On Drawer Pulls and Powderhorns

[Elnathan]

I'm curious about the dating on the the drawer pulls of this pattern: https://www.powderhornsandmore.com/product/3-8-inch-brass-drawer-pull-finials/

Awhile back I looked through my powderhorn books and found a couple examples - my books are now all in storage and I don't recall specifics, unfortunately - so I know they do show up on surviving horns. What I haven't been able to find is when such drawer pulls were in style. From what I've read, drawer pulls were very style specific, and the 18th and early 19th century saw furniture styles change every 25 or 30 years. Now, most of my period furniture books have been buried in storage for the last couple years and between the internet and handful of books I had available I've only been able to get a general overview of styles, so maybe I've missed something, but I've never found examples of anything but loops for furniture pulls from Williamandmary up through the Federal period. I am wondering if perhaps the handful of original horns with re-used drawer pulls of this style might have been retrofitted at a later date. Anyone know when such hardware came into fashion?

[Tim Crosby]

 Dr. Hopkins in his book "Bone Tipped & Banded Horns Pt I" dates the use of "Furniture Rings" to the mid 18th century. There are horns on pages 196 and 200 with this type knob.

  Tim C.   

[okieboy]

 I can't specifically answer your question, but I do think that a pull like the one you ask about may have been used on small cubby drawers like on the back of a desk for most of the time that furniture has been built, without going through the period style changes that pulls for larger drawers went through.

[Tanselman]

While some brass pulls may have been original to a powder horn here or there, I am always a bit skeptical, and think many that we see were later additions, at times during the working life of the horn, but unfortunately many were added in the 20th century since it was a quick, easy repair to get an otherwise good horn back to looking whole again. Another consideration is that some of the more common pulls found on horns, like a perforated brass post with moveable brass ring, appear a little older than the horn itself, as if salvaged and repurposed on the horn. I've seen several Tansel horns like this, mostly earlier KY era horns but also a couple later IN era horns, none of which I believe were/are the original front strap attachment for the horn... although some show good wear and were on the horn for a portion of its working life. And some brass pulls were added during the Victorian age when many old heirloom objects were "cleaned up" to look better. A good question is, when you look at the finer early horns that have not been tampered with, how many have brass pulls? And if those better horn-makers didn't use brass pulls, why would the more common horn-makers use a more expensive pull than the best horn makers?

Shelby Gallien

[Tim Crosby]

 I've often wondered what's original to a horn and what has been added. Tips, rings, pulls, screws, nails, tacks, carving, etc... I'm sure a lot of "Original" horns had modifications in their lifetime not to mention the ones that are/were faked.

   Tim

[rich pierce]

I've often wondered what's original to a horn and what has been added. Tips, rings, pulls, screws, nails, tