What is a dovetail hinge and why do I care?

Another installment of short and sweet answers to the Did Ya Know episode on Antique vs Vintage.

Hello Hoomans! Lucy here with more valuable information for you. When you are looking at a piece of furniture and trying to decide if it's a “real” antique piece or not, here’s another tool to help you figure it out. Remember the last blog about Vintage vs Antique? Well, we figured out that vintage is 50 plus years old and antique is 100 yrs plus, remember?

So a drawer is a box, right? The corners have to be held together in some way, right?

Over the years, the way this was done has evolved. Back in the day furniture makers came up with this cool idea of dovetailing. It was strong, held together well, and kept the drawer “square” so it would pull in and out of the furniture easily. Of course they didn’t have power tools so it was done by hand.

Turns out, these didn’t always hold up so good over time and took FOREVER to make! Soooo….

In comes Knapp joints, a new way of fastening the drawers together. They look like pins and crescents. Martha Leone Designs sheds some light on Knapp joints on the Martha Leone Designs website:

“They were called Knapp Joints after the inventor. This joint replaced the hand cut dovetail joints and was used from about 1870 - 1900. Used in furniture factories, the Knapp machine made it possible for a skilled cabinet maker to turn out 15 - 20 drawers per day.”

These days fancy drawers are constructed by machines so the dovetail joining looks uniform (see picture). There are still some individual craftsman (makers) out there that do their own dovetail hinges when making furniture because they just love to do everything by hand.

Less expensive drawers are nailed, screwed, glued, and stapled. If you see this you are guaranteed it is NOT an Antique and is NOT good quality!

So that about sums it up! Now you have another tool to determine if a piece of furniture is an antique or vintage or junk. Thank you, thank you very much Lucy!

AND HEY, as a reminder, Colene paints some unique, statement piece kind of furniture for your home and businesses. And she has been killin it during this Quaranteeenie thing. Quality and detail are important to her so she only uses top of the line chalk paints, finishes and hardware. PLEASE check out https://lucysfurniturecreations.com for a gallery of sold and available pieces. There’s also a group of pieces that are NAKED and ready for customization!

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