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    For the widest spread interest, American furniture lies at the core of  American material culture and what everyone calls “Americana.” Furniture is something everyone can use, the best or the most resonate is seen as sculpture.  Historically, furniture resonates with the largest number of people. “Washington sat in a chair like this.” “Jefferson wrote the Declaration Of Independence on this portable desk.” A William and Mary tuck a way table used by General Schuyler as a field table in the Revolution. All those sideboards, chests of drawers in the early 19th century that look like Roman or Greek temples tell of the proud, broad shouldered, confident Americans who saw their Republic as an heir to and perhaps even surpassing, the Greek and Roman Empires.

    The appraiser should know that all antique American furniture is best understood as falling into Periods.  These periods roughly correspond to the major changes in artistic styles that swept over the Western world since the Middle Ages. Period Furniture refers to antique furniture made before 1830, before the widespread introduction of power machinery that turned furniture making into an assembly line process. Furniture a 100 years old or older is antique, 1911, as of this writing, less old collectible.

    When the first European settlers arrived here for permanent settlement, Jamestown 1607, Plymouth 1621, the furniture styles they brought with them were a careful amalgam of lingering Medievalism, Renaissance Classicism and  emerging Mannerism that had started in Italy and quickly swept up through northern Europe. The great court cupboards of Massachusetts are the most dramatic example. Wallace Nutting called this “Pilgrim Century.” We  call it “The Seventeenth Century.” The great break with past scholarship in this period was the 1982 exhibition and three volume, must-have catalogue New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century, Jonathan Fairbanks, Robert F. Trent, where the case is laid out for Mannerism.

    The second great style to roll up on our shores was the Baroque, an art style that started in the Counter-Reformation, quickly shorn of religious connotations by northern European Protestants, but keeping the emphasis on emotion, dynamic movement, variety, contrast between thick and thin curves. We call this the William and Mary Period (1690-1730) and the Queen Anne (1725-1760). Think of case pieces with big ball feet on thin necks, chairs, tables with baluster turnings and sharp transitions to thin necks, reel turnings, lots of contrast. Some consider the Queen Ann period to be Late Baroque.

    The third great style was the Rococo best known in America for it’s greatest English designer Thomas Chippendale.  A combination of Rocaille  and Coquille (Rockwork and Shellwork), it was light and playful using naturalistic motifs, asymmetry, large C and S scrolls. Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director published in 1754 immediately came to America and defined a style for a generation. For this stretch of influence: Chippendale (1750-1790). One should know that a small minority of scholars consider Rococo to be the last phase of Baroque. This has not been accepted in the furniture community as a whole and with good reason. The underlying sentiment, or zeitgeist, of Rococo is markedly different than Baroque.

    The Fourth style is a large break, The Federal Period 1790-1820. Some  continue it until 1835.  Defined by Neoclassicism, it was all thin, clean, rectilinear, symmetrical without carving as a main definition. For the first time since the William and Mary there was an emphasis on the play of veneers on large surfaces although here on uncarved flat surfaces. Think of Palladianism. This was a direct reaction to the Baroque and Rococo. The styles of English furniture designers George Hepplewhite and Thomas Sheraton dominated American furniture consumerism.

    The final period of the period styles is the Empire, also called the Greco-Roman. Dominating completely from 1805 to 1840, this was, as noted above, the furniture of large-shouldered optimism, admiration of ancient Greece and Rome. As the style developed it became ever more massive and powerful. Columns from Doric temples held up sideboards and were often on Roman or Etruscan lions paw feet.  Carved dolphins held up sofas. Finally with the introduction of the power bandsaw in 1830 the last phase ended with the Cyma-Scroll School produced by high speed in factories, what some auctioneers now call “Elephant Trunk” furniture. 

    One should always be aware that rural vernacular forms often continued later than the periods mentioned above. These examples are either called retardadaire or examples of “persistence of form.”  A county Queen Ann chair of 1810, nearly 100 years after the lady died, is an example.

    “Terminus post quem non,” a terminus after which one cannot go, is the rule for furniture appraisers. That terminus is the point of last stylistic detail. For example, if a piece has an Empire detail, however small or obscure, on a Queen Ann form, the piece is Empire period. If a county stepback cupboard has great 18th century form with old color but is primarily put together with wire nails it has to be, at least, late 19th century since wire nails were introduced in 1851.

    There was a collapse or disappearance of one uniting style in 1840 which brought in the Victorian era with it’s endless Revivals:  Elizabethan Revival (1840-1880), Louis XV and XVI Revivals, Renaissance Revival (1850-1900), Rococo Revival,(1840-1900) Empire Revival (1880-1900).  Aesthetic Movement furniture (1880-1910) and design as well as Japanese Revival or  Japonisme, Moorish Revival of the 1880’s, Colonial Revival spurred on by the 1876 Centennial, and the very short lived Art Nouveau added fresh influence.

