Featured New user - hello - could anyone kindly advise re: painted table

Not here in america no, not in early 19th century for sure. That means that the 5 boards are less than 5" wide, in america that's not a tree, more like a sapling. Even today in america, you can purchase pine boards 24"-30" wide, ditto walnut & many other species, naturally it's expensive.

 

Walnut board i purchased 5-10 years ago or so to replace a top on a piece, 27 inches wide.

 

Oh right, I didn’t know pine got that big. I guess it depends on the age of the tree and the level of deforestation in the locality. I suppose it’s safe to say that in Europe we’d had a denser population, using more timber, for a much longer period of time. I’ll try to find some legit European pine pieces from the period in question, that might help.

 

Wow. The only places we get trees with that kind of girth in the U.K. is in the far north of Scotland and some protected National Parks.

 

James, the farmhouse I was raised in was framed with walnut in the early 1800s. The boards are quite big and thick. Several people wanted to buy the house and tear it down to salvage the walnut Fortunately the family has hung onto it and it still stands strong.
Patd

 

Walnut................okay, I'm here to go off tangent again..............when we sold my grandparents 1842 NYC townhouse in the mid 1960s we sold all of the woodwork (7 floors of it, including stairs and 50 doors) to a gun manufacturer to be milled into stocks. Family lore was that my Great-Great Grandfather had taken a ship load (a sailing ship!) of it in lieu of a debt.

 

I got that board from a boutique saw mill. There are guys here in the States that travel and harvest very old trees in mostly urban locations. They must come down for 1 reason or another so when i called and asked the price, he laid it on me & it was like YIKES! why so much? Well, he explained, these are old growth trees in cities mostly and are a difficult fell, there are houses in the way, power lines, bla bla bla. Additionally, a slab of walnut of that size must "air" dry for 4 years in a shed to get it down to aprox 20-25% moisture content before they can kiln dry it down to final a 10-12% MC. Add all that up, HIDEOUSLY EXPENSIVE!

 

I know these boutique saw mill guys travel to Europe as well to harvest old growth timber, primarily oak i think.

 

This is the kind of Oak they hunt in europe.
Angel Oak, Charleston SC, reported to be 1000-1500 years old, the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi River.

 

"the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi River."

Than you for that........................nice to know my competition................

 

Table looks late 18th to me with those paint colours.

 

Thanks for that. On the basis of the colours and the diamond/losenge motif I was hoping this might be the case. Certainly, the table would seem to have had a lot of wear in order for bare pine to be showing through two coats of paint. On the other hand, I can appreciate the argument about plank width or lack of it. Can I ask where you stand on that?

 

If it's English and country made, which I think it is, then the narrow planks don't surpise me one whit. We used vast amounts of timber for shipbuilding, so that which was left was often the narrower stuff or "newer". The maker used what was to hand, easily.

 

Right, thank you, that ties in with what I was thinking/hoping. We’d clearly been using a lot of wood in that period and there’s no saying that the creator, depending upon his location, would necessarily have had access to very mature timber. Can I ask, do the legs tell you anything? By the way, the moulding on the edge of undertier is applied, rather than carved, and unpainted - presumably a later addition?

By the way, I apologise for the poor quality of the images. They are my sellers. The table should arrive tomorrow at which point I’ll be able to supply more and of a better quality.

 

Wow, that’s a pretty heady mixture! Can I ask what your intuitions/thoughts might be about the table?

 

I bet. I live in Wigan and the closest we have to that kind of ‘sensory bygone’ is the not-unpleasant aroma of the Uncle Joe’s Mint Ball factory!
Can I ask Dave, do you have an opinion on the table in terms of age/origin?

 

Thanks Davey, that is what I was hoping to hear. Much appreciated!