posted on October 1, 2006 03:49:19 PM new
I have a chance to get a vanity that needs some work. I think it's older but it could be a copy of a circa 1920's vanity.
The markings on the back are:
J48 and a signature
Spiegel
May Stern company
j48 could be model and the signature is "V something"
"Joseph Spiegel emigrated with his family from Germany to the United States in 1848, when he was eight years old. In 1865, Spiegel started a home furnishings store in Chicago. A 1903 merger with another furniture company created Spiegel, May, Stern & Co. In 1905, Joseph and his son Arthur Spiegel started a large-scale mail-order business; mail-order sales for 1906 totaled about $1 million. By 1910, the company employed about 300 people at its offices on West 35th Street. In 1912, the company began to sell women's clothing. Thanks to its mail-order operations, Spiegel grew rapidly during the 1920s, as annual sales rose from $4 million to $24 million. Sales dropped during the first part of the Great Depression, but Spiegel grew between 1933 and 1937 (when its name became Spiegel Inc.) by offering installment buying plans and pursuing a strategy of high-volume discount sales. Business slowed during World War II, when the company experimented unsuccessfully with operating retail stores. After shedding these stores in 1953, Spiegel reached $200 million in annual mail-order sales by the end of the 1950s. In 1965, Spiegel was acquired by the Beneficial Finance Co., another mail-order company, which moved Spiegel into the field of high-priced designer clothing. By the early 1970s, when annual sales reached about $400 million, Spiegel employed about 5,000 people in the Chicago area. In 1982, Spiegel was acquired by Otto-Versand, a German catalog company. Under the new ownership, Spiegel expanded. In 1988, when orders placed by telephone accounted for the bulk of its business, Spiegel purchased the “Eddie Bauer” clothing chain and brand from General Mills Inc. At the beginning of the 1990s, Spiegel, based in suburban Downers Grove, still employed about 2,200 people at its catalog warehouse on Chicago's South Side, but this facility would soon close. During the 1990s, when Spiegel mailed as many as 340 million catalogs a year and operated about 350 Eddie Bauer stores worldwide, annual sales rose to $3 billion. At the turn of the new century, when the Otto family of Germany still controlled Spiegel, the company employed about 1,600 people in the Chicago area. The economic recession of the early 2000s hit the company's catalog and credit card divisions hard. Spiegel entered Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in early 2003 and planned to close at least 60 of its 540 Eddie Bauer stores nationally, including several in the Chicago area."
posted on October 1, 2006 05:08:29 PM new
WOW Tom, Thanks! Now why couldn't I find that! Maybe this was made in '48 It's solid and not veneered which doesn't make sense with my timeline. I thought maybe it was made in 1920's. If so, then this piece would be veneered instead of solid pieces of wood. HUMMMM interesting.
posted on October 1, 2006 05:44:36 PM new
Paloma, all 1920's furniture was not veneered and all 1940's furniture was is not solid wood. Give us a pic of the front and a close up of the back and a side pic of a drawer and we can date it for you.
posted on October 1, 2006 05:48:19 PM new
I will as soon as I pick it up. It's approx 20 miles from me right now. I'll take fotos and post as soon as I get it home
I have a nasty foto of the front only. You can see the work I have to do to it in order to restore it. The mirror is in better shape
posted on October 1, 2006 05:53:30 PM new
I see it now!!! I vote 1920's - my grandmother had one much like it and she was married in the late teen's or early 20's
[ edited by ladyjewels2000 on Oct 2, 2006 07:21 AM ]
posted on October 1, 2006 09:08:51 PM new
I'll tell you right now that that is NOT a copy of a '20s piece. It has to be a '20s piece, in my estimation. Really attractive and it'll look great when you've redone it.
posted on October 1, 2006 09:09:45 PM new
Looks early deco with nouveau influence. Probably late 20's early 30's.
The top will be solid wood, but sides and drawer fronts are veneer.
Be very careful when you start stripping this. The different hues of wood are just different colors of stain. When you strip it you will lose the detail. Also, the stripper can cause the old glue to dissolve and the veneer can ripple or seperate.
I would also be willing to bet that the drawer pulls have been replaced. This piece would have most likely originally had catalin or bakelite handles.
[ edited by paloma91 on Oct 1, 2006 05:55 PM ]