Why Mahogany Came to Rule the British Parlour

Before mahogany, the British cabinetmaker worked in walnut. Then came the killing winters of 1709 and 1739–40, which wiped out walnut across much of Europe, and ships returning from the West Indies began to bring something far better: mahogany. Cuban and Jamaican timber arrived first, dense and finely grained, followed later by the more open-grained Honduran variety and, eventually, West African supplies.

It was a gift to the parlour. Mahogany took a deep French polish, resisted worm, moved far less than oak, and could be cut into wide single boards. From the 1740s onwards, tea tables, card tables, Pembroke tables and dumb waiters were made in it, and afternoon tea — that most British of rituals — was poured on a piece of the Caribbean. Chippendale, Hepplewhite and Sheraton all worked in it.

The difficulty is that mahogany has been copied ever since. Victorian revivalists, Edwardian imitators and twentieth-century reproduction workshops all turned out furniture in the Chippendale manner. Telling the two apart takes practice, but the clues are consistent.

Patina, Colour and the Honest Marks of Time

Start with the surface. Genuine age does not produce an even colour. A table top should be darkest where hands, cups and sunlight have touched it, and paler underneath or inside a drawer. If the whole piece is one flat shade of reddish-brown, assume stain.

Look at where a piece has actually been used. The front edge of a table top wears paler than the centre. Brass handles leave a halo of darkened, worn polish. Feet and the front corners of drawers take the knocks. French polish, which is shellac-based, develops a fine crazing pattern — a delicate network of cracks you can see if you tilt the piece towards the light. It also has a soft, forgiving depth. A hard, uniform gloss in an unbroken skin is likely to be a modern varnish.

Shrinkage is honest too. A solid mahogany top will often have a fine split along the grain, sometimes filled by a patient restorer. Veneered tops lift and ripple along the edges. Look underneath the piece as carefully as you look at the front.

Construction: Dovetails, Drawer Bottoms and Backboards

Turn a drawer upside down. This is where reproductions give themselves away.

• Dovetails. Hand-cut dovetails in eighteenth-century work are rarely uniform. The spacing varies, the angles differ slightly, and you can often see fine saw kerfs and the occasional sliver of wood tapped in to close a gap. Machine-cut dovetails, common from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, are evenly spaced and identical.
• Drawer bottoms. On an eighteenth-century drawer the sides usually extend below the bottom board, which sits in a rebate a little way up. The bottom is often oak or pine, made from two or three boards that have shrunk slightly apart. A flush plywood or hardboard bottom is a twentieth-century signature.
• Backboards. Early backs are solid timber, often pine, and roughly finished, because nobody expected to see them. Plywood, chipboard or a neatly machined back panel suggests a later date.
• Screws. Hand-made screws, used before machine screws became common in the 1840s, have off-centre slots and irregular threads. The slot is never quite central.
• Corner blocks and glue blocks. Look for triangular blocks glued into the inside corners of carcases. Hand-cut ones are uneven and often show old animal glue.

Handles, Hinges and Locks

Very few pieces have survived two centuries with their original brasses. That is not a problem in itself, but it should affect the price. What matters is honesty: look for ghost marks, filled holes or plugged holes on the inside face of a drawer front where earlier handles once sat.

Original cast brass has crisp hand-chased detail and a worn smoothness where hands have grasped it. Hand-forged locks show irregular ward cuts and hammer marks, and their escutcheons sit slightly proud. Hinges should match the period — hand-wrought iron or brass rather than modern steel butt hinges.

Proportions, Timber and the Smell Test

Eighteenth-century mahogany furniture is surprisingly light-looking: slender tapering legs, shallow drawer fronts, restrained carving and careful proportion. Victorian and later mahogany tends to be heavier and chunkier, with deeper carving and bolder mouldings.

Timber tells you a great deal too. Cuban mahogany is dense, close-grained and a deep, warm brown. Honduran mahogany is more open and slightly paler. Later African mahogany is coarser and often more orange. Genuine old mahogany is heavy for its size — pick a chair up and you will feel it.

Then there is smell. Put your nose inside a drawer. Old mahogany has a sweet, faintly waxy, slightly spicy scent. Fresh linseed oil, varnish or new timber announces itself immediately.

Questions to Ask Before You Buy

• What is the provenance, and can the seller tell you where the piece has been?
• Which parts have been restored or replaced, and are the handles original?
• Is the finish original French polish, or has it been stripped and re-polished?
• Are there repairs to legs, feet or the top, and has the piece been made up from parts of others?
• Is the top a solid single board or veneered, and is any veneer lifting?
• Has it been treated for worm, and are there any active flight holes?
• What are the exact dimensions, and will it fit through your door?

Buy from someone who answers these questions readily and can show you the evidence with a torch and a mirror. A good dealer will happily turn a drawer upside down. A hesitant one is telling you something too. Buy slowly, look underneath, and let the mahogany do the talking.