Starting to Collect Antique Furniture

This concise yet wide-ranging survey of collectible antique furniture, illustrated throughout in full color, guides the new collector through almost three centuries of Western Furniture with clarity and authority. Invaluable as a reference tool, it offers collectors the means to identify key features of a wide variety of pieces, ranging from the Gothic and Renaissance period to Art Nouveau, and the beginning of the twentieth century. The book is structured chronologically by century and, within each time period, by country. Existing collectors will find all titles in the series act as a handy and portable reference, and beginners will welcome a reliable, accessible starting point from which their interests can develop. Readers will find succinct sections detailing all major phases in Western Furniture, with full-color coverage of English, American, French, Italian, German, Austrian, Low Countries, Spanish and Portuguese pieces. The work of important furniture designers is discussed, from the French ébénistes and Chippendale, through key 19th century figures such as Biedermeier, Pugin and Stickley and the mass producers of bentwood such as the Austrian Thonet, to the Belgian and French Art Nouveau designers.