Tips to Find Antique Furniture

Shopping for Antique American Furniture can be tricky unless you're a true expert in craftsmanship and provenance. Is that gorgeous console with the fretwork a real find—or a fake masquerading as the work of an 18th-century English craftsman?

In some cases, it might not matter to you. But you also don't want to pay through the nose for something that's not worth it. While an antique dealer would never tell you about how many times or place do they buy things from, it is important for you as an Old Antique Furniture dealer to understand the basic difference between buying and robbed.

You may follow these tips to find out the quality of your furniture or whether it is actually antique:

1. Look for Dovetail Joints

This construction detail is your first key to the piece’s age and quality of craftsmanship. Dovetail joints are strong and require skill to produce, so they’re generally a sign of a well-made piece. Hand-cut dovetails can date an older American piece to before 1890, although hobbyists and specialty makers still use them.

There’s no hard and fast rule, but hand dovetailing was really no longer done in factories after that date. Hand dovetails are slightly irregular and the pins are thin and tapered. Wider, uniform machine-cut dovetails were common in factory-made pieces from 1890 until the modern era.

2. Look for Plywood Backing

Look at the backside of your piece, including the insides and backs of drawers if applicable. Solid wood backing indicates a piece is likely pre-1880s; plywood came into vogue around the turn of the 20th century. Particleboard means you probably have something made in the 1960s or later—the era of cutting corners.

3. Look for Manufacturer’s Stamps

If you’re lucky, a piece will have a marking on it indicating its origin. Early pieces that were handcrafted will sometimes bear an inscription from an individual furniture maker, a clue to its value that should be examined by a professional appraiser.

If they’re really old, it could be just a pencil signature on the inside of a drawer, but by the time you hit the turn of the 20th century, makers were using paper labels which then progressed into brass plaques tacked onto the insides of drawers or on the back of a piece. Then in the 1950s and 1960s they were using spray-on stencils. Keep in mind that sometimes suites of furniture had only one piece marked, so if your piece got separated from its mates, you may have nothing to go by.