Victorian Glider?

[matty77]

Hello All,

Just purchased this morning for $20!  The woman selling was 81 and moving into a small senior apartment out of state - this chair belonged to her great grandparents.  The wood is in very good shape, but the upholstery and springs need some serious attention.  Just hoping someone can confirm that this piece dates to around 1860 - 1890, and perhaps give me some tips on where to begin restoring the functionality of the seat portion.  Thanks in advance!

[fancypants]

Not a bad buy , matty77 .

Looks to have been refinished & repaired (kind of a marginal repair , with the steel 90 degree 'braces' on the base of your chair) .

I'd guess 1890's-1910's .... however , when you take on the upolstering project (check out the 'projects' section of the forum for more info) , you may find patent dates on the spring-retainer hardware .

Looks like a good candidate for checking the tightness of the glued joints & any such repairs that will/might be done , while re-up-ing the item !

[talesofthesevenseas]

Yes definitely check out the Eastlake rocker posts in the projects section. There are three of us who restored these from beautiful rockers in varying states. I think you will find a lot of good information.

I have a task to start you off- Carefully turn your chair upside-down and examine the rocker springs. You may need a magnifying glass or loupe. You may have a patent date on them. Coils would be an older chair, but sometimes a broken coil was replaced with a spring. Look near the springs and see if there are holes where coils were attached, but I think Fancy is right, this will turn out to be a later one. I was able to date my Eastlake rocker by its coils.

[mart]

Think Fancy is right on date !! It does appear to have coil springs but those were used well into 1900`s !!  Like Tales said look for marks/patent dates when you get into the restoration !! Its a very nice little Eastlake chair !!  You did good buying that one !!

[matty77]

Will do - thanks to all of you for the information and guidance!

[talesofthesevenseas]

By coil springs I mean these. Flat coils. This is the underside of my Eastlake:



This photo shows the patent date of 1874, which means with a twenty year patent length, the rocker was produced sometime between 1874 at the earliest and 1894 at the latest. (giving a heavenward nod to Wayward for that info )

[talesofthesevenseas]

 Here is a whole article on platform rocker mechanisms. This is from the project topic.

http://www.worthpoint.com/article/restoring-%E2%80%98rock%E2%80%99-antique-platform

[matty77]

Thank you so much for your help Tales!  I'll keep you all posted as to what I find underneath...

[hosman321]

I always thought it was 35 years, that's what wayward said on my table here:
http://www.antique-shop.com/forums/index.php?topic=7840.15
But you know, I think it's more likely within 15 years or so that people actually used the patented parts. After that, something newer and better probably came along...

[talesofthesevenseas]

That would be a good thing to know. He did say twenty in that Eastlake rocker topic, but I am not sure if the lengths of patent life may have been different at different times. I think they have changed a lot recently since the whole thing with Disney and the expiration of the patent on Mickey Mouse. This would be interesting to investigate further.

[talesofthesevenseas]

LOL this is gonna get seriously complicated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_law
Mickey Mouse Protection Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

[KC]

Early to late 30's - American Made.  Lots of this furniture produced depression era and WW - item produced in greater quantity. My grandparents had several platforms like this - absolutely loved them but they got dispersed to others in the family. 

Nice pieces of furniture that have many, many more years of use!  Just need some TLC!

[matty77]

I finally pulled one of the coils from the glider - the bottom reads "PAT  Jan 12.Dec 7.86".  I am assuming then, if patents only lasted 20 years, that this chair was made between 1886 and 1906...

I believe that 20 years has been a fairly static length for patents.  However, I think that COPYRIGHTS have had varying lengths - probably confusing the issue.

[GreenhornGirl]

Wow.  That is a gorgeous chair.  I hope you do restore it so we can see the before & after pictures!  I'm jealous 

Slightly OT, but does anyone hear subscribe to Worthpoint?  I've read some bad reviews by people who claim to have been scammed by them, but I'm still so tempted to join because they have at least 40% of the things I am trying to value, and you can't obviously see the prices on there unless you subscribe.  I would be even more tempted to subscribe if there weren't a "limit" on how many items you can look up per month, though.  Which makes me lean towards the validity of the rip-off complaints.

[talesofthesevenseas]

COOL! Looks like you've got an oldie there. It is good to know where the patent date is on those kinds of springs. I would not have thought to remove them in search of the patent date.

GreenAcres, you know I kinda thought the same about Worthpoint at first, but all they really are (as I see it) is an Ebay archive. The trick is catch the items when they are up for sale on Ebay and it's free. It would make things easy to have access to that data though.