[BCMA] Dating of furniture - Looking for a furniture expert in Lower Mainland

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Over the coming decade, the New Westminster Museum and Archives is
undertaking an interior restoration of its 1865 Irving House. We shall
be selecting a time period focus for our restoration and interpretation
shortly. We have consultants' reports to advise us on wallpapers, paint,
carpets etc. but part of the restoration will be the accurate
arrangement of furniture in each room as well as removing items that are
newer than the yet to be determined time period.  

 

Over the years the house has been filled to overflowing with "old"
furniture (e.g. in the house we have about 110 pieces of furniture to
sit upon such as chairs, benches, stools, couches etc.) The furniture
ranges from the 1500s through to the early 1900s and the "time period"
has been portrayed as what I would call "vague Victorian."  Staff have
recently inventoried the vast majority of the 32,000 plus artifacts in
the NWMA collection and we need to know the approximate dates on
furniture to assist us with our decisions and implementation. 

 

The kind of information we are seeking is: For each piece of furniture,
what DECADE(S) does it hail from? The maker, style, national origin,
formal name etc are of less importance. The bottom line is that if the
time period has a cut-off date of 18XX I do not want furniture of the
1910-1920 period in the house. Older than the time period is OK, but
newer is not. 

 

I would appreciate hearing from (or about) people who are extremely
knowledgeable about dating furniture - primarily of the 1800s-1900s. My
goal would be to hire someone to come through the house and collection
storage and be able to quickly tell us the decade of items of furniture,
then we can mark that on our records and use the information in our
planning. 

 

The sooner the better as understanding the dates of certain key pieces
of furniture such as the bedroom suite which was used by the occupants,
are part of the decision making process. The bedroom suite is "original"
as it was used by the family in the house, but I avoid falling into the
trap, as others have done, of thinking that "original" automatically
means it was there when the family first moved into the house on August
5, 1865. Technically "original" in this case only means that it was in
the house when the City bought the house in 1950. Did Captain William
Irving die in this bed in 1872 as many people believe? Not if it was
made in the 1880s! You can see why I NEED to know the dates as soon as
possible.  My contact information is below. 

 

Colin MacGregor Stevens,

Manager,

New Westminster Museum and Archives,

302 Royal Avenue,

New Westminster, BC, 

V3L 1H7

 

Phone Office:    604-527-4639

Work Cellular : 604-830-6965

Fax:                  604-527-4641

E-mail: cstevens at newwestcity.ca <mailto:cstevens at newwestcity.ca>  

Web Site: www.newwestminster.ca <http://www.newwestminster.ca>  

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