Antique furniture clues Enthusiasm for antique furniture is great. But it's even better if you're able to identify age and origin. Here, antique restoration specialist and collector Fred Taylor shows how to make an informed field decision, so you won t have to rely just on the label and the word of the seller. The most important part of identifying antique furniture is determining its age.
Age is the primary unknown.
Well, there's no point in paying an 1840 price for a 1940 reproduction. So know what you're looking at. Recognize the clues left by a piece s creator. Handmade dovetail joints. A period s technology reveals itself in the way an antique from that era is constructed.