Drawer bearers

[jacon4]

 All of which brings us back to the original question. Is it possible that the method of connecting the drawer bearers is a German method.

Good question! the bad news is, I dont know the answer. It's like wedged dovetails, I know it's Germanic construction however, thats all i know. Wishes we had some furniture historians/ scholars that were members and  interested in posting on some furniture construction details.

[millcrek]

As you may have guessed I get obsessed once in a while. I promise I will quite soon.  I have two buildings full of mostly customer work waiting for restoration. I  now know that I have 9 hand made chests of drawers in waiting. Behind the things in the picture below are three empire and one Hepplewhite chests. I managed to squeeze in there far enough to get my hand into the drawers and feel the back of the dividers. One of the empire chests has the type of construction we have been talking about with the slot fading away towards the center.  I couldn?t get enough room to get a picture so you will have to trust me it?s a typical empire chest about 1830.

[millcrek]

Here?s a chest similar to Jeff?s that I bought from a family that had some provenance. There story was that it was brought from Ohio in 1836 to Ithaca Wisconsin.  The entire chest is walnut even some of the secondary parts. The beading is scratched directly into the drawer fronts. All of the surfaces show signs of hand tools and it appears to be pre-industrial. The drawer pulls are wrong and it was antiqued at some point. There are four corner posts with turned feet. The drawer dividers are mortised into the posts. The bearer is in two pieces, the side piece is notched and also mortised into the post. The bottom piece that the drawer actually slides on is nailed to the side piece.

[Jeff L Headley]

With the migration of period techniques it would be expected to see valley influences continue into Tennessee and up into Ohio and then West especially 50 years later or it could just be a coincidence. Regardless it seems like superior construction than just nails. Has anyone considered this might be of Irish influence just to stir the pot. Happy Saint Patrick's Day

[Jeff L Headley]

When attaching a bearer to a guide it is not recommended to glue the bearer. It wiil have to be replaced.

[Chuck Bender]

Jacon4,

I'd have to call your stand Empire. It's hard to have elements from a later period in an ealier period. A dressing table/lowboy with double arch molded drawer openings, side hung drawers and cabriole legs would be classified as Queen Anne not William & Mary simply because the newer design elements didn't exist earlier. I only take this stance after nearly 30 years of curators beating this thought into my head. In my early years I'd have called both your stand that Millcrek's chest "transitional", but we all know that is improper terminology.

[jacon4]

I'd have to call your stand Empire

Well actually, I think we are mixing up style periods/designs here. During the Classical Era, there were 3 different & distinct styles, Neoclassical, Empire & Late Classical. For a more thoughtful description of these styles, check out this post from another blog i visit as it clears up much confusion (theres alot!) between Empire & Late Classical for instance.

http://rarevictorian.com/2009/06/empire-furniture-isnt-always-empire-furniture.html

I only take this stance after nearly 30 years of curators beating this thought into my head.

I am always wary of what curators say as it often turns out to be wrong, sometimes famously so, as when Joseph Downs, then the curator of The American Wing at MMA said this to a CW antiques forum in 1949
"little of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore....."

So I am guessing here that whatever the latest design element that is included in a piece, that piece is always defined by it's latest element, correct?

[millcrek]

I can see how the idea that every piece becomes the style of  it?s latest element would be useful in the categorizing of furniture for academic organization of style. It makes for less categories. This however assumes that the development of furniture styles is always linear, that only one style was developing at a time and that the styles were developing at the same time everywhere. On the ground during the periods was it that clean? I would guess that there were hold outs that worked in one style well after the beginning of an other. There may even have been individuals who purposely combined styles long term.  I sometimes think that much of the academic writing is done primarily for other academics. If you look in the older books, like Furniture Treasury by Nutting, there are many more pieces included that exhibit multiple style elements. The newer literature seem to concentrate primarily on pieces of pure style, or they concentrate on small niche areas like hearts and crowns. If furniture was studied and categorized by construction technique alone we might get a whole different view of what happen and how technique migrated in the period. This is what I think we have been doing in threads like this one.

[jacon4]

Well, one of the problems i have with this is, what happens when 2 styles are being produced at the same time, as is the case with Neoclassical (sheraton & hepplewhite) and early Empire?

[jacon4]

In browsing the auction catalogs this morning, I came across this cherry chest of drawers built in connecticut in late 18th/ early 19th century. Note the federal (neoclassical) fan inlay on the corners of  the drawers. I suspect what happened here is either the maker or the client (or both) decided they wanted to include this classical decoration and by god, thats THAT! They simply didnt care what the fashionista's would say, this is a very american tradition in american decorative art.

I dont know about you but to me this chest shouts chippendale, despite the federal decorative element.

[msiemsen]

Whether the chest is Chippendale or not the design element of a newer fashion aids in putting a date to the chest. This is no different than dating a chest by the fact that it has machine made screws in it. If something wasn't available it wouldn't be there.
Mike

[dkeller_nc]

Back to the drawer bearers - those of you that are not into the hand-tool thing might appreciate this observation.

The "dissappearing" groove on the back side of the drawer divider makes a lot of sense from an economization of effort and material perspective.  In particular, sinking a mortise in the back of one of the drawer dividers with a mortise chisel consumes a great deal of time, and also pretty much requires that one leave the piece long by at least 3 or 4 inches on each to avoid blowing out the end grain.  This extra length then must be sawn off and tossed (or perhaps used for drawer stops, but there's usually no shortage of small scraps in a WW's shop!).

As to why the groove gradually dissapears - it's very difficult to cut a stopped groove with a plow plane, but it's really easy to cut a sloping groove as shown in the photos by just starting the plane somewhere in the middle and repeating the strokes until you have the groove sufficiently deep at the ends.  As to why there's not a groove all the way across, this makes sense from a pure labor economization perspective - you don't save much planing effort by doing this, but you do save some.


One interesting question arising from this technique is the shape of the end of the tenon on the side runners - one wonders whether it's square as one would expect a standard cross-cut to be, or whether it's cut on a bevel angle to fit the sloped section of the groove....

[Jeff L Headley]

This is where my original posting came from. This is a simple answer for supporting a drawer support that isn't just nailed to the case side. Why is this not seen earlier and more often in other areas? Or should I say that Southern (Including Virginia) internal construction is superior during this time frame.

[Jeff L Headley]

I have not seen tapered tenon ends in Virginia though. I have seen the same consideration in the back also, (tenons into half dovetailed rails) but almost as often just nailed in the back in our local pieces. You do see this method migrate down the valley into Tennessee and Ohio and then back into the Carolinas. Full dust dividers are the answer for structural integrity but who wants to move it.