When buying antique furntiure it is important to look out for pieces stamped with the mark of their maker, to help date and vaule a piece. They may be stamped in a variety of ways and often in more than one place. In France a strict guild corporation insisted on stamping and verifying every single piece of furntiure that was made. Britain did not have such strict regulations and so it is unusual and exciting to find antique British furniture that has been stamped by its maker. Often you find quite crude marks impressed on earlier pieces of furniture. In the 18th and 19th Century most marked furntiure had more sophisticated ink or hand-written inscriptions on paper labels or they were elegantly incised into the wood. The cabinet-makers Gillows of Lancaster and London are well-known for having correctly marked their furniture. They normally punched their stamp 'Gillows.Lancaster' onto the inside of drawers or onto the bottom of the piece. In fact the signatures and names of Gillows' workmen are pencilled on much of their furniture from this period! At Reindeer Antiques we are very fortunate to have some pieces of British furniture that still retain their original Maker's Mark.

Autumn Exhibition: A Sporting Miscellany

Reindeer Antiques, Issac and Ede & Jason Sandeberg

Towards the end of the Seventeenth Century the highly skilled art of veneering rose in popularity in British furniture-making. An expensive and technical skill, veneering is when thin sheets of wood are glued onto a carcase of wood in order to create striking decorative surfaces. These veneers can be made in a variety of materials including walnut, ivory, tortoiseshell, mother of pearl, and other exotic woods such as ebony, rosewood and satinwood. For information on how to identify these woods please take a look at our blog.

Explore the Commonly Found Woods in Antique English Furniture blog examining timber types and craftsmanship.

Of the antique furniture-making trade's many specialisms and subcategories, which in the eighteenth century ranged from upholsterers and carvers to chair- and bedstead-making, one of the most ''aristocratic'' and respected areas of the profession was the craft of the cabinet-maker. Adept at uniting form, function, spatial ingenuity and highly expensive and laboriously-cut timbers and veneers, the cabinet-maker emerged as the most reveered specialist of the profession during the century.

To the untrained eye lacquer and japanning can appear to be the same. However japanning is a European imitation of lacquer and is less refined.

Explore our buyer's guide to antique desks and writing tables.

From the late medieval period up until the 1720s, oak was the dominant timber used in furniture construction in England. The rise of the English furniture industry during these years concurred with the growth of the wool trade; sheep farming spread rapidly, and pastures for grazing were extended further and further across the landscape. They steadily ate into the ancient forests of Dean, Sherwood, Arden, and Epping, to name but a few, and brought about the felling of huge numbers of trees. Giant oaks, a sight all too rare in this day and age, littered the landscape, and found use in furniture construction.

Our understanding of antique Regency furniture (c.1800-1835) stems from a handful of surviving houses and their interiors, the most famous of which is Brighton Pavilion, constructed for the Prince Regent from 1787 and finished by John Nash between 1815 and 1822.

We always stock a large selection of antiques which are useful for decorating a bedroom.

George Hepplewhite is the most enigmatic of the triumvirate of famous Georgian furniture designers (Chippendale and Sheraton being the others). Despite there being no known pieces of furniture by Hepplewhite's hand his fame stems from the posthomous publication of The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide in 1788, 2 years after his death in 1786.