Home & Hearth

The things a household ran on. Fire tools and trivets, boxes and tins, a candlestick, kitchen brass, the small pieces that lived by the hearth. Most of it was cheap when new and used hard, which is why the good survivors are worth cataloguing.

We look for wear in the right places. A trivet worn bright where the kettle sat. A box with a dent that matches a century of being shut. That kind of evidence is what separates a working object from a reproduction made to look like one, and we point it out on the card.

Dating here is mostly construction. Cut nails, hand-filed edges, the shape of a hinge, the type of screw. Makers rarely signed domestic brass or tin, so Attributed and Our reading are common on these cards and the date is often a range. When a piece carries a registration mark or a patent number we say so, and the date firms up.

Large furniture is not sold online. Anything that fits a box ships anywhere in the United States with the card inside.