Best Reasons To Buy French Antique Furniture

The French connection with respect to elegance, beauty, the food, living, including the furniture and interiors apart from the lifestyle has always been remarkable. Truly, being French is one of the best things that a human can ever come across in his life. With almost a history of over 40, 000 years, the French style of living has always been an amusement for numerous denizens across the globe. Especially, the French antique furniture has always been regarded a bench mark due to its elegance, excellence for detail and also for the finesse of the craftsmanship.

 The French vintage furniture has never failed to demonstrate the innovative styles of furniture, be it a simple sofa or a huge antique French Renaissance KING Bed. The matchless style and elegance that carries in every furniture item and interior is undeniably spectacular. The French furniture is not simply made out of wood but also with a passion for excellence and brilliance.

The graceful carvings, delightful designs and the mesmerizing finish always promise the buyer to enjoy the ownership of fine art. The vintage French furniture showcase the lan and smartness of those who spent innumerable hours on making a furniture item that lasts for few generations ahead. Also, this vintage furniture is available to the buyers in various designs and styles as antiques belong to diverse timelines of the history. 

The French vintage furniture and interior items are unusually captivating due to their eloquence in style and ergonomics. However, the similarity among these eternal furniture items is that they affluently speak the heritage of that country. The amusement for French antique furniture can be strongly felt globally as several furniture enthusiasts invariably decorate their living spaces with at least one or two French vintage furniture. 

Popular French furniture items like cupboards, dressing tables, row of cabinets are widely bought by numerous furniture aficionados across the globe and the collection of home furniture items is certainly a matchless possession.

 The wide range of collection often includes Louis style, rococo style and shabby chic style furniture. Also, oftentimes, the French collection in creamy and white colors is highly preferred by myriad furniture buyers. Besides these, the authentic French furniture items that are made from Mahogany, Oak, Teak and Plywood are also widely sold by many vintage furniture dealers across the globe.

Many serious buyers often prefer to buy the bedroom furniture that is made out of Mahogany as these are classic furniture items and also stand as a testimony for durability, inimitability and charm. It is certainly a worth spending on French vintage furniture for several reasons like it is a congregation of several antique styles, for the interesting history and above all, these classic furniture items are ideal for a family life.

 The furniture and interiors are available to the buyers for every kind of usage like kitchen, hutches and armoires etc. There are undeniably thousands of dealers who are into selling these antique furniture items both in stores and also over the internet. However, it is always advisable for the buyers to perform a detailed and thorough research not just on the furniture products but also on the dealers’ authenticity.

It is always better to read the reviews about specific dealers, understand the dealer’s legitimacy, experience and expertise in the business of antiques. Oldplank Antiques & Interiors has offered the largest & most diverse collections of French Formal & French Country, Italian & European antiques. Each antique is hand-selected as antiques are our passion and our specialty - new shipments arrive weekly. Nationwide and international shipping assistance is available. To learn more log onto www.oldplank.com.

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Antique Wooden Furniture

Mahogany is such a well-known timber that it is scarcely necessary to say much about it in the way of description. To most people it is a familiar reddish-brown wood, and it has been used for making furniture since about 1730. The timber was imported from the Bahamas, from San Domingo, from Cuba, and from Honduras.

Strictly speaking these different places produced trees that were not usually true mahogany, but the use of the word spread to cover all timbers of a red-brown colour that resembled it closely in appearance and could be worked in a similar manner. It is the Cuban variety that has the very distinctive markings beloved of cabinet-makers in the second half of the eighteenth century.

This variety was used often in the form of veneers, as was walnut, in order to show the light and shade of the figurings to the best advantage. Mahogany is very strong, seasons quickly and does not tend to warp and split, is seldom attacked by woodworm, and is a good timber to work. It could be obtained in large enough pieces to make large table-tops without joining, which had not been possible before, and not only does it take a pleasing smooth finish but is excellent for carving.

 It is therefore not hard to understand why, once it had been introduced, it quickly became popular and stayed for long the principal timber used in cabinet-making. Satinwood came from the West and East Indies, and was in use for furniture-making from about 1780 until 1810. It is a wood with a warm yellow colour, and has a close grain that takes a high polish. It was used mainly as a veneer, but unless handled carefully by the cabinet-maker it has a tendency to split. Towards 1800 it was used in the solid for making chairs and for the legs of veneered tables.

Satinwood was an expensive timber, and it was used, on the whole, only for special pieces for wealthy clients. Satinwood furniture was sometimes elaborately inlaid with other light-coloured woods, but mostly it was decorated by having oil-painting as part of the design. Much of it is said to have been the work of the woman artist, Angelica Kauffmann, but this is seldom, if ever, true.

Chairs, as well as tables and cabinets, were decorated with painting, and this took the form of small bouquets of flowers and garlands of trailing leaves which suited the slender shaping of the woodwork. About 1900 there was a revival of interest in eighteenth-century satinwood furniture. Old pieces were brought out from cellars and attics, where they had been hidden as unfashionable, and were restored and sold for large sums.

