Parlor table and dresser

[KC]

lol, yeah well, you are in Texas, Texas don't count when it comes to furniture, BAM!

Say what?  BAM back at you!     (I would watch out for Mart's BAM!)  LOLOL

Kathyv43, Porcelain casters were VERY POPULAR in Victorian times (the days prior to carpeting and shag rugs when you mopped alot and had to move the furniture to) - the furniture style and casters are both indicative of Victorian!  We are all agreeing on that!  (We are just splitting hairs on the dates!)

Jacon4, putting my nephew on a plane back to Columbia, South Carolina in the morning after being here for a month!  He'll be okay with the heat but not the humidity!  I have always kidded my brother you could cook raw spaghetti/pasta by just sitting it outside there in South Carolina (with all the head/humidity)!

Mart, how did you fare this morning?  We had a major electrical/wind storm through this morning and didn't know if it was still strong when it hit your neck of the woods!  (At least we kept electricity this time!)

[jacon4]

Yeah, it's been HOT, i get up very early here so i can retreat back home in the AC by 11 a.m. I was in Dallas Tex a couple years ago on a job, it was HOT but not near the humidity we have here, very sticky here.
Well, where did Texas and western states get their furniture back in the day? Was it shipped from the furniture centers like Grand Rapids in the east? build their own? I have no idea where furniture comes from out west. I do know that Calif has walnut but it's different than walnut here in the east.

[mart]

Its been hot but this week has been a drier heat than normal !!  Has not been bad  at all !! But then I am outside so much that the temps do not make me melt like every one else !! Plus our yard is quite shady with big trees all around it !!  Have been picking grapes (bumper crop this year) and watering fruit trees before they get heat stressed !!  Big garden is done and in the freezer (thank heavens) just some late stuff in the little garden,,squash, zuchinni, a few late tomatoes !!
KC,, it has rained all around us last few days but not a drop here !!  Yesterday a thunderstorm warning for our area and rained in town which is only 6 mi. south of us but not here !!

Jacon4,, I have no idea where all the furniture came from but it was mostly solid walnut,, very little was veneered !!  Only thing on it was the typical style numbers you find on most of it !!  One attorney brought an entire  bedroom suit that he wanted for his house !! But most of the pieces were the ordinary buffet/ servers, dining tables/ occasional tables, ect !!
We have a ton of black walnut in this  area !!  Wish I knew someone to buy the nuts but you need a jack hammer or steam roller to crack the things and then not enough inside to be worth the trouble !!
I would assume that since most of the mfrs in Texas were small, local and few, that most was shipped in from Grand Rapids MI or High Point NC around the turn of the century !! 

[jacon4]

Well, if it was solid walnut from that era, i would say it was very high end and expensive when built. Most of the run of the mill depression era stuff i see is veneered, poplar, birch or plywood core with veneer surface or a straight up dark/light stain applied to poplar which accepts stain or paint like a dream. A lot of curvy-waterfall-rounded surfaces that worked well with veneers.

[cogar]

Well, where did Texas and western states get their furniture back in the day? Was it shipped from the furniture centers like Grand Rapids in the east? build their own?

This should answer your questions, to wit:
-------------------

 Early Texas furniture industry was well beyond primitive

Sam Houston was spitting mad about the wagon load of furniture arriving at his Huntsville home. The stove had no pipe, the bed's canopy and side rails were missing and a bedpost was split, the mirror was shattered and the sideboard was "infamous beyond all things else."

"The veneering is broken and split," Houston furiously complained to the Galveston merchant who sold the items. "Wherever it needed it, and I should say at least 20 places, it has been puttied. ... One end of the sideboard was split for near a foot and filled with wax. I have not told you all, nor is it worth the trouble."
 
Furnishing a house in mid-19th century Texas, where even short-distance transportation could be treacherous, could pose serious problems. Thousands of early Texas settlers arrived with little more than a trunk, and the items needed to fill their homes - especially those in the hinterland - often were improvised on the spot.

Yet, when it came to furniture, Texas was filled with surprises. Among the frontier settlers were skilled craftsmen capable of transforming native woods into functional, sometimes highly sophisticated, furnishings.

Although most settlements of any size had someone capable of fashioning at least rudimentary furniture, 19th century Texas furniture production centered in Austin, Galveston, areas around New Braunfels, Round Top and Nacogdoches and the blackland prairie of North Texas.

Shops ranged from single-man operations to those with multiple artisans using simple hand-operated machinery. Workers often doubled as farmers or builders of coffins and wagons. Some craftsmen also offered ready-made imported pieces.

By the 1880s, cheap industrially produced furniture brought by rail was available in most parts of Texas, and furniture artisans - some of whom had fled Europe to escape mechanization of their craft - found their skills obsolete.

Read more @ http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Early-Texas-furniture-industry-was-well-beyond-3340496.php#

[jacon4]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH    HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAA! what i said earlier was truer than i thought! Sam Houston agrees with me!
" Texas don't count when it comes to furniture, BAM"

[mart]

Darn  !!  Hate to admit it but,,,Jacon4 is (bite my tongue) right !!   

[jacon4]

Furnishing a house in mid-19th century Texas, where even short-distance transportation could be treacherous, could pose serious problems.

Yeah, that was also true on the east coast in the mid 18th century, postal services were very good because that only involved a horse and rider but if you needed to haul any type of cargo in a wagon (like logs for instance), you had some serious issues because the roads were very bad.

[mart]

Thanks Cogar !!  That article was correct !!  Thank heavens we had  a pretty good rail system after 1900 !!  Otherwise we would still be sitting on tree stumps !!

[KC]

[jacon4]

LOL, cute. I got that BAM! thingy from that cooking show, Emeril, who was always saying BAM! as he finished this or that dish. Interesting piece on Sam Houston, an interesting man who was removed as Governor of Texas because he opposed joining the south in the civil war. Lt Col Robert E Lee, another virginian as was Sam, was in Texas when war broke out, returned to Washington to make a painful decision about that war, he opposed leaving the union as well.

[cogar]

Thank heavens we had  a pretty good rail system after 1900 !!  Otherwise we would still be sitting on tree stumps !!

Mart, that's pretty much true for all areas in North America that was 50+ miles inland from a coastal or a river port. It t'was the Erie (Barge) Canal that made New York City a major center of commerce. Up n' down the Hudson River to Albany and across to Buffalo and the Great Lakes. 

Ha, the origin of the rail system into Texas was for shipping cattle to Chicago stockyards. And West Virginia would still be known as the hillbilly "backwoods" of western Virginia if not for the railroads that were built for transporting coal and lumber to the great cities on the East Coast.