What era was it?

[baileyuph]

Several older pieces of solid walnut chairs, and settee have come in lately.  They are from an era where typically design is Gothic and the wood work includes some fairly nice walnut burl in the faces (inside backs and rung between front legs).  Like I said solid walnut.

The size of this furniture, a lot was scaled as a small sitting chair, closer to the floor.  I suppose the females used these while the counterpart sat in the larger, same style.

My curiosity is age of this era?  The chairs are old school, the roll edges are hand filled and sewn, those builders were old world craftsmen.  Fillers include of course the usual, hair, excelsior, and cotton of different refinements.  They didn't have or use the luxury of rolling off preformed roll edge.  They did an impressive job of forming the shape with the twine, needle, and heavy stitching twine.  Not nylon, needless to say. 

Any of you, who endeavor in this activity, needless to say can pick up on the vintage I discuss. I am thinking the furniture or era is almost a 100 years old.  Maybe 85 to 100 years.

I got a small ladies chair in this week, believe it or not, it had the original covering.  Not durable, dry rotted though but still on there.  I suppose the phenomena was it hadn't been rebuilt or recovered, hence revealed all the old world way of doing things.  Which affords  seeing the old school spring tying craft, padding build up, plus roll edge formed by old style fillers and hand sewing techniques.  Yes, all that stuff.

If a camera had been handy, I would have taken a picture of the build up, that was the price of the entry ticket. 

Oh, I forgot the given, the edging of the upholstery is almost always finished by gimp lace which is generally pretty formal and wider than available new stuff.  The chairs do come off somewhat formal, put that in contrast to the new Asian in vogue today.  But, know what, some of the younger do not give the stuff a second look, just old furniture great grandma probably had.  Do you find the same reaction?

Pin pointing the era, is the thrust.  Kinda fun stuff, a break from truck and boat seats, and repairing the new Asian products.  Smile.

How old?

Doyle

[crammage]

They would be considered gothic revival style that stems from the Victorian era (1847-1900).  More than likely they are 1890 - 1910 period.  These parlor sets were made up into the 1900's and can be found in the Sears catalogs (and other retailers of the time). 

It is exciting to find original furniture where the insides haven't been touch for over 100 years.  I have a pair of side chairs from the same period (Eastlake style 1870-1900) that has the original fabric that I'm going to redo for myself this summer.   The worst part is tearing off the old materials and 100 years of dust and pollution floating around, that's why I like summertime to do these types of teardowns. n  :)

http://s1115.photobucket.com/user/crammage/media/Upholstery001_zpsca5cb5ad.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

Clay

[baileyuph]

Clay, indeed you have a couple that are in incredible condition for their age.

Restore the finish, not refinish, and they will be master pieces.  Those a customer's chairs?

Update on mine, the fabric I took off was the second covering.  I got too anxious by stating original covering as I based that on the bottom chintz covering, it was the original dust cover.  These, like your E. Lake chairs, the dust covers do not have to be removed.  So, when I took the upholstry off, it could be easy to determine, original, one recovering, and now mine.  

The wood on my chair is just amazing.  Polish and keep on trucking.

The dust, yes, I know what you mean.  I did it slow to keep the dust down.  

Actually I just have a few minutes left of work on mine and it will be ready to ship.  Lay the gimp early in the morning and done!  Which is good, I have some boat seats to recover and other pieces in the side of the boat.

I have some other interesting pieces of furniture thought that I am anxious to get going on, one is a chaise and the fabric is interesting.

I am staying very busy, hope the same for your business.

Thanks for sharing the East Lake pictures.  To add what has been said, it is always interesting if one can get a historical background on these type of pieces.

Oh, almost forgot, thanks for your rational for the age of my Gothic chair and settee waiting.  That makes sense when I see the hand build up and materials used internally.  Now, I can adjust my age range , the chair is probably from a 100 to a few more years old.  

Amazing,

Doyle

[crammage]

Doyle, these are actually my personal chairs that have been sitting in the shed for a number of years.  Finally decided to get to them this summer.  I actually started tearing them apart last night and also found out that these are not the original coverings.  There were recovered once before although a very long time ago.  The only way I could tell is that there was an additional row of tack holes.

As far as the frames go I'm regluing the joints and fixing the corner braces, replacing veneer, etc.

As far as the finish goes I think they are going to get painted.  Yep, not my first choice but before I picked them up at auction they were stored in a very damp environment and there is a lot of staining and old repairs that won't look so good unless it is finished with a really dark color which then loses the beautiful wood.  They are not valuable antiques just still very functional furniture that's quite old so making it useful is the main goal, not preserving history.  Hopefully they'll last another 100 years and then someone can truly restore them.

Clay

[baileyuph]

Clay,
Just to let you know those old chairs fill a market need.  I had a older walnut classic chair with a lot of show wood.  I thought I saw beauty in the old thing and yes, you guessed it.  The chair was stripped and the wood was beautiful after tung oiling a few coats.  Then, I went to no strings attached in padding the chair, to end up covering it with a beautiful classic pattern.  Set it up front and the next day, customer commented how nice it looked and I said, I like it too but reworked it sell.  The next day the customer came back, said just couldn't get it out of mind and paid me $400 for it.  It was a small scale which required little reupholstery/materials.

So, fix the chairs up, never know.

It was a fun project,

Doyle