The Oak Collector (Paperback)

THE OAK COLLECTOR; A GUIDE TO THE COLLECTION OF OLD OAK AND SIMPLE COTTAGE FURNITURE BY MacIVER PERCIVAL. PREFACE: THE Oak Collector, like all the other volumes of the Collector series, is intended for the lover of old things who has to be careful what he pays for them. The man who has been in my mind while writing it, is one who has not a great deal of money to spend and none to waste. He has no spare space either in which to keep useless treasures, so has to buy things which will not only be a delight to the eye but a pleasure to use. I hope he will find in this book information which will help him to acquire what he wants and to understand something of its history . The sturdy oak furniture which our fore- fathers used has in very many cases come down to us in perfect condition, so that it can be taken into our daily lives without renovation or alteration. We cannot but respect those craftsmen who, two or three hundred years ago, plied their trade with such skill that the joints they made and the panels they framed are to-day often without a crack or shake. It is customary for books on oak furniture to close abruptly with the end of the seventeenth century and to ignore the oak furniture of the eighteenth altogether as being unworthy of notice. It is not to be denied that this late oak lacks the courtly grace of the contemporary walnut and mahogany, but the country squire, the farmer, and the good folk of the country- side generally, would have made short work of the finer furniture if they had come across it in the inn parlour or farmhouse kitchen, and it was for such situations that the greater part of the oak furniture of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was made...