           The break that came was sharp and permanent. We call it Arts and Crafts (1880-1920). The public calls it Mission Oak. Starting in mid-19th century England, Arts and Crafts was a rejection of historicism and everything Victorian. Very, very little carving, usually none at all, straight, clean severe lines, emphasis on function. Arts and Crafts was a dominate force from high brow to low brow 1900 through 1920 and swept in the Modern Age. Chief cabinetmakers were Gustave Stickley, Syracuse, N.Y, his brothers L. & JG. Stickley, Fayetteville, N.Y. and younger brothers George and Albert, the latter who used “Quaint Furniture” and Stickley Bros. Co. of Grand Rapids.” In East Aurora, N.Y. were the Roycrofters led by Elbert Hubbard and in Grand Rapids and Holland, Michigan, the Charles P. Limbert Co.  Life-Time Furniture of the Grand Rapids Bookcase and Chair Co. were latecomers in 1910.

    For Americans, the Jazz Age was defined by Art Deco (1925-1940) followed by Art Moderne (1930-1940). (Like Chippendale, they called their furniture “modern.” The terms came later.) Designers to know: Donald Deskey (1894 – 1989), Gilbert Rohde (1886-1958), Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), Kem Weber (1889-1963), Paul Frankl (1886-1958), Wolfgang Hoffmann, [1900 - 1969] son of the co-founder of the Wiener Werkstatte ; the firm Schmieg, Hungate & Kotzian which also produced a wide variety including revival styles all strong in contemporary auctions and showroom.  Uniting all of this all the way back to Arts and Crafts was the International Style or International Modernism (1925-1970) whose credo was American architect Louis Sullivan’s  dictum of 1896, “Form follows function.” For the latter think the incomparable refugees from Hitler, Ludwig  Mies Van De Rohe (1886-1969) and Marcel Breuer (1902-1981).

Post World War II.

    Furniture design and manufacture followed two different routes: studio furniture and mass-produced modernist design.

    The latter evolved out of Art Deco and Art Moderne with a strong nod to the Internationalists. In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art caught the drift perfectly with their “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition. The designers that emerged defined the 40’s, 50’s and well into the 60’s. The term was Biomorphism.  What better could personify that but Eero Saarinen’s (1910-1961) 1948 Womb Chair ? Or the molded plastic and plywood of Ray and Charles Eames (1907-1978) in dozens of different designs? Or the multiple designs that flowed from Marcel Breuer’s 1935-1936 Lounge Chair ?
    In her must-read book for the appraiser, Cara Greenberg in Mid-Century Modern says of this Lounge Chair: “Early organic: Breuer’s laminated plywood lounge, manufactured by the English firm Isokon, was a translation from aluminum and one of the first pieces to suggest the flow of living tissue.”

    Other American designers of this period that the appraiser should be familiar with are Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) whose work is very hot, icon George Nelson (1908-1986), Harry Bertoia ( 1915-1978), Vladimir Kagan (1927--), Edward Wormley (1907-1995), Seattle architect Wendell Lovett (1922--) , Paul McCobb (1917-1969) who was influenced heavily by Danish Modern which in turn was influenced heavily by American Shaker furniture.

    Studio Furniture or Art Furniture was the other path furniture design took after World War II. This has a very strong market deserving serious attention from the appraiser.  Each piece manufactured or created is the product of a single craftsman from conception through final completion. As a website dedicated to this movement, http://www.furnituresociety.org, notes:

 
  The marketing of studio furniture is also unique to our time. Normal retail outlets for furniture or design have little relevance to the field of studio furniture, where work is distributed through peculiarly dynamic sales networks. Works are showcased and sold through craft or art galleries or at craft or furniture shows, displayed at studio open houses where a local group of art supporters might see them, commissioned by a client, or purchased directly from the makers shop. Some makers sell through a number of these venues simultaneously, but there is considerable variation based on region, gallery or show presence, and makers connections. Often studio furniture tends to be concentrated in the region of its creator, but some also becomes part of an extra-local art collection, in private residences or museums. The marketing is thus distinct from the mainstream furniture trade, and closer to that of small local businesses and the fine art world. The term studio suggests the importance of the individual maker and his or her artistic aura in the marketplace.”

    Leading practioners are Sam Maloof (1916--), Wendell Castle (1932--), James Krenov (1920--), Tommy Simpson (1939--), Kristina Madsen, Clifton Monteith and Kurt G. Holsaple. The specialist appraiser can find 50 more. Sam Maloof is the oldest and longest running studio furniture designer. His works are in a large number of museums and appear at auction. A new single rocker is $25,000 and there is now a waiting period of several years.

    Wendell Castel is considered by many to be the founding creator of the Studio Furniture movement. His furniture is found at many high-end auctions. A “wall sculpture/table” estimated at $3,000 -$4,000 at Rago’s in 2006 went for $51,000.  18th century furniture dealers should be so lucky . A more common form of Castle’s furniture, a swooping “Walnut Crescent rocking chair” brought $18,000 at the same sale. 

    James Krenov founded the fine wood working program at the College of the Redwoods in California. He taught there until 2002. His works fall in the range above.   

    Kurt G. Holsaple, Hudson Valley sculptor, furniture designer and maker, apprenticed with Wendell Castle from 1975-1977. Diningroom sets and furniture are all in the five figure range but seldom found outside collections.

    Not all Studio Furniture reaches great monetary heights. A Tommy Simpson “faux-finish, black and white marbleized wood bench (one of a pair) created in 2000 for the Pilobolus Dance Theater went at Winter Associates, Connecticut, or $476 against a $350 to $700 estimate in 2006. These all demonstrate the challenge to the appraiser in this field.

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