Two Empire Chairs (ca.1800)

The Completed Chairs

 Recently I worked on two chairs made in France circa 1800. It is a little difficult to firmly put these chairs in one stylistic category, although I conservatively lean towards the French Empire Period which lasted roughly from 1804-1814, I have good reason to think that at least the arm chair was made prior to 1800 which strictly speaking would put that chair in the Directoire-Consulate period (1795-1799) that bridged the gap between the Louis XVI period and the Empire period. Both chairs are made primarily of Mahogany with Beech used as a secondary wood. The chairs  are also decorated with Bronze Mounts that were once coated with a gold and mercury amalgam called Ormolu, in which the mixture is applied to the cast bronze and then heated, removing the mercury and leaving a thin layer of gold applied to the bronze. Over time this layer has been removed by cleaning, but evidence of the original gold was visible in many places.

the arm chair in particular was very broken and the customer and I decided the best course of action was to remove the upholstery so that I could access the broken areas better and make better repairs. Ultimately this meant removing the back from the chair and dismantling it. Below is a photo of the chair as it came into the shop followed by some photos of the damage to the back legs of the chair.

Upon removing the upholstery from the chair, I found a signature on the rear seat stretcher. the signature was written in India ink and appears to say "Filjame" followed by a date of either 1798 or 1793. This date was very hard to read and the more I looked at it the more I felt like it could say something else! Below are some photos of the signature.

I spoke with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City concerning the signature. The museum houses a large collection of Continental furniture and so I figured they might know of this maker. The had not heard of him, but suggested that this could also be the signature of an upholsterer. My feeling about it is that it is the signature of the cabinetmaker due to the interior prominence of the signature. This signature is well executed and centered on the interior of the rear seat stretcher. It was meant to be seen ( once the upholstery was removed) and it almost seems to exude pride in workmanship. Although this is all speculative, it is my feeling on the matter.

As far as the date is concerned, being signed in the 18th century would make the chair older than the Empire period by a few years. All of these styles evolved and several design motifs spanned periods, especially when they were short lived. The tendency we have to place a piece of furniture in a specific period is relatively modern, and to the maker and the original owner, it would have been a chair made in the latest fashion. Either way , it is a well made chair that employs beautiful West Indies mahogany and great design.

Once the chair was dismantled, the first step in repairing it was to glue all of the broken pieces in place. These were all centered around the joinery in the back of the chair, in one case where tenons for a seat stretchers meet the rear leg and in another, where the crest rail is joined to the rear leg. In either case, these areas were weakened by removal of wood to create mortises and further weakened with the introduction of pegs, used to secure the joints. At first, these joints were sound and the loss of wood was countered by tenons glued in place. After 200+ years, the glue failed and the wood became brittle, leading to the structural failure. Below are a few photos of the broken pieces being glued in place on the right rear post (The direction is given as if you were facing the chair).

The left rear leg, seen below was in much worse shape.

Here is the left rear leg after it was glued back together.

One problem in this leg was that when the joinery was pegged, the holes from the pegs broke the internal shoulder of the mortise, making this shoulder structurally pointless. I decided to rectify this by removing a bit of wood and putting a patch that would be solid and bridge the lower and upper parts of the leg. Again, the location of this mortise is at the seat stretcher/leg intersection.

To create this patch, I employed a new method for me. It involves creating a negative space for the patch with a stacked dado blade (picture a bunch of round table saw blades sandwiched together in the table saw). I first clamped the leg to the table saw fence and secured it in position, and then raised the blade into the stationary leg. This can be seen below.

Leg clamped to the fence, the blade is lowered into the table.

Detail of the photo above.

While the blade was running, I slowly raised it into the wood, removing the damaged material and creating a negative space in the diameter of the blade.

Below is a photo of the leg with the arced negative space cut by the dado blade.

A similar procedure was done on  the other leg, where the crest rail met the right leg.

A close up of the damaged area.

The damaged area being removed by the dado stack.

