Most folks here would love a matching victorian bedroom or dining room set, but unfortunately, sets are hard to come by and expensive. Also, a lot of us do not have the room in our homes for massive furniture. We only have 7? 10? ceilings in our bedroom, kitchen, dining room etc, although we do have nice 13 foot ceilings in our living room and we concentrated on the living areas for the first years we lived in our home. With great passion we bought some wonderful pieces (thanks Lise ;) but, our bedroom had some turn of the century generic oak dressers. Baby came along and baby was very expensive so buying new bedroom furniture went on the back burner. Well Jake is now 16 and our love for Victorian furniture is now rekindled, so we set out to furnish the bedroom in walnut.
Our first find was a modern gothic lockside that i posted about earlier and we decided to look for pieces that would ?Go? with it, and with some great luck we furnished our bedroom.
Our first find after the lockside was an aesthetic dresser that had many elements that complimented the lockside. It actually looked like it may have been made by the same company.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/aestheticdresser.jpg
It has a very nice pediment with some marquetry.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1091.jpg
Very nice side pieces on the mirror have japanese influenced incised decoration on the burl.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1089.jpg
The aesthetic dresser looked incredible with the lockside so what next? As luck had it I found a similar dresser on ebay shortly after. It was a blurry picture, but only 17 miles away so I went to take a look at it. Like the lockside and first aesthetic dresser it was in pristine original finish and had the original hardware and was well taken care of. My wife and i fell in love with it immediately. The pediment had some of the feeling of the other dresser and had this nice rolling pin or curtain rod like effect.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/AestheticPediment.jpg
The side pieces at the mirror bottom were also similar.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/Dresser.jpg
The total effect of these three pieces in our bedroom is sheer beauty. Note Renaissance Revival canterbury printer stand next to dresser.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1204.jpg
My whole point of this post is that through diligence and careful searching, one can put together an eye appealing and aesthetically pleasing array of victorian furniture that doesnt really match but compliments each other in a way most pleasing. Our lockside was $2250, the first dresser was $1250 and the other dresser was $1000. For $4500 we could have surely got a matching victorian bedroom suite. It wasn?t cheap but all pieces have that warm orangy glow that only 100+ years can do to walnut. All pieces are in incredibly well cared for condition and I think that an assembled set of non matching pieces can add interest and the eclecticism that the victorians were so fond of.
Good luck searching, Helen and I love our new bedroom!
Zeke
Mix and match
Archive summary
Victorian Furniture thread on victorianforum.com · started April 18, 2008 by zeke · 1 post · discussion in 2008.
Most folks here would love a matching victorian bedroom or dining room set, but unfortunately, sets are hard to come by and expensive. Also, a lot of us do not have the room in our homes for massive furniture. We only have 7? 10? ceilings in our bedroom, kitchen, dining room…