Hardware for miniature furniture

Magazine Antiques, March, 2004 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Antique miniature and children's furniture has always attracted attention. In the first issue of this magazine in January 1922 among the editorial offerings was an article entitled "Playthings of the Past" by Alice Van Leer Carrick. She wrote that the pursuit of these objects was "a worthy interest, for dolls are as old as mankind, and they and their small belongings mirror the past; they represent the dailiness of life, mimicking the human beings about them."

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While period dollhouse furniture is relatively rare, it is difficult to walk through an antiques show without coming across a tiny chair, chest of drawers, or some other diminutive piece of furniture. It has long been debated whether these pieces were intended to be cabinetmakers' samples or playthings. Many of the earliest were exported from England, but later they were made in the United States in some quantity. Not surprisingly, these objects have been exposed to rough treatment, and restoration has sometimes been necessary. Over the years chairs have lost casters or the casters have lost their leather wraps; chests are without pulls, escutcheons, and decorative mounts; and the hinges of secretary doors have vanished. Mrs. Carrick cited a charming eighteenth-century English rhyme that addressed the problem of wear and tear on dolls: "What children of Holland take pleasure in making,/The children of England take pleasure in breaking."

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Almost twenty-five years ago Robert Byles, an English antiques dealer and restorer in Devon, needed a handle for a piece of small-scale furniture and soon realized that reproduction hardware then available was unsatisfactory. He understood that lost-wax casting was the preferred method for making these pieces, and in 1981 he founded Optimum Brasses. Seven years later molds had been made from more than seven hundred pieces of antique hardware, and Byles produced a large catalogue, which he divided into twenty-six categories, one of which was hardware made in one-half or one-twelfth scale. Today his offerings include some six thousand items, and last year the company issued a catalogue devoted only to what Mr. Byles calls "apprentice pieces, boxes and caddies, children's and doll house furniture and other Lilliputian pieces." The lost-wax casting process has been in use for millennia in both Europe and Asia. About a hundred years ago a more modern process was developed employing reusable rubber molds. A further development was to pour the molten metal into a spinning device and use a vacuum pump to force it into every nook and cranny of the mold. This process diminished the shrinkage inherent in the lost-wax process, which is particularly important in replicating a piece of antique hardware.

At Optimum Brasses each piece is made by these methods and is hand-finished and patinated to look exactly like the original fitting. If the company does not have a perfect match for a piece of hardware, they will create it for the client. At present the firm's hardware is appropriate for furniture made from the seventeenth century through the Victorian and aesthetic movement periods.

The catalogue of small-scale offerings, a decidedly workman-like publication with black-and-white illustrations of the products shown actual size and with prices quoted in dollars, is called OBIDA (Optimum Brasses Inclusive Dollar Account). It is available by contacting the company by telephone 44-1398-331515, fax 44-1398-331164, or e-mail (brass@obida.com). Information may be gleaned from their Web site (www.obida.com).

A selection of hardware manufactured by Optimum Brasses in Devon, England, for one-half and one-twelfth scale pieces of antique furniture.

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