Once the negative spaces were made. I milled a piece of mahogany to the exact thickness of the space cut by the dado stack. I then used a compass to trace an arc at the same diameter of the dado blade. I then cut the arc out on the band saw, giving me a patch that fit perfectly into the negative space made by the dado blades. Below is a photo of me scribing the arc. I clamped a piece of poplar to the mahogany to give a center point of the compass and then drew the arc.

Clamping the patch on the rear right leg.

The patch on the rear right leg once it was pared flush with a chisel.

The patch at the seat level on the rear left leg before and after it was pared flush.

Drilling out the patch on the rear right leg to create a mortise that would accept the crest rail tenon.

The completed mortise.

I learned of this method of patching by discovering it's use in a chair I was reparing. While not handwork, I like this patch because it is an effective method of repair and can be concealed within the workpiece a lot easier then a hand cut patch. I have used it in several scenarios and have found that it works great every time.

The side chair was in far better shape structurally and really all that it needed was to have the finish cleaned and the upholstery changed to match the armchair. Here is a photo of the side chair as it came to the shop.

A close up of the ormolu mount on the splat. Neoclassical themes abound!

To clean the Ormolu, I decided to use alcohol on a soft rag in opposition to an abrasive like fine steel wool. This would preserve any gold left on the bronze. Below is a photo of the same hardware cleaned.

Here is a photo of the side chair with the finish restored ready to go to the upholsterer. Because I did not need to fix any structural problems on the chair, I left the upholstery on and the upholsterer removed it.

This photo shows the arm chair restored and ready to be upholstered.

These final photos are of the chairs once they returned from the upholster.

Cedar Lawn: French Empire Style Pier Table ( Ca.1980)

The Restored Pier Table

 Another piece I have recently restored for the Cedar Lawn estate in Jefferson County, West Virginia is a pier table made in the style of the French Empire period. I dated it's manufacture to 1980, but it is only a guess at its age. While being a reproduction, this is certainly a good one. The hardware was all nicely detailed and cast well. The primary wood used is Mahogany and good Honduran Mahogany was selected for the piece. The top is made of Poplar, pointing towards American manufacture, which was ebonized. Portion of the columns were also ebonized and gilt with a bronzing powder. The term "Ebonized" refers to staining a piece of wood with black stain to mimic the appearance of Ebony. The look is different from painting, in that the grain of the wood is visible through the black stain and once stained the wood is coated with finish the same as the rest of the piece.

The condition of this piece was pretty good overall, but there was significant damage to the finish on the ebonized top and the Mahogany sections had a cracked and tired finish, the gilt and ebonized portions on the base had flaked off revealing the Mahogany wood beneath. Structurally, the table needed little work and it only had minor cosmetic damage. Here is a photo of the table as it came to me.

Before going on, a little history on the Pier table. A pier table is a table usually placed between two windows. I do not think that the form is found much earlier than the early 19th century, and most are made in the style of French Empire. Many pier tables are made with a large mirror set between the two back legs. An interesting myth cropped up surrounding the use of this mirror which is debunked by another blogger here:

http://clermontstatehistoricsite.blogspot.com/2009/12/mythical-mirrors.html

Now back to the restoration. Below is a photo of the table with  the finish removed and the surface sanded and prepped for a new finish.

The first thing I did was to stain the Mahogany portions of the table, as seen in the two photos below. As stated above the top was made from Poplar and appears very light in these photos.

The next two images show the top after it was ebonized.

This last photo shows the completed piece with the hardware attached and ready for delivery.

French Empire Style Elm Burl Bed (ca. 1910) Part 1: The Repairs

One of the pieces I am currently working on is a bed built around 1910 in the French Empire style. While this is a reproduction, it is a nice one and displays the general themes associated with the French Empire movement and utilizes book matched Elm burl veneer inlaid with Satinwood cross banding. In addition, the foot board displays a marquetry bouquet of flowers. While not strictly Empire, this adds a nice balance to the Ormolu mounts. Before I detail the repairs made to this bed, I thought it might be nice to write a little on the French Empire movement in furniture.

The Empire Period in French furniture dates roughly from 1804 until 1815 and the earlier date coincides with the ascension of Napoleon Bonaparte to the throne as emperor of France. With his new role, Bonaparte wanted new decoration for his court apartments and enlisted architects Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine to take on the project. The result was, among other things, the creation of the Empire movement. The furniture broke from the tradition of Louis XVI furniture by employing very straight lines and broad planes of surface veneered with fine hardwood, usually Mahogany. The decoration came from mounts made of Ormolu, which is bronze casting that has been gilt. In addition, the decoration that was used took it's influence directly from the architecture of classical times. This include the use of columns, lion's paws, and after Bonaparte's trip to Egypt, pharaohs and sphinx. This furniture form fell in with the larger Neoclassical period and was employed in Europe and America during the first half of the 19th century.

While the bed in question is not of this original period, it does appear to be made in Europe sometime around 1910. The secondary wood for the piece is Beech and Oak. There were many repairs that were necessary and the finish had yellowed so the customer and I decided to refinish the bed.

Below are a few photos of the bed as it came to me for the most part. After it entered my shop the joinery on the headboard gave out and the head board fell apart.
Several of the feet were broken off of the foot board and in one instance took a section of the foot board with it. This was an old break that had been repaired with nails. Below is a photo of the foot board and the feet broken off below that is a detail shot of the damage described above.


After the finish was removed, the first thing I did was to glue the loose joinery on the headboard. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of this but you can see in photos below that it was repaired!

The next step was to repair the feet on the foot board. The two outer feet had not only become loose, but the joinery had given way as well. This is in due, in part, to the fact that this is where the side rails join with the foot board. There is a lot of torquing and pulling on this section of the foot board. In fact, the left hand side of the foot board had been previously patched with new wood. the patch had given out as well as you can see in the photo below:
Clamping at an angle like this can be tricky, so I cut a block to the profile of the bed and used sandpaper for traction between the block and the bed. This prevented the clamp from slipping while the patch was glued in place.
Here is the same repair from a different angle and with the turned foot in place.
The other side was missing a portion of the leg, so I patched this and later inserted the hardware for the bed bolt as seen in the second photo below.

On the head board, I noticed that a cover for one of the bed bolts had been replaced. The original covers on all four legs were veneered with Elm Burl. This was a cover made from Black Walnut. In keeping with original design I decided to veneer this cover with elm burl. The next three photos show this. The first is the Walnut cover, the second shows the veneer being glued on, and the third photo shows the cover with the elm burl veneer trimmed and ready to be sanded.


One leg on the foot board had a similar problem, except that here was no cover at all, so I made one with Elm burl veneer covering over a Tulip Poplar cover. The first photo below shows the veneer being adhered to the the Poplar. The second shows the veneered cover before the excess wood was trimmed. The third shows the cover ready to be glued to the leg.


This next photo shows the area to be covered by the Poplar. This is followed by a photo of the cover being glued in place and finally of the cover in place ready for sanding.


The stray photo below shows the headboard re-assembled and some loose veneer being glued in place.
The construction of the bed rails was a little different than usual. Rather than having a continuous ledger board attached to the inside of the rails for the slats to rest on, The rails had six blocks which the slats were dovetailed into. the reason for this is twofold. The first is that the rails have bed bolts that are integral to the rails. These attach the rails to the head and foot board. A continuous ledger would cover over the bolts. The second reason for this construction is that the dovetailed slats help to keep the bed rails from warping and keep the slats from moving around.

Four of the original slat holders were intact, although they were severely damaged. They had also been flipped and two new pieces were added to support slats without dovetails. I decided to start from scratch and make eight new slat holders to accommodate four slats. I made them the same as the originals and made four new dovetailed slats to go with them.

Here is a photo of the original slat holders:
Here are the eight new slat holders ready to be attached to the side rails
This photo shows the slats in place. The following photo is a detail shot showing how the dovetailed slat fits into the slat holder. As I move forward in the finishing process I will write a second post concerning this bed.