Furniture

Antique furniture, a form of decorative art, is considered valuable from both a practical and artistic standpoint. Buyers often collect and care for period pieces as long-term investments and prized, beautiful, or historically important possessions.

The Types of Antique Furniture For Sale at Auction

The antique furniture market includes an array of types (e.g. tables, chairs, dressers, etc.), designs, historical eras, and styles. Broadly speaking, the most popularly collected items are American, European (especially English), and Asian. Within each of these categories are historic periods marked by stylistic movements, each with their own modern-day admirers looking to expand their coveted collections.

A period piece is made during the original historic era, whereas a style piece is one with the aesthetic of an earlier time, but made later on.

Asian Furniture

Antique Asian furniture comes in a variety of styles, from elaborately decorated Chinese pieces to Japanese minimalist designs. Some of the most widely known types originate from China, Japan, Pakistan, and Indonesia, but Korea, Mongolia, and South East Asian countries also have their own furniture traditions.

Antique Asian pieces are often made from rare and exotic woods; rosewood and bamboo, for example, are highly sought after in Chinese furniture, and nearly-extinct Huanghuali, a type of rosewood used during the Ching and Ming dynasties, is always in high demand because of its scarcity. Japanese pieces date back to the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, and iron-decorated chests called Tansu are some of the most coveted Japanese antiques.

“The most sought after pieces in the world right now are Chinese Huanghuali and Zitan examples,” says Deric Torres, Vice President and Director of Furniture and Decorative Arts at Clars Auction Gallery.

European Furniture

From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, European furniture went through several eras of style driven by a series of cultural and artistic movements. Most notably, European furniture is crafted with the wood from mahogany, oak, and walnut trees that went extinct over 100 years ago, making antique European furniture almost impossible to reproduce.

A number of styles, including Rococo and Neoclassicism, were seen throughout Western Europe while other styles were distinct to a particular country such as France (Rococo being a notable type), the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Russia. Pieces originating from England are arguably the most sought-after furniture style from Europe.

American Furniture

European styles migrated to the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries when crafters reworked them into aesthetic movements of their own. Wood and materials used were based on what was available within the settled areas, making American furniture relatively easy to date and trace back to its origins.

Makers located in urban centers like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York took established design elements and made them unique, further differentiating American furniture from some of their European forerunners, where styles are diverse across not only time periods, but specific locations also.

The Antique Furniture Market

Ever since the 2008 economic crisis, the antique furniture auction market has been on an upswing. Interest in museum-quality antique furniture lags behind that of the lively fine art market due to a number of commercial, personal, and cultural influences, so prices are generally on the lower end of the scale, but exceptional collector pieces can still sell for top dollar.

As is the case in any other investment market, that of antique furniture fluctuates based on taste and consumer demand, sometimes regardless of the maker’s renown. While the desire for mid-century modern pieces is quelling, 1980s American craft furniture, for example, is gaining interest. This kind of ebb and flow is common every 30 or so years, often correlating with changing generations of new buyers.

Learn more from the Invaluable Guide to Buying Furniture.