Antique furniture appraiser blowing smoke.

[popeyespappy]

 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.

If you are disagreeing with my statement that the techniques of the old masters can be improved on you probably need some context.

Sometime in the mid to late 80s the Rhode Island Historical Society bought the Thomas Brown House in Newport with the intention of turning it into a museum. If memory serves they paid around $3 million for it including the furniture. One of the pieces in the house was the Chippendale secretary pictured in my post. It was 1 of 7 Townsend-Goddard secretaries know to exist. It was tallest and considered by most to be the finest example of an 18th century Chippendale tall secretary on the planet. It was also the only one available to private collectors. The other 6 are all in museums. The RIHS knew it was valuable and planned to auction it off to help pay for some badly needed restorations of the house.

Before they auctioned it off they commissioned Allen Breed to build a replica for display in the house. The Fine Woodworking article I mentioned earlier was about Breed making the replica. Breed doesn't use CNC machines to build furniture. It took him more than a year and cost the RIHS more than $100,000 in the 80s. Breed did everything he could to make the secretary as close to to the original as he could. On the outside. On the inside Breed made some changes to the joinery. He did that because after 200 years there had been some failures of the joinery of the massive piece, and he wanted to make his piece stronger. No one knows for sure who made the Brown secretary, but most attribute it to Goddard who is considered one of if not the best American furniture builder of the 18th century. Despite that Breed was able to make improvements to the techniques Goddard used to build what was probably his master piece.

When the hammer dropped on the Brown secretary at Christie's the selling price was $12,100,000. At the time it was by far a record price for a decorative art piece that wasn't a painting. The previous record was a little more than $3 million for a Fabergé egg. The RIHS made out like bandits. It paid for the house, the renovations and put millions in the bank.