At the same time, a large number of copies and near-copies were made for those who could not afford the real thing. These pieces have now had half a century of wear and tear, so the prospective buyer should be on his guard. Often, too, the old painting on an eighteenth-century piece has been removed because it was worn, or for some other reason, and has been replaced by the work of a modern artist. This happens commonly with table-tops, which inevitably get scratched and stained in daily use. Such restored pieces are worth less than those on which the decoration is original

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The Role Of Antique Wooden Furniture

Though the new world is waking up to many different substances that can be used as a material for making furniture, whether for the household or for official purposes, there will always remain a major group of people who would like to remain with the old school of thought - they prefer antique furniture. These really old pieces of wooden furniture lend a royal, classy look to their house.

The antique furniture is so much in trend again that people not only use it for beautifying their houses but also invest in such furniture as an investment. They treat wooden furniture as art. There are various classifications of antique furniture. For example, in Indian antique furniture, we get to see that all the royal families have lent their own style to the furniture. In English furniture we see that different eras had different styles - like the Georgian furniture which are plain and simple.

They follow the style of architecture used in their buildings. Such furniture is mainly made from oak and mahogany. A lot of attention is paid to the design. Even the screws are made of wood. Regency furniture (as it is popularly known, though it is the late Georgian style) is the style in which a new look was given. It has a more elaborate look. This style was inspired from the Greek, Roman and Egyptian styles. Victorian style is more into curves, rounded corners and heavy carving with glossy finish.

Edwardian style is actually the beginning of reproduction of old furniture. The furniture of various other cultures reflects their own unique styles. For instance, somehow African furniture always has a mysterious aura surrounding the furniture. When it comes to taking care of wooden furniture, there are a few points to note.

Bear in mind that not all wooden furniture is meant to be restored to its brand new condition. For example, you wouldn't want an antique piece of furniture restored as new! Such furniture looks better with old marks, and they are worth more that way. So make sure you know what you are doing. In general, wooden furniture should be polished with bee wax and soft cloth at least once in two months to give it the shiny look.

You should take care that the furniture is not exposed to direct sunlight as extreme or long exposure to direct sunlight will result in fading of the surface area and it becomes more difficult to restore.

 You should also avoid exposing your furniture to extreme humid environment or central heating. In such cases, you should use humidifiers or dehumidifiers depending upon the environment. As mentioned earlier, some wooden furniture are meant to be pieces of art. So naturally, they need more care just like any other expensive pieces of art.

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A Primer for Appraising Antique Wood Furniture

The general look of a piece of furniture tells the expert whether it is old or not, but this is a matter of experience. If you are interested in old furniture see as many genuine pieces as you can; go to museums where you are certain of the authenticity of the articles. Slowly the eye and mind can be trained to recognize whether the appearance of a piece is true or not. The aging of wood alters its colour according to the timber from which it is made, and according to the treatment it has received over the years.

Even the hidden inside parts change with time; if a drawer-lining is scraped it will show at once how the surface has aged. Equally, the old polished outside surfaces mellow, and repolishing changes the colour of the wood completely. It is worth while studying the methods of making furniture, and how they have changed from time to time. How, for instance, the crude dovetails on the heavy drawer sides of 1600 were modified and improved in the course of the century.

Safeguard Your Antique Wooden Furniture from Molds

When examining a piece of furniture in a strong light, it is as well to look for signs of alteration, and to try to reason what was done and why. New screws differ markedly from old; prior to about 1850 they did not taper to a point, Also, the slot in the head was hand-cut and seldom central; in modern machine-made screws it is invariably exactly across the middle of the head. Old veneers were cut with a saw by hand, and are consequently quite thick; many of them almost an eighth of an inch.

Modern veneers, however, are cut with a machine-driven saw, and are much thinner.This, with other factors, is a useful indication of the genuineness of a piece. The use of some of the rarer woods implies that an article cost more for materials and probably also for labour, and that it was probably made to a high standard throughout. The better-quality eighteenth-century pieces were fitted with oak linings to the drawers, but in exceptional instances this might be mahogany or cedar.

Practice varied from workshop to workshop and from period to period, and a guide can give only clues not answers. If you are really interested in discovering more ways to appraise antique wood furniture, then the most comprehensive book on all aspects of old English furniture is The Dictionary of English Furniture, by Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards. It is in three large volumes, copiously illustrated, and was first issued in 1927.

The Best Antique Furniture In Phoenix

A further edition, revised and enlarged by Ralph Edwards, was published in 1954.Also, an excellent guide to the period 1720-1820 is Georgian Furniture, issued by the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1951. A standard work on French furniture is Les Ebenistes du XVIW Siecle, by Comte Francois de Salverte, of which the fourth edition was published in Paris and Brussels in 1953. Also written in French, but less exhaustive and cheaper in price is Les Meubles Francois du XVIW Siecle, by Pierre Verlet.

It is in two volumes: i, Menuiserie, ii, Ebenisterie, published in Paris in 1956. In English the Wallace Collection, London, Catalogue of French Furniture, by F. J. B. Watson, issued in 1956, containing a great deal of information and many illustrations. The more you educate yourself on the matter of fine wood furniture, the better eye you will develop over time, resulting in an antiques collection to make you the envy of all your house guests!

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