Tentative essays of earlier date including the publication in 1836 of Henry Shaw’s specimens of ancient furniture, with text by that patron of armour collectors Sir samuel Rush Meyrick, scarcely obviate the fact that the scientific study of old oak furniture is of relatively recent growth. Indeed it was not until the close of the 19th century and, more especially , the early years of the 20th that the subject showed clear signs of developing a literature of its own.
Country and townhouse antique furniture, since then has experienced growth that is both rapid and profuse. Though much remains to be done or perfected, it can be claimed that knowledge has reached a reasonable degree of certainty.
Oak now boasts as extensive a corpus of literature as any other form of collecting.
Country and townhouse antique furniture though in common with the rest, has experienced much inequality of merit. Beginners should beware of placing implicit confidence in statements merely because they have appeared in print. Many opinions, apparently well founded, have had to be relinquished in the light of freshly discovered evidence, and , even now theories are sometimes propounded with an assurance which may prove to have been ill considered. Much benefit can be derived from an Intelligent study of books and articles, but these should be regarded as an aid to and not as a substitute for, personal study and observation. Country and Townhouse antique furniture Kensington. nothing can transcend the value of personal experience. Above all a piece of Oak should be acquired , like any other piece of Furniture, primarily for its condition, colour and patination and for its authenticity.
Proven documentation is a part of the history of country and townhouse antique furniture, especially when a romantic order is preferably ignored by beginners.
Even so the debt to the early pioneers of Oak studies and to the best modern authorities for there patient checking and counter checking is indisputable. Though the day is past when old oak was the preserve of a handful of artists and collectors, it is largely due to the initiative that later generations have enabled to build on the foundations thus laid down. If in what follows the emphasis is mainly on certain aspects of terminology, it may at least assist an average reader to recognize and to avoid some popular errors.
Among such solecisms one does not reckon the age of oak, though that, like other labels, means more (and less) than it says. That other woods were used in country and townhouse antique furniture is obvious: but term is useful covering furniture and woodwork through the middle ages onwards to the experimental period of charles the second and the rise of the age of walnut. Not that Oak furniture ceased to be made at the end of the seventeenth century, but wherasits milieu had been general, its later setting (before modern times) was mainly of the unmodish, and even humble, home.
Country and townhouse antique furniture as will be seen in an oak collectors vocabulary as a blend of words as used by carpenters, joiners, turners and architects, together with some recovered from documentary sources, and other truly or falsely traditional.