How to identify the age of antique furniture by drawer joinery.

Published 2024-04-28
How to determine the age of antique furniture by looking at the drawer construction. We examine basic construction, machine dovetails, hand cut dovetails, Knapp joinery and modern assembly.

All Comments (8)
  • @fugueine
    Thank you for the information. Drawer joinery is the first thing I look art to determine whether a piece of furniture is solid wood, thanks to you I've a better idea of how to guess age.:)
  • @catsandcrafts171
    That Knapp joinery is beautiful. Not seen that here in the UK so much, mostly a wide variety of shapes of dovetails. I'm not an expert, I just like old furniture and browsing antiques, so I love learning about dating methods. Interesting video!
  • @erichaskell
    I had an Eastlake bedroom set I thought was made between the 1920s to 1930s which used the drawer type you described in at the beginning ( the ones that do not come apart) so is my dating wrong? The drawer pulls were "sphinx" faced in brass.
  • @Fixorfish
    Not a bad explanation of the joinery-use as an age identifier....but not particularly complete, imo. The materials used in drawer construction are also indicative of the age of a piece. Plywood use for bottoms (20th century) or back pieces, integral drawer slides, and of course...finish quality (or even existence on all but the face !) are also good indicators. Additionally, the species of wood used in "non-seen" parts, their smoothness (saw marks) and consistency throughout the entire piece, are also indicators of an era or even an area of the country in which the piece was made. Overall, not a bad video, so thanks. Next time you go into a discussion of dovetails, you should probably include the differences between "through dovetails", "half-blind dovetails" and "full blind dovetails" as well as the 'oh-so tricky and difficult to get tight'.....sliding dovetails, to be thorough in your tutorials....just sayin'. (Gotcha by nearly 3 decades in doing this kind of woodworking professionally, but you are doing fine !)