I just finished reading “Discovering and Restoring Antique Furniture” by Michael Bennett. It is a 250-page or so large format trade paperback with lots of color photographs and line drawings. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in Antique furniture. His focus is on the modern antique market and therefore concerns itself mainly with the details of 18th and 19th-century furniture. However, you can apply the discussion to antiques of any age.
The first 100 pages are devoted to identifying fakes and inappropriate repairs or alterations, a significant concern given the prices commanded by some of these pieces. Even though I am not in the antique market, I found the information quite interesting. By explaining what to be wary of, the author showed proper period practices and details. Details that are not obvious (or visible at all) when just looking at a picture or the live object at a museum.
For instance, Bennett shows a brass escutcheon from an 18th-century drawer pull next to a modern reproduction. Superficially, they look the same, but you can see the contemporary piece is more two-dimensional and lacks some fine details on closer examination. The quality of modern reproductions is not something that would be apparent if I were trying to reproduce the item from photos or even a measured drawing. I would look through catalogs (online, of course) and find something that matched the period and was of good quality, which I felt comfortable spending on. Now, if I were making a quality reproduction, I would think seriously about engaging a craftsman. You can find many on sites like Etsy that handle custom orders.
He has similar discussions for wood types, joinery, wear patterns, and finishes. Then, the author goes on to discuss methods of restoration and repair that are thoughtful and appropriate. Since finishing is most likely to require repair, much of the material is on finishes and finishing.
Now I am working through Charles Hayward’s “Antique or Fake?”. Hayward went through a traditional English apprenticeship in the years leading up to WWI. The working conditions, tools, and work methods weren’t very different from 150 years previously and gave a good glimpse into that life. Working in a crowded and unheated row house south of the Thames, the shop made antiques.
Yep, created fakes. They either made a new item and “antiqued” it, sold it to a dealer, and frequently had the dealer bring it to them to repair the damage they had inflicted on the piece. Good work if you can get it, I guess. Or, they repurposed what was then boring Victorian-era furniture into something from an earlier era.
The author gives the reader an interesting perspective on how to spot fakes and build this stuff.
The book is cheap on the used market, not terribly long, and an easy read.