Need Help Determining Age of Wood Furniture - Shrinkage, Wear etc.

[talesofthesevenseas]

Hi there fellow antiques addicts! 

I'm trying to learn more about determining age by looking at the shrinkage and wear on wood furniture, in addition to the style. What inspired this is a rather interesting, but not too valuable old dining table and chairs that I picked up recently. I fell in love with the rustic personality this old table has and would like to know more about it.

I have no doubts that the top is quite old, but I suspect that the top may have been recycled onto a later trestle base and chairs. But maybe not. What do you think?

The top is VERY worn and made from a single piece of oak approximately 51" x 35" that was stained with a dark walnut finish. The wooden pegs vary slightly in form, protruding up quite a lot from the table top. When you run your hand over the table, you can feel the highs and lows of the grain. The edges of the table are VERY irregular and worn. All good signs that the top is old.

The trestle and the chairs do have wear, irregularities and are definitely had made. Like the top, they are oak stained in dark walnut.The chairs in particular do have a particularly "old feel" to them, in that they are extremely sturdy, but surprisingly light weight and very "old-fashioned creaky n' squeaky". There are no visble nails except on the seats, which have been replaced, so I cannot date it  by nail style. The wear on the chairs appears in all the right places, fronts of legs, places where feet have rested and most obvious, on the ladder-backs of the chairs, where they are moved around and pulled out from the table. The trestle "feet" show wear on the edges as well. The designs are definitely done by hand, there are slight irregularities and the chairs and trestle also appear hand made, with irregularities throughout. Where the feet attach to the trestle pillars, the pegs are protruding, just as they are on the top. But the level of wear on the chairs and trestle, are not to the degree that I see in the top.

So here are my questions:

Do you think the top is older than the bottom?
Since the pegs are protruding on both the top and on the trestle, does that mean they are more or less the same age?
Is it normal for a table to have this much extreme wear on the top, but perhaps not so much on the chairs and trestle?
How old do you think the top is?
How old do you think the rest are?

Here are the photos:

The whole set:



Up-close on the edge of the table, not protruding pegs, wear and raised grain due to shrinkage:



One of the chairs, the leather seats were a later replacement, I recovered them in the toile shown above. Note the wear on the ladder-back top and rungs, front of legs. There is the same amount of wear on the slats between the front/rear legs. There are no parts of the set that were turned on a lathe.



Up-close on the trestle span. Not a lot of wear here, although this does not surprise me since the chairs are padded and the chairs typically do not contact the trestle, they contact the upright posts, due to the table being only 51". You can see some of the wear on the trestle feet in the lower right and on the front of the chair leg. Note the matching pattern on the chair tops and trestle span, definitely a set.


I will provide some additional photos of the protruding pegs on the trestle feet and the wear on the trestle feet.
Thanks for your opinions on this, I look forward to hearing your comments!
-Claire

[D&b antiques]

What I would'nt do is Refinish. if you' feel you need to clean it Murphy's oil soap is great. it take years to get a decent Patina. it look's all original.

Typical of the Art's Craft's movement. notice the spoon carveing in the crest rail of the chair's. if you payed anything less than $ 500.00 Dollars your ok. But just remember it's not so much what you pay for it. if you like it.

[talesofthesevenseas]

Thanks D & B Antiques!

No, I am not going to refinish it, its all those wear marks, bumps and scuffs that give it the rustic personality that attracted me to it in the first place. I like things to show their history! I only covered over the seats, going over the tops of the existing leather, which I'm pretty sure was a later addition, about 1950-60ish.  I paid $200 to a private seller, so I am fine with it no matter what it's value is.

So Art's and Crafts Movement would date it to approximately 1880 - 1910-ish then! That's great! That is just about what I was hoping it might be! And I'm glad to know that the top seems to be all original too, that is also good news! Many thanks for that!

-Claire

[regularjoe2]

Not being able to touch it & see the grain for me = no opinion here .

talesofthsevenseas - are you certain that the top is one solid piece ?
I ask because that would require deep cutting (to rip it) & a very huge oak tree .
You might check the bottom of the table-top for toolmarks from it's manufacture .

There was a bit of a cottage industry in the U.S. in the 60's thru the 80's that distressed furniture in order to make it appear to be 'rustic' .
When sand-blasted , end grain of oak ablates at a diff rate than other grains ( quarter-sawn does too ) , and this method was sometimes used to accent dowels that really covered screws .
It was really a quick & effectve way to distress hardwoods .

One thing that sometimes gives this away , esp. on furniture designed for daily use , is the presence of wear patterns that are mostly uniform-appearing (esp. on flat surfaces) .

Bird-shot was commonly used to simulate worm-holes ... not to mention chain & steel cable 'work' too .

I've used harddrive magnets to set up a simple experiment -
Set the magnet on top of the suspect 'peg' & let it stay there for a min. & then remove it .
Hover a liquid-filled compass in the vicinity of the peg .. no reaction=real peg .

Shrinkage & wear depend on alot of various environmental conditions . from the time it was an acorn to the time it wound up in your hands .

[talesofthesevenseas]

Thanks for the comments Regularjoe2!

OK responding to each point...

About the top:
Absolutely 100% positive this is a single piece of wood. I was skeptical about that too when I went to see it originally too, but I have flipped the whole table over and examined it top and bottom. It came from a HUGE tree. No doubt on that at all. It's pretty impressive to think about the size of the tree it must have been, which is one of the things that really intrigued me about the table, since it has been a long time since that kind of wood was available. Someone had to have felled a whole tree just to make this table I think! I really don't have much doubt that the top is old, and one of the main reasons is because of the single piece of wood.

About worm holes:
It doesn't have any worm holes, real or faked.

About the surface of the table top:
Hmmm... I do wish I knew more about tool marks that could be helpful. I don't know how to tell if it is quarter-sawn or sandblasted. I can try to get some better photos of the surface when I get home tonight. I know this is tough to tell through a photo, when you guys can't give it the touch test! I'll try to get the light to show more of the surface texture.

About the pegs:
I will see if I can dig a magnet out of an old hard drive and I'll try it! I do have a compass... just gotta find it! I can say that the pegs are rock solid in the table, no wiggle room, no looseness, and the patina around them looks like the real thing. I will report back after the magnet test! Thanks for suggesting that!

I can't say that there is much that is uniform on the wear. Some chairs have more than others, one leg will have more than the others. It looks pretty random to my non-expert eyes.

About the environmental conditions:
All I know about this table/chairs is that I purchased them here in California, from a couple that had purchased it ten years earlier from an antique store in Canada. They did not know any of its history before finding the set in the antique store. So it has gone through some environmental changes and I was wondering if the cold temps in Canada would cause an accelerated shrinking of the wood. Although it does not look like it was ever left outside to the elements though. It is not dried out or water damaged, just scuffed and bumped, with a couple of water rings. The wood all seems "healthy" and solid, no cracking, no lifting, no peeling.

I too have had suspicions that the chairs and trestle could have been faked as a replacement to recycle a good ol' table top. The chairs don't feel like manufactured chairs though. They really feel different when you pick them up and move them. This is kind of hard to describe. They are lighter than they look and that comes as a surprise the first time you move them. They also "talk alot" there's kind of a "groan factor" with them, but they are tight and solid. I hope this is a little helpful, I'll try to get some better photos.

Thanks!

[regularjoe2]

Another bit about toolmark ... take your time & check the areas where mortise & tenons are & look for very fine (razor-blade thickness) cuts , even short ones , in the wood .

Most highly-skilled cabinetmakers would (and still do) scribe (cut) wood prior to using a chisel on it (not pencil-markings) .

Machine-made pieces sometimes may have an 'index' mark , but are usually run through jigs .

That's some piece of oak , if one piece .
You might want to check the end-grain for growth rings , so as to see what part (section) of the tree was used .
If you see a break in the growth rings , direction of rings , etc. , you'll know 4 sure .

Very large slabs of hardwoods can tend to check (crack) over time , depending on where the section of the timber was harvested from the original tree .

You could also see about the width of each growth ring ( wide rings = lots of growth that year , thin ones = not so much ) .

It's been my experience , with hardwood slab-top tables , that the slower grown lumber tends to crack less ( of course , all the variables of the 'after-harvest environment' come heavily into play in this ) .

[talesofthesevenseas]

Great! This gives me a lot to investigate, I love it when I get to do this kind of stuff! (I started by looking up mortise and tenons and now I know what those are!) I will check it out tonight, take more photos and report back on what I find or don't find. Thanks again for the great info and new direction!

[cogar]

Up-close on the trestle span. Not a lot of wear here, although this does not surprise me since the chairs are padded and the chairs typically do not contact the trestle

So Art's and Crafts Movement would date it to approximately 1880 - 1910-ish then ……

With 100 years of use I would expect to see quite a bit of wear on the top edges of the trestle. Children love to scruff their feet on such things when they have to sit at a table to eat.

[talesofthesevenseas]

OK here are the new photos. I did a lot of photographing it in different lighting conditions, trying to show as much of the features that might help to indicate its age as possibile. Let me know if we need more photos, different angles etc. I got a bright light and shined it on the table to try to pick up the details for the photos.

Yup- it is definitely one big ol' piece of wood on the table top. More details below.

One correction to the previously posted emails. I measured the table when I got home and the actual dimensions are as follows:
Length along the grain = 54"
Width across the grain varies from 29.50" to 29.75"
Thickness = .75"

Here is the top of the table in all it's battered glory. You can see pretty well that it is a single piece of wood in this photo:


Here is the raw, cut end of the grain. No planks. The core of the rings of the original tree is slightly left of center in this photo. It is a little tough to see with the dark stain, so look close!


Here is an up-close shot of the same raw, cut end of the table. The grain looks just like this, all the way along the whole width of the table. No plank separations. The grain looks pretty darn tight. I guess that means the oak is from a dry climate?


Here is the wear on one of the trestle feet, also the protruding pegs on the trestle feet:


View from beneath the table looking up, the vertical pillar of the trestle is at the bottom of the photo, and the piece on top of it, spaning the width of the table, is what the pegs in the table top go into. Those supports are so tight that I was unable to slip a piece of paper between this support and the table top!


Another view from underneath the table looking up, trying to show the marks that are there in the light:


Up-close on the cross piece of the trestle. Very little wear here, because the chairs are padded and typically hit the upright pillars. You can see some chisel marks in the spoon carving on the far left. I think those divets or dimples in the cross piece are later dents from when the chairs had exposed upholstry tacks.


This is a construction photo from the underside of the table. The board on the left is the support that runs with the grain along the length of the table top. the board on the right is the support that runs across the grain under the width of the table top. In this photo, with light coming through from behind, in the center of the photo we can see a shadows of a couple of wooden tenons (male) on the lenghtwise support going into the mortise (female) on the width support.


I cannot see anything that looks like scribe marks around the areas where tenons join to mortise. Here is the trestle cross piece joining the upright trestle pillar. There are two protruding wooden pegs on back of the upright. You can see differences in shapes of the pegs and a circle of what I think is wear around them.


Two up-close shots of the pegs on the table top, where the peg protrusion is more extreme than on the trestle. You can see the pegs really stick up high and there is again that circle of wear around them:



Looking forward to your comments on this!
-Claire

[D&b antiques]

Step back. take a look at the size & weight of table And Chairs typical Art's & craft's styling of the depression years. lot's of company's mfged these smaller tables in depression years

Set back Relax & injoy.

[talesofthesevenseas]

But would a single piece of wood have been used for the top in the depression? I'm not sure when single "slab o' wood" table tops stopped being made and planks came into use, which is what makes me wonder if the top is older than the trestle. Hmmmm...

Whatever the table is, I love it for it's character, rough edges n' all!  

[D&b antiques]

it's likely' wood of that size was available. oak chest etc are found useing one plank.

[talesofthesevenseas]

OK cool! Thanks! I had fun trying to get those photos and looking for more identifying marks last night. I've learned a lot from this!

[cogar]

Here is an up-close shot of the same raw, cut end of the table. The grain looks just like this, all the way along the whole width of the table. The grain looks pretty darn tight. I guess that means the oak is from a dry climate?

Width across the grain varies from 29.50" to 29.75"

That is a “quarter sawn” board. See here: http://www.auf.asn.au/const_images/sawn_log.jpg

And if the grain looks just like that, all the way along the whole width of the table and the width is 30”, then that means the tree was at least 8+ feet in diameter that it was cut from. And from the width of those “growth rings”, …… NO, not from a dry climate. Most probably from the Northwest coastal region.

Given said, I'm beginning to wonder if it is really white oak.

[talesofthesevenseas]

Thanks, that diagram was very helpful! Yes, I think 30" was its original size prior to shrinking with age. It does look like it came from a very old tree, judging by how close together the rings are. The rings are very consistant in size on the raw end, it's like that all the way across. Sheesh, I wonder how old that tree really was! That is kinda cool to think about when we're having dinner!