Finally, more pics!

So here are the pics I promised. I also called Karges today. They told me they never got the request online, so I sent it again along with a link to this blog. If you at Karges are reading this and see the pictures, thank you for even looking! I appreciate any help I can get!
Please ignore the Fighting Irish in the background. We haven't painted the upstairs yet.

More bedroom pics to come...

Well, no word from customer service at Karges yet. I dutifully filled out the information request form on their website night before last. Maybe an email will shoot my way next week.
I received my new book as promised from Barnes and Noble. It has some beautiful pictures in it, but I think the authors might have been related to J. H. Belter, or havestock in his company or something... The entire rococo section was full of Belter stuff. Don't get me wrong, it is lovely, but, gee, folks! Can't we give Meeks and Mallard some more room? By the way, the authors also have no idea that his name was "Prudent" and not "Prudence". Annoying.

The Bedroom Set

These are pictures of the aforementioned bedroom set, containing the unusual piece, the double hat box gentleman's dresser (Well, that's what I call it for lack of a more appropriate title). This set was purchased for Simon Finger's store on the square in Ripley. Any thoughts?
The company that made it was still in business a few years ago. I still need t email them these pictures. Maybe I'll do that tonight. At least I can get an approximate age or something. I'll make some pictures of the bed and wash stand this weekend to post later. Enjoy!

A little backstory...

This little experience started when we acquired a parlor set that is attributed to Prudent Mallard from the estate of the last aristocrat in Ripley. It's very nice, although incomplete. We have the settee and the gentleman's chair, but the lady's chair has been long lost. So, my husband picked up a chair from the same period when we went to the Mississippi Nurses Association meeting in Biloxi last October. it looks nice. I'm pleased.
Actually, come to think of it, all this started earlier. We bought a gentleman's dresser from the same aristocrat before her death. It is quarter-sewn oak I am told. The unique thing about it is that is has two hatboxes lateral to the mirror. They both have mirrors on the front of the doors. I have googled and googled, and I can't find any other dresser that looks like it. We then bought the rest of the bedroom set from one of her neighbors that the family had lent it to when their family's house had burned probably three quarters of a century ago. It is a beautiful set that was bought new from Finger's Five and Dime store on the Ripley square. There still is a label on the back of the dresser. The company is still in existance somewhere up North. I really need to email them the pictures. That's another thing I've put off for more than five years...
Perhaps I can take some new pictures and post them to see who can tell me something about it. We'll see.
To the point of this post: We went "antiquing" on Saturday to Collierville, Tennessee. Like many "antique stores" in our area, many had what I like to term a "junklectic" mix of items. The one new store we discovered is actually an auction house. Beautiful stuff. He also sells some of his personally bought things outright. We bought a chandelier for the foyer. It's not antique (20 to 30 years old), but beautiful still. I'll try to post pictures as I can.

In the Beginning...

In the beginning... God said, "Let there be light." And there was light, and He said it was good. Unfortunately, in my beginning I am fumbling in the dark with a very limited knowledge and even more limited resources. Let me introduce myself. I am an amateur antiquer. And while "antique" has traditionally not been used as a verb, I find there is no other word to describe myself. I am a nurse practitioner by trade, working in Northeast Mississippi at a small rural clinic. I am married and the mother of a ten-year-old. So how, you ask, does a twenty-eight year old woman become so intrigued with antique furniture? Easy. I am a genealogy fanatic. There is nothing greater to me than tracking down that elusive infinitely-great grandparent and discovering the circumstances of life at that moment in history. Therefore, I find that I desire to collect relics from those glorious days of inadequate sanitation, rampant pestilence, and commonplace hardship.
I bill myself as an amateur because I know next to nothing about antiques, except that they are older than I am. I am slowly learning the major periods in American furniture manufacturing: Victorian, Art Deco... (That's about as far as I have gotten.) I am so completely ignorant that I have ordered a book from Barnes and Noble booksellers entitled "American Furniture of the 19th Century: 1840-1880" by Dubrow. I hope it makes a difference in my antique literacy level. Until it arrives, quite possibly this week, I am still fairly clueless. Bear with me.