Dating american furniture - Furniture - Wikipedia

A relatively cheap material, wood lends itself to various kinds of treatment; for example, it can be stained, painted, gilded, and glued. It can be shaped by means of hand- or power-operated cutting and drilling tools. Heated, it can be bent to a certain extent into a predetermined shape and thereafter will retain the shape. The grain in wood creates a structure with varying character, which in itself provides a natural ornamental surface, in which patterns can be formed by means of precalculated juxtapositions . Colours range from white, yellow, green, red, brown, gray to black through countless intermediary tones. By juxtaposing wood of different colours, extremely rich effects have been achieved, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Wood, if stored under favourable conditions, is durable, and pieces of furniture from the oldest civilizations—Egypt, for example—are still extant . Lastly, most wood has an aromatic scent.

Although it requires registration, offers a free searchable price guide for antiques. The information in the database comes from the sale prices of more than 750,000 antique items around the world. If you know the manufacturer of your furniture, you'll be more likely to get an accurate idea of its price.

Dating american furniture