How to Date Furniture by Its Hardware

Drawer pulls, knobs, hinges and locks often reflect the style of their era, which makes them a handy dating clue. This guide is for buyers and sellers who want to read furniture hardware, and to tell when that hardware is original and when it has been swapped out.

Why hardware is only one clue

Hardware is the easiest part of a piece to change. Owners updated pulls to follow fashion, replaced broken ones, and restorers added reproduction brasses. Reproduction hardware in older styles has been made for well over a century and is still sold today. So use hardware to support what the wood and joinery tell you, not to override it.

Common pull and knob styles

Broad style periods give you a starting point. Dates overlap, and revival styles repeated earlier looks later on.

• Wooden knobs: turned wooden knobs were used across many periods, from simple country furniture to Empire and early Victorian pieces.
• Brass bail pulls: a hanging brass handle on a decorative back plate is associated with 18th-century styles. Shaped "batwing" plates and later oval stamped plates are classic examples, and both were widely reproduced.
• Pressed glass knobs: clear or colored glass knobs were popular in the first half of the 19th century and came back in later revival furniture.
• Victorian pulls: carved wooden pulls shaped like leaves or fruit, and cast brass or iron pulls with elaborate designs, fit the mid-to-late 1800s.
• Arts and Crafts hardware: hammered copper or dark iron pulls with simple, sturdy shapes suit the late 1800s and early 1900s.
• Plastic and early synthetics: Bakelite and other plastic pulls point to the 20th century, especially the decades around the 1930s and 1940s.

Look at how the hardware is attached

How a pull is fastened can say as much as its style. Earlier brass pulls were often held by threaded posts with small nuts on the inside of the drawer, or by wire loops bent over inside. Later hardware usually uses machine screws with uniform threads. Look inside the drawer front at the nuts and screws. Rough, irregular, hand-finished nuts suggest older hardware. Shiny, uniform hex nuts suggest replacement.

Hinges, locks and escutcheons

• Hand-forged hinges show hammer marks and irregular edges. Cast or stamped butt hinges with crisp, uniform shapes are later.
• Locks mortised into drawer fronts and doors were common on older case pieces. Check whether the keyhole lines up with the lock and whether the lock looks as old as the wood around it.
• Escutcheons, the decorative plates around keyholes, should match the style of the other hardware if everything is original.

Spot replaced hardware

Original hardware leaves a history in the wood. When something has been changed, the evidence usually shows on the back of the drawer front.

• Extra holes: filled or open holes inside the drawer, beyond the ones in use, mean earlier hardware was removed.
• Ghost marks: on the outside, a faint outline in the finish shaped differently from the current plate shows where older hardware once sat.
• Finish differences: wood under an original plate is often lighter or less worn. If the plate was moved or replaced, the shadow may not match.
• Bright, uniform metal: genuinely old brass usually has soft wear on high points and darkening in recesses. Pulls that look identical and freshly cast deserve a closer look.

Replaced hardware is very common and does not make a piece worthless. It can affect value for serious collectors, though, so note it when you describe or price an item.

Nails as hardware clues

Check the back panels and drawer bottoms. Hand-forged nails with irregular heads came first, then machine-cut nails with rectangular shanks, then round wire nails. A piece held together entirely with modern wire nails is unlikely to be very old, unless those areas were repaired.

Don't clean away the evidence

Resist the urge to polish old brass to a bright shine before you have studied it. The darkened recesses and worn high points are part of how you judge age, and many buyers prefer an untouched surface. If you plan to sell, leave the hardware as found and let the buyer decide.

Quick checklist

• Match the hardware style to the furniture style.
• Look inside drawers for extra holes and modern nuts.
• Check the outside finish for ghost outlines.
• Compare wear on all pulls for consistency.
• Note hinge and nail types on the back and sides.
• Treat hardware as supporting evidence, not proof.