Greetings, A couple of weeks ago I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum. They've got a special exhibit of "American Fancies," which was much more appealing than the previous "German Expressionists." Yuck. Anyway, they've got a few examples of cabinetry. I thought I'd share some of my observations regarding those pieces of ... of... ok, I'll say it... of "art."
Paint. Lots and lots of paint. Some of which was in rather nice patterns. Not a lot of Freedom polishing. Pine. Much pine.
One remarkable piece was a folding card table. When folded, the moving section lay atop the main table. Folded, it was about 3 feet by
18 inches. Each of the two segments of the top were made from single boards. Yes, 18 inch qs. Find that at the borg. They'd both bowed about like you'd expect, so there was about a 3/4 inch gap across the center of the folded tabletop. There was a drawer. The drawer sat atop another solid plank; no slide-rails. That bottom plank was about an inch thick, and had been riven more-or-less to size. Not merely mice, but corpulent squirrels could have wriggled up through the gaps. The apron was mortised into the legs tightly enough, but there were big ugly saw cuts at the joints. That's ok, the builder filled them, mostly, with paint.The craftsmanship of the rest of the cabinetry was on a par with that table. These were not found in a barn. One big wardrobe came from the collection of (oh, rats, my somezeimers just kicked in) Peggy... Peggy somebody-Vanderbiltish. Cabot? Lodge? DuPont? You get the idea, anyway. (Funny, I can see the details of the woodwork perfectly in my mind's eye. Must be misplaced priorities, eh?)
So some among us extol the virtues of the masterwork of the past. I used to, anyway. Now that Sauder POS that holds up my TV doesn't look quite so bad...
Maybe someone nearby, say over by Monotony Falls, could get cooler near the lake and have a look.
Regards, australopithicus