Dating Antique Furniture Leg Styles

A bracket foot on antique furniture is a simple designed foot shaped like a bracket.
Dating antique furniture leg styles. There are many different styles of furniture and each type has distinguishing features. The wood used to construct the buffet sideboard often determines the era. If every journey begins with a single step the road to antique furniture knowledge can start with a foot specifically the antique foot style belonging to a chair chest or table. Early 17th century furniture typically featured bun or ball style feet.
You aren t likely to find a louis xv chair at a garage sale. It is named after french society hostess madame récamier. The three legs at the sides and back rise past the seat to become part of the back and arm support ending in a curved top rail. But a leg can tell you when a style was first introduced and that is one important step in identifying an antique s age and period.
Leg and foot styles. It has a joined straight corner edge and curved inner edges and was often used on georgian furniture like chest of drawers. This sub category of the victorian era is probably the most feminine influenced style. Other leg types include the saber spiral and spider tapered or straight leg.
Identifying antique furniture feet can help determine the approximate age of a piece along with the period in which it was made helping you research and value antique pieces more skillfully. The récamier is a type of chaise longue with a raised back and foot. Consult antique furniture guides to compare photographs and details of identified antique buffets and sideboards to your buffet sideboard. The style began in france and england but eventually migrated to america where it evolved into two other furniture styles naturalistic and renaissance revival.
One of the best ways to identify an antique style is by observing the piece s legs and feet. Leg styles are key not only to the appearance and functionality of pieces but they can also be used to successfully identify many types of antique furniture furniture legs can provide clues to when a piece was manufactured especially when considering how they are used in conjunction with foot styles. When is old an antique. For the most part the furniture you ll encounter will probably be limited to traditional english and american colonial styles.
According to museum furniture queen anne style buffets and sideboards will have carved scallop shells with graceful bowed legs. The bracket foot has been in existence since approximately the 1680 s and was one of the main types of feet used throughout the georgian period and was reproduced in the edwardian period. Look at this leg.