What is it and What’s it Worth?
Do you have any chairs that look like the ones in the photo above? What about a table that looks like the one below?
If so, you are in luck! The furniture in the photos is in the style of Renaissance Revival. Renaissance Revival furniture, which was made roughly between 1850-1880, can bring great prices. Our Worthopedia has over 8,000 listings for Renaissance Revival. Keep reading if you want to take your knowledge of antique and collectible furniture to the next level.
History
French influence brought about the appearance of the massive forms and more rectangular construction of the Renaissance Revival Period in America. Furniture of this period typically featured straighter lines, with arched tops, broken pediments and prominent cresting. Burl walnut panels and applied machine-carved moldings and ornaments were used in place of the hand carvings of the French Renaissance models.
Leading Craftsman / Manufacturers
Gustave and Christian Herter (Herter Brothers), Jacques & Hay, Allen Brother (Philadelphia, PA), Wooton Desk Company, Alexander Roux.
What to Look For
Renaissance Revival furniture, with the exception of side chairs and pedestals, beds, sideboards, and tables are generally large in scale. Major stylistic features include inlaid table tops, incised lines, angular scrolls and pilasters, fancy columns, Pompeian style legs, roundels, portrait medallions, and bronze or porcelain mounts.
Walnut tended to be the primary wood of choice, with pine and basswood being used as secondary woods for case and drawer construction. Both pine and basswood were both primary and secondary woods used in the construction of painted or grained examples of “Cottage Furniture” in this style.
Marks
American Renaissance Revival furniture was seldom marked by the maker. Some paper labeling was used, but it is very rare to find an example with a label intact. It is most often identified by attribution to a maker based on identified examples for which documentation and catalogs exist.
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