17th Century English Oak Chest with Brass Accents

• Drop Handles - In furniture of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, small metal drop handles were often used, frequently in a pear or tear shape. The back plate, to which the drop was attached, may be either a simple plain circle, or in the form of a star or diamond. These handles have been widely reproduced, and are frequently found on Jacobean and Queen Anne style furniture made after the first world war. Reproduction handles can usually be identified by the inferior quality of the metal used during the 1920s and 1930s, sometimes thinly coated with brass or copper, though modern copies are often of excellent quality.
• Oak - Native to Europe and England, oak has been used for joinery, furniture and building since the beginning of the medieval civilisation. It is a pale yellow in colour when freshly cut and darkens with age to a mid brown colour.
  
  Oak as a furniture timber was superceded by walnut in the 17th century, and in the 18th century by mahogany,
  
  Semi-fossilised bog oak is black in colour, and is found in peat bogs where the trees have fallen and been preserved from decay by the bog. It is used for jewellery and small carved trinkets.
  
  Pollard oak is taken from an oak that has been regularly pollarded, that is the upper branches have been removed at the top of the trunk, result that new branches would appear, and over time the top would become ball-like. . When harvested and sawn, the timber displays a continuous surface of knotty circles. The timber was scarce and expensive and was used in more expensive pieces of furniture in the Regency and Victorian periods.
• Escutcheons - An escutcheon is a plate, made of brass, wood, ivory or ebony, which fits into or over the h keyhole, to protect the edge of the timber keyhole from damage by continual insertions of the key. As a general rule you would expect these escutcheons to be sympathetic in design to the handles of the piece. From the early 19th century escutcheons were sometimes made from ivory, ebony, bone or contrasting wood, often cut in a diamond or shield shape and inlaid into the front. Ivory, in particular, will tend to discolour with age, and certainly should not show up as brilliantly white.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• chests of drawers, material - oak 340
• chests of drawers, period - William & Mary 34
• chests of drawers, style - four drawer 260