Word of the Day Nearby words for cabrioleI recently met with one of our regular Skinner customers to take a look at an interesting find: a circa 1740 chair, made in near-coastal New England somewhere north of Boston, probably New Hampshire. When I saw this antique chair, I shared a knowing chuckle and shake of the head with its consignor. We both realized what the chair amounted to now, but more importantly we both knew what it used to be. This Queen Anne Tiger Maple Side Chair falls very squarely into a category of antique furniture that we encounter every now and then – the flawed masterpiece. The flawed masterpiece is, as defined here, an exceptional piece of craftsmanship that has been significantly compromised in one way or another. The chair pictured here, you may realize, used to be about three and a half inches taller than it is now. For some unknown reason its long-ago owner, whether by necessity or choice, lowered it. Maybe it became water damaged or rotten.
Maybe one foot cracked and weakened and the easiest way to make the chair’s other legs useful was to just even them all out. Maybe the owner wanted his child to be able to sit in it more easily. This “height loss,” as we refer to it, is the only thing about this antique chair that seems to be flawed. Structurally, the chair is otherwise untouched, and the surface is pristine, highlighting the bold curl of the wood. We, frustratingly, will never know how this masterpiece became flawed. What we do know is that the height loss will affect its value because at the high end, today’s American furniture market especially rewards perfection and incredible rarity. In a recent American Furniture & Decorative Arts auction, we thought lots 169 and 170 fell into the category of the flawed masterpiece – each was an extraordinary piece of 18th century Boston furniture. Lot 169 is an antique bureau of very desirable size, but without its original base; Lot 170 a rare card table with its original wool baize playing surface, but refinished and with a rebuilt drawer.
While the prices paid are still out of reach for most, they are a small fraction — perhaps a tenth, if we dared to warrant a guess — of what each piece would have brought in its original state. From a value standpoint, there is simply no way to account for how much a flaw like that of the chair, the bureau, or the card table will affect a piece of antique furniture at auction – the only way we can find out is to sell it! Understanding the issues at hand, the owner of the 3-inches-too-short Queen Anne Tiger Maple side chair agreed to the tantalizingly low estimate of $200-300. Certainly it’s worth more than that. What would you pay for a flawed masterpiece? Ask us a Question Unfinished Queen Anne Style Dining Table Leg American Made Table Parts Looking for parts for your solid wood dining table? DutchCrafters Queen Anne style table legs complement the table you're building or looking to upgrade with a new leg style! Available in coffee, end table, and dining table heights.
With so many woods to choose from, you're bound to find wood you're looking for. See all your options in the Dimensions tab above. We also offer these legs in unique tiger maple, genuine mahogany, sapele mahogany, santos mahogany, and teak wood. Call for a quote on these species. All of our Amish furniture table parts are handmade in the USA! Queen Anne style table legs come unfinished and ready to use.YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsTrends THE latest design revival celebrates one of the most elemental motifs in furniture: animal legs and feet. Everywhere you look -- be it in the mass-market Shakespeare & Co. bookcase from Thomasville or the high-end BC Workshop collection at L.A.'s Blackman Cruz -- you'll find bookcases with griffins' talons or marble consoles with bronze horses' hindquarters."It all started with antlers," says Brooke Hodge, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Along with a renewed interest in Victorian design, particularly taxidermy, this obsession with animal parts is a throwback to the Teddy Roosevelt-era gentlemen's club, Hodge says."
It gives a room a sense of history right away," says Charles Fradin, the L.A. designer whose reinvented American classic furniture includes a fawn-legged side table. Adds interior designer Frank Webb of White Webb: "It is a harkening back to antiquity, to forms seen throughout the ages."Indeed, furniture based on the anatomy of wildlife dates back 3,000 years to the creature comforts of the animal-worshiping Egyptians, whose beds stood on carved bull legs, gazelle hooves or lion feet. Four-legged beasts also influenced the design of chairs and tables of the Greeks and Romans, who used them for strength as well as decorative detail.Although legs were often stylized representations of animal limbs, feet were rendered realistically. Bird motifs dominated in the early 18th century: A three-lobed drake foot was a feature of Queen Anne furniture, as was the claw and ball, commonly seen on Chippendale and early American furniture derived from Chinese sculptures of dragons clutching crystal orbs.
In the mid-1700s, horse hooves became popular. Lions' paws were common in Continental neoclassical styles of the late 18th century.In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as archaeologists unearthed relics of ancient civilizations, furniture makers revived animal motifs. Big-game safaris made zebra and leopard hides a sign of status, and furniture took eccentric and extreme forms such as umbrella stands made out of hollowed-out elephant legs.Animal feet can be seen even during the Modernist period, says Angela Past, 20th century decorative arts specialist at the Bonhams & Butterfields L.A. auction house. "T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings and John Dickinson re- created ancient animal motifs for a modern setting," she says.These designers continue to influence contemporary furniture makers. The British firm Julian Chichester electrifies the traditional ball-and-claw chair with hip upholstery (seen on Page F1). Interior designer Mariette Himes Gomez's line for the Hickory Chair Co. employs similar legs on a streamlined wing chair silhouette.
Parisian interior designer Jacques Garcia has created Le Lion, a bronze stand composed of three lion paws joined into one piece that is sold through Baker Furniture in the U.S. The Mykonos collection of outdoor furniture in Kreiss showrooms has minimalist horse hoof feet.By contrast, the BC Workshop's Equus Console is painstakingly detailed. Designer Adam Blackman found a wooden mold for plaster carousel horses and recast it in bronze.Blackman also sells a leather ottoman with bronze hippo feet, and on a recent buying trip he acquired a 30-inch-tall 19th century sculpted talon, which he plans to use as a table base. By changing the scale, he says, it becomes "surreal and mythological."He's all for such audacity. "In the Roman times, emperors would wear lion capes and sit on thrones with lions' feet," he says. "The more fierce the animal, the more fierce the person." Seizure Led to FloJo's DeathHis 104 scores make his caseRestaurant review: South Beverly GrillBrutal Murder by Teen-Age Girls Adds to Britons' ShockComaneci Confirms Suicide Attempt, Magazine Says