Arts and Crafts Oak China Cabinet (ca. 1920)

The Completed  China Cabinet

Once and a while we get a restoration job where the piece we are working on really sees a major transformation. Pieces that are painted usually fall into this category. 

A customer asked me to restore an heirloom china cabinet that was a piece made in the Arts and Crafts style in America sometime in the early part of the 20th century. The piece was made from white oak and had some nice quarter sawn boards throughout the piece. While I would not label this piece "Arts and Crafts" in the strictest sense, the use of oak, and the over all lines (minus the bandsawn feet and applied corbels) reflect the American Arts and Craft aesthetic. Of particular note is how the mating surfaces are never flush. for example where the side front glass frame meets the side glass frame, the frame overlaps about 1/16 of an inch. The designers of this did this intentionally to create a very simplistic sense of depth to the surfaces. For more on this take a look at the music cabinet I made in 2014:

http://johnmarkpower.blogspot.com/2014/08/stickley-music-cabinet-2014.html

At any rate, this piece loosely falls into the Arts and Crafts category, so that is where I am placing it!

The condition of the piece when it came into the shop was that the entire piece had been painted, every joint in the piece was loose, It was missing its lock, escutcheon, and key, and the back had been pieced together at some point with newer material. Here is a "before" photo of the cabinet:

 

Obviously, the first thing to do was to remove the glass and then the paint and the finish below the paint, leaving the bare wood. After this was accomplished the cabinet looked like this:

The back and the quarter round were discarded and new material was installed in its place, but first the loose joinery needed to addressed. Below are the components that make up the cabinet during the dismantling period, everything was labeled so I knew how to put it back together.

While the cabinet was apart, several panels (like the bottom and the shelves) had separated along the joined boards. they were repaired and glued, as seen below.

These next two photos show the fixed frames that make up the sides and the door being glued together.

After the glue had dried on the side frames, the customer and I decided to introduce an adjustable shelf system to the piece. The brackets which had held the shelves originally had been fixed. To accomplish this, I used a shelf drilling jig to drill the holes on the stiles of the side frames as seen in the next three photos.

Once all of the frames were assembled, the rest of the piece was assembled with new glue. Before I assembled all of the individual parts, I sanded everything which was easier than sanding the piece when it was together. Below is are photos of the rebuilt cabinet and the shelves before staining.

I used a blend of a light walnut and extra dark walnut stain to simulate the look of oak fumed with ammonia. This fuming was the way in which Arts and Crafts pieces obtained there color, although I have run into plenty of pieces that were stained instead of fuming.

These next few photos show the completed piece with the glass installed.

Here is a detail of the key and new escutcheon I installed (the lock is on the inside of the door).

This photo shows one of the two corbels. They were made of a few boards stacked side by side, which were  face glued and band sawn to the curved profile. The band sawn edge was then sanded and veneered with quartersawn oak. The feet were also made this way.

Here are a few more photos taken outside (with a bit of snow in the foreground).

Oak Bobbin Cabinet (ca.1920)

The Completed Cabinet

Recently I worked on a piece that is a bit of a mystery. It is an Oak cabinet that was made sometime in the early part of the 20th century. The cabinet has a large door that opens to reveal six drawers. The drawers all had bottoms that had holes drilled in them every three or four inches in a grid pattern. There is also a shadow of some pieces that cris-cross the holes in a x-pattern. The owner of the cabinet thought it might have something to do with an old record player, like a Victrola. The thing that first came to my mind when I saw it was that the holes had dowels in them at one time and that these dowels received bobbins of thread that were not in use. If this were true than the bobbins would have to have been pretty large in diameter and height and also the cabinet would have had the capacity to store many bobbins. If it was used for this purpose, it was likely used in a commercial setting. 

All of that being said, I really have no idea what this cabinet was initially used for. The cabinet was made from Oak and portions of the case were veneered with book matched panels of  Quarter Sawn Oak with a very pronounced grain pattern. If it was used in a commercial setting, I wonder why the manufacturer made it look so good?

The cabinet was in pretty rough shape when I received it. The finish was cracked and the top was marred with scratches and rings. In addition, the cabinet was missing a portion of the bottom of the case as well as two feet (one a carved lions foot) and it was also missing a drawer. Below are some photos of the restoration of this mysterious Oak cabinet. 

The first thing I did was to remove the finish from the cabinet. Once that was done I set about the repairs and also making the drawer and the missing feet. To make the drawer, I disassembled an original drawer so that I could make copies of each individual component. The photo below shows the drawer disassembled. The blue tape shows me the orientation of each board for reassembly.

The front edges of the two side boards were dovetailed into the front of the drawer using a half blind dovetail. This means that the ends of the dovetails on the sides are concealed by the front of the drawer. These original dovetails wer produced by machine and so I faithfully reproduced the originals using my router. To do this I built a cross cut sled for my router that allowed me to move the edge of a board across a moving bit. I then set up the router in the table with a dovetail bit and cut my dovetails. Below is a close up of this operation folllowed by a shot taken from further back.

I used a similar procedure to cut the mortices for the dovetail pins into the board that would be the front of the drawer. Here is a close up of the completed dovetail on one side of the drawer.

This photo shows the new drawer constructed minus the bottom.

This photo ( a little out of sequence) shows the new drawer sides beside one of the sides I had copied.

The next two photos show the completed drawer with the bottom. The bottoms of the original drawers were plywood that was nailed onto the bottoms of boards. I kept with this design when I made my drawer.

This last photo shows the new drawer on the left being glued next to the one I disassembled. I glued them on the table saw to ensure that they were flat.

To make the missing feet, I first had to glue up some Oak to create a block large enough to accommodate the size of the feet. Once again, this was done on the original cabinet instead of using a thick stock of Oak. The next two photos show the blocks being glued up.

 To create  the carved foot, I traced the profile of the original (seen above in the photo below) and cut two sides of the block. The block is seen after the cuts were made in the photo below.

Using double sided tape, I then reassembled the block and cut the adjacent sides. After those cuts were made. I removed the unwanted sections, as well as the tape. The photo below shows the double sided tape on the piece to the right.

The photo below shows the sawn block roughed out to the shape of the original foot. I then carved the detail of the toes by hand. One quick side note: When carving with an extremely sharp gouge on tough White Oak, try not to point the gouge towards your hand. I slipped and it went straight into the inside of my knuckle! That meant a trip to the ER and two stitches. Oh well, It happens to the best of us, but I am happy to say that the finger has healed and I am currently typing with it!!

Jumping ahead in time, This photo shows the assembled cabinet with all of the feet and the new drawer in place, ready to be stained.

The last few photos show the completed cabinet. The new drawer is on the bottom in these photos.

Quarter Sawn Oak Flemish Style Cupboard Part 2

Here are a second round of photos of repairs made to the Flemish cabinet I have been working on. At the end of the post are photos of the two sections completed. The Cabinet was too tall to stand assembled in my shop so these separate photos of the parts will have to suffice!

Gluing the bottom gallery together. ( Seated on the arms of the chair)Gluing one of the support legs for the top section.Gluing molding in place.A photo of the bottom section completed.A photo of the top section completed.