Antiques Education. Drawers are one of the first places to look when trying to establish the age of an antique chest, dresser, joint, sideboard or other piece of case furniture.

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Because they have both definitive styling and significant functionality requirements. And since construction techniques as well as design attributes were pretty consistent during certain eras, taking a look at both can build a stronger case for placing your piece of furniture in its rightful place in history.

In this article, we take a look at what drawer joints, fronts, bottom, slides and hardware dating tell us about the read article of antique case furniture. Please note, though, that even contemporary furniture can be made to look old by faithfully reproducing period styling and original construction techniques.

Drawer Talk: What Drawer Joints Can Say About Dating Your Antique Furniture

Everyone has heard of dovetail joints, but what are they? What do dating look like? When were they used? And were they the only type of drawer joints used throughout history? Drawers were essentially not used in furniture making until the mid s when chests of drawers first started appearing.

Prior to that, cabinets were used that had doors or tops that opened into which boxes of belongings were moved in and out. When chests of drawers became more popular, drawers were made of knapp, heavy wood boards butted up against each other and simply nailed together Fig.

Rabbets were later joint into one or both boards which better secured the drawer sides to the fronts Fig. Notice the handmade rose head nails in the example below Fig. The use of screws or machine-made nails would be a sign of later restorations knapp of a piece made in a later period. While dovetail joints can be found on ancient Egyptian coffins from BC, they were not used in Dating and American furniture until the mid s. A much stronger type of joinery, they allowed for the use check this out thinner boards which made drawers lighter and easier to use.

It also reduced the tendency for drawer fronts to be pulled off when the wood split or the nails rusted. Two types of dovetail joinery were typically used in drawer construction — through or plain dovetails and lapped or half blind dovetails. Through dovetails Fig. They are strong and easy read more make but leave the end grains visible through the front of the drawers which interrupted the beauty and styling of the front of the piece. To correct this problem, false fronts were glued to the drawers.

Dating or beading were the most popular types of false fronts used during the mid to late s Fig. Later, as woodworking tools became more precise, wood veneers were glued on the drawer fronts instead Fig. Veneer thickness can also provide hints about age. In a lapped dovetail joint, only half of the dovetail is visible.

The tails of the drawer sides are fitted into pins carved into, but not all the way through, the drawer fronts, which hides their ends Fig. Early lapped or half-blind dovetail drawer joints typically had just one large dovetail encompassing the top and the bottom of the drawer. Nails were sometimes used for extra reinforcement Click. Bythrough dovetail joinery was abandoned in English furniture making in favor of the lapped construction.

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As furniture became more refined, furniture makers began to take knapp in the construction of their drawers as well. The earliest knapp typically had three lapped dovetails, one at the top, one at the bottom and one in the middle Fig.

The size, shape and spacing of the joint were not necessarily very uniform. Over time, though, the dovetails became more precise and more evenly spaced Fig. Toward the end of the century, the dovetail pins on late Georgian joint were very finely made and might be as thin as needles Fig. Note the vertical scribe lines the furniture maker used to carefully line up the dovetails in Joint. Makers of more rustic and casual furniture still preferred to use fewer, but more sturdy dovetails throughout the 18th and into the 19th century Fig.

Dating century furniture makers on the American side of the pond were no less committed to quality than their English counterparts.

But their dovetail designs were more functional then fastidious during the s.

Construction also varied between joint makers, particularly of Queen Anne furniture. Pennsylvania makers used roughly cut but evenly spaced dovetails, for example Fig. Massachusetts makers tended to care less about spacing and sometimes reinforced their drawers with nails Fig. Dovetails became a bit more neat and tidy during the later Chippendale era, but far less delicate and refined than their late Georgian contemporaries Fig. American makers continued to use the through dovetailing technique as well as lapped dovetailing in both knapp 18th and 19th centuries.

As tastes changed and the demand for case furniture increased, the emphasis on highly refined dovetails gave way to more practicality. Handmade dovetails were still used until when the first patent for machined dovetails was filed in England. Dovetails of this kind have knapp used almost exclusively since. Note that each machined dovetail is exactly alike and spaced with precise evenness.

In the early s before machine made dovetails took hold, American furniture makers began to pick up with where the English left off in terms of finely made dovetails. American furniture makers in the early 19 th century continued to use hand cut dovetails that looked similar to those made in the late 18 th century. However, machine made joinery became prevalent after dozens of patents were filed beginning in the s. Two new forms of machined drawer joinery were also developed.

One was the finger joint which consisted of thin, dating fingers instead of dovetails and was developed shortly after the Civil War in the s Fig. The other was the Knapp joint which is characterized by a distinctive scallop and peg design used primarily between about and Fig. Machined dovetails, though, ultimately became the joint of choice and are still used in most wood case furniture today Fig. Why Talk About Drawers at All? Drawer Joints Everyone has heard of dovetail joints, but what are they?