Home Interiors: Brown furniture returns to our living rooms

Brown furniture describes a family of hand-made pieces from the Georgian to the mid-20th century. Aged, waxed and patinated, often with a few domestic slings and arrows, it carries what’s fondly described as “honest wear”. Much of the beloved brown is delivered in fine aged timbers and finishes, some of which came from rare, tropical trees not even legal to fell in our environmentally sensitive age. U

Decades of waxing will have lent this furniture a silken feel and a surfacing you can look into. It’s important to understand that when you buy something even 80 years old in wood, be it pine or laburnum, it could carry elements another 100-200 years older than the table, chair or pier mirror. Add to that a hearty lineage, swathed in human stories — well, who could resist this fascinating ballast?

For most of us (not hauling home true, blue Sheraton and Chippendale in the back of the Bentley) brown furniture falls somewhere between the mid-19th century and the 1940s in affordable examples at Irish sales and antique and used furniture outlets. This is the puddle of caramel to bruise black furniture, often overlooked alongside the star lots. Oak ribboned in medullary rays, rich walnut in a bubbling burr, flaming mahogany, violet-tinged rosewood, ruddy pitch pine and 1960s teak. 

It’s all categorised somewhat cruelly as brown. The name was intended in the late 20th century to be derisory. By the 1980s, familiarity had bred contempt and less distinguished brown furniture (ten a penny), was pushed aside as incompatible with contemporary interiors, and old-fashioned in the worst way. Prices for all but the best collapsed, as we turned away from the lived-in for our living spaces.

Well, brown furniture is back. Some of these things were made at the premises of important makers in London, Paris or Dublin, some were made by provincial carpenters. Once you recognise the magic of bobbin-turned legs, exquisitely rendered parquetry and hand-cut dovetails to drawers —there’s no going back.

Even enormous lumps of old brown furniture with powerful lines and considerable height can create fabulous tension with new paint scheming. Trawl Instagram’s braver reaches. Up to the 50s, when a lot of unfashionable, sturdy, antique furniture was cheerfully heaved to the skip by our grandparents, most family homes had an accrued nature, with a generational layering of stuff collected down the years.

Sticking an ancient oak coffer at the end of a velvet bed-frame is not as weird as you may think. With a relatively up-to-date roomscape, the trick is to keep your choice to one or two pieces per room.

Anne and Rody Keighery have run RJ Keighery Auctioneers in Waterford, one of the largest purpose-built auction rooms in the country, since 1995 (antiquesireland.ie). They are famed for their unique collections taken from great house clearances, pubs, religious houses and country homes, and host large auctions with an eclectic choice for every taste and budget.

What are their tips for celebrating the golden brown? “Cut-corner oak or mahogany dining tables with or without leaves, are always great value,” Anne explains. “They have a solid rustic appeal and can be used with a painted finish or scrubbed finish on top which can work in any home. Brown furniture even as-is or cheap pieces recycled so well. Victorian pedestal sideboards for example. Chop them up and you have a lovely pair of bedside cabinets and an arch top bed head with a gorgeous pediment.”

Rody adds that accessorising and outwardly modest buys can be repurposed to let those heritage timbers shine. “Buy old religious prints - they often feature very good quality frames. Take them apart gently and replace the image with a mirror. Wardrobes can be easily shelved to use as a larder cupboard in a kitchen or deployed as a press in a bathroom. These recycles and upcycles can keep it green when doing up a house.”

When you are considering antique or vintage furniture or accessorising, at auction or through a dealer or private seller, take in the condition. If you see structural integrity issues, add this to the cost together with any buyers’ fees and VAT. Always bring a tape with you, as larger pieces that won’t break down into sections may not make it through a standard doorway.

To paint or not to paint? Have any inherited brown furniture evaluated by an expert before you slap on the chalk paint or carry out a night-class French-polish attack. Buying new, explore the latest trend in spice and walnut to offset those Scandinavian blondes.