Vintage Maple Display Cabinet with Reeded Glazing Bars

A vintage glazed maple display cabinet, 20th century, the two…
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A vintage glazed maple display cabinet, 20th century, the two door cabinet with reeded and scroll glazing bars, two shelves and raised on reeded feet, in a fine honey tone with a vigorous silkwood graining, 146 cm high 137 cm wide, 37 cm deep

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  • Astragal / Glazing Bars - An astragal, bead or glazing bar is the term used to describe the wooden strips that divide the glass in a cabinet into sections. However it can also refer to the narrow beading on a multi-door cabinet or bookcase that covers the gap between the doors, when they are closed. The astragal is usually attached to the inner stile of the left-hand door (or the right hand as you look at it).
  • Glazing Bars - Thin astragal mouldings, almost always of timber, behind which glass panes in bookcases, china cabinets, kitchen dressers, and so on are fixed. The glass is either puttied in or held by thin beads. Old hand-made glass should show imperfections, such as bubbles and ridges when looked at obliquely against the light, something which is not found in modem factory-made glass. The joints of the glazing bars should always be neatly mitred.

    A cheap shortcut is to apply false glazing bars over a single pane of glass, and this indicates either an item of modern manufacture, or a later conversion, where the panelled door of a press or wardrobe has had a glass front fitted, and the article turned into a 'bookcase'.
  • Maple - Maple, native to North America, is a dense heavy timber from light to yellow-brown in colour. It has very little distincive graining unless it is one of the variants such as birds-eye maple or burr maple, so was not used extensively for furniture in 18th and 19th century, where cabinetmakers and designers preferred timbers with more distinctive features such as mahogany, walnut, rosewood and oak.

    Birds-eye maple has a seres of small spots linked by undulating lines in the grain, is highly sough and is used as a decorative veneer. Burr maple has larger and irregular grain swirls than birds-eye maple.
  • Graining - Decorative painting applied to furniture to imitate the natural pattern of fibres in timber. In the Victorian period it was used to simulate more expensive timber finishes such as rosewood and walnut.
  • Reeding - A series of parallel, raised convex mouldings or bands, in section resembling a series of the letter 'm'. The opposite form of fluting, with which it is sometimes combined. Reeding is commonly found on chair legs, either turned or straight, on the arms and backs of chairs and couches and around table edges in the Neoclassical or Classical Revival manner. Reeding was also used as a form of decoration during the Edwardian period, but it is usually much shallower and evidently machine made.

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