Clothes press
1. Fine, dark-figured mahogany veneer antique clothes press, well-matched on doors, drawers and sides.
2. Applied half-round or reed moulding simulating panels with small decorative rosettes on cutaway corners of rectangles.
3. Matching moulding around drawers.
4. Slim, stepped profile with half-round or reeded moulding on base of cupboard where it joins the antique railroad signs drawer section.
5. Brass locks with brass bolts and levers, all inset into door timbers.
6. Mitred joins to door frames, perhaps showing some signs of timber shrinkage.
7. Well-fitted interiors of smooth-planed oak with rounded top edges to drawers and trays.
8. Good patination on inner surfaces of tray-fronts where they have been handled.
9. Locks and lock-rail to
drawers in base.
10. Well-made solid bracket feet with no decorative apron.
11. Friezes, cornices, in simple architectural motifs.
12. Back planking of same aged wood and colour on top and base.
Likely restoration and repair
13. Oval satinwood cross-banded inlay to ‘improve’ plain pieces. Ground grain will continue as single piece.
14. Inlaid satinwood oval panels in later, thinner veneer, sometimes of ’satin birch’ and sometimes even inlaid marquetry panels added to ,enhance’ appearance. A typically Edwardian addition.
15. One or both bottom drawers removed, fronts left as ’shams’ and interior fittings removed to make full-length hanging space.
16. Bracket feet and plinth moulding replaced where damaged.
17. Large breakfront wardrobe cut down to central piece only new sides and added bracket feet. Original wardrobes were on plinth bases without feet.
Historical background
A clothes press is no more than a cupboard with shelves - an earlier version of the bbcantiques.com clothes press was the city sheraton sideboard mahogany finials linen press and a later one the architectural antiques wardrobe. `Wardrobe’ is an ancient term, originally applied to clothes and not the antique pharmacy display cabinets cupboard in which they were stored. It also included linen, wall-hangings and table linen - the antique kerosene lamp wood Keeper of the antique brass jewelry stampings Wardrobe was an important person in a large household.
Until the 1860s brass bed last quarter of the antique battleship book british eighteenth century, built-in hanging cupboards and chestson-chests were the antique jewelry shop standard equipment for the antique wurlitzer pianos gentleman’s dressing room. Only from c.1770 were these augmented by a clothes press - a low chest of drawers surmounted by a cupboard with double doors, inside which were open shelves or trays, on runners.
Freestanding hanging cupboards for clothes in bedrooms and dressing rooms are a late development. Sadly, many handsome Regency clothes presses were knocked out to full-length hanging cupboards by the antique map hungary early Victorians, the victorian chamber pot chair drawers turned into ’shams’ and
the insides completely gutted of fittings.
More monumental breakfront wardrobes were built during the rounded veneer dressing table Regency period, with two slim, tall, cupboards flanking a chest with three flights of drawers and a cupboard with double doors above. The flanking
cupboards were fitted with shelves on one side and clothes pegs on the gold coin for a vintage pocket watch fob other, probably for full-length ‘dressing gowns’ worn by gentlemen while they dressed, put on the 1920 draw-leaf table wigs and powdered their hair. Until the
nineteenth century full-length outdoor clothes were usually kept downstairs or in passages in built-in hanging cupboards.
Construction and materials
Plain dark mahogany is most usually associated with clothes presses of the antique car show carlile late Georgian period, although some were made with plain dark figured walnut veneer. The carcase wood was usually cheaper Honduras
mahogany or close-grained red pine, always solid and well-made. From c.1770 the antique furniture mahoganhy reproduction traditional stepped shape of double-height pieces was incorporated into the antique brimfield flea market design of clothes presses, although they were in fact made as a single piece.
Interior shelves and drawers were of oak, finely finished and smooth, on oak runners, often in the antique silver hairbrushes manner of the 1807 fusee pocket watch old ‘hung drawer’ construction, fitting into grooves in the antique gold pocket watch sides of clothes trays.
Drawers in the antique bands base were also of oak, usually a flight of two, sometimes with a pair of drawers
below the antique tester bed cupboard. Plain half-rounded or reeded astragal moulding on the antique waterfall style dresser right-hand door concealed the antique rifle price join: the eileen gray sinuous oriental lacquer work left-hand door closed with brass slides at top and bottom.
Detail
Half-round mouldings and small corner ornament echoed the antique rug repair earlier panelled doors of linen presses, while both bases and cupboards were often made, like tallboys, with canted corners. It was Hepplewhite who first
used inlaid satinwood decoration from c.1780, in oval as well as rectangular shapes on the cabinet circa 1700 1750 doors instead of half-round moulding, and Sheraton who introduced the antique wet bar oval inlaid panel which was to be so endlessly copied.
Variations
The communal clothes press in smaller country houses and farmhouses was still built in, often taking up half a small dressing room or closet, housing all the antique furniture pictures clothes of the antique furniture johnson city virginia family. Downstairs in large and small houses there were built in hanging cupboards for overcoats and capes with turned pegs for hanging. Freestanding oak cupboards of any age are likely to be made up from the antique keystone silver horse bridles doors of built-
in period hanging cupboards, or are of Continental origins. Some provincial presses were made in walnut, but they are French and not English.
Below, left: early Georgian
walnut veneer clothes press with well-figured, quarter-veneer panelled doors.
Below: George m secretaire linen press in mahogany- veneer.
Reproductions
The true clothes press with drawers and fitted cupboard continued to be made, along with other massive bedroom furniture, well into the
beginning of the antique auto classic repair restoration twentieth century. Hanging cupboards or wardrobes’ are predominantly Victorian. Later versions of the 17th century french dressers clothes press are taller than Georgian and Regency cupboards, with fitted shelves and trays on one side of the antique drum style pedestal table cupboard and full-length
hanging space on the antique collector cars for sale other. These usually had two half-doors in the antique clock link suggest base as well as the price of sabre wilkinson 1850 top half, as opposed to drawers.
The all-too-familiar shiny, thinly veneered ‘hotel bedroom’ type of fitted hanging cupboard was mass-produced in a variety of combinations and
permutations of shelving, trays, drawers and hanging space as a typically Edwardian piece of furniture, often mimicking Sheraton’s oval inlaid satinwood panels with panels of cheap maple or dyed sycamore, also known in the antique murano glass chandeliers trade at that time as ‘maple’. Dutch, bulbous-shaped, serpentine-fronted, top-heavy clothes presses, often inlaid with marquetry, date from the deco frosted glass lamps bullet base man early nineteenth century and are not of the antique mattel toy tompson machine gun English
`marquetry period’ at all.
Price bands
Early Georgian clothes press, fine walnut veneer with good detail, made in two halves. $3,000-5,000.
George III plain linen press with drawers in base, $1,750-2,500.
George III press with fitted secretaire drawer,
$2,000 3,500.
Plain linen press in the antique jewelry diamond engagement rings best `Sheraton’ style, $800-1,500.
Victorian wardrobe, $500-700.

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