Antique furniture appraiser blowing smoke.

[Anomalocaris]

Once again I'm not trying to say your stuff isn't worth more than these are. I'n just giving some examples of the kinds of pieces you will be competing with for the smallish group of consumers looking for this type of thing.

Vintage Tiger Maple Bonnet Top Drop Front Secretary Desk Bookcase - $400


Vintage-mahogany-secretary-desk-fold-down-by-W-A-Hathaway-$375

Vintage Jasper Solid Mahogany Secretary Desk DBL Serpentine Ball & Claw Foot - $299

Vintage Secretary Desk Ball Claw Feet - $195

Unfortunately most of us don't inherit an 18th century Townsend-Goddard.



If you can find it the Fine Wood Working article about Allen Breed's reproduction of that particular desk is interesting reading. Among other things it points out that even the techniques of the old masters can be improved on.

 I disagree, the old masters were required to build things within 1/132." tolerances that are hardly possible with machinery, unless you want to count CNC's, I do not. Hand work is always more accurate than machine work, there are many tricks that the old masters and today's masters use to build such beautiful pieces. Someone back a year or so ago was wanting something challenging to do and I suggested a simple piece built with a bit of a challenge to it. No rulers are allowed to build the piece. The piece I suggested was a table.

GC

Maybe not hand machinery, but manufacturing machine tools without any CNC routinely achieve tolerances much finer than 1/132, which is only about 0.2mm. The trouble seems to be no one seems to think it worthwhile to mass produce wooden furniture with that level of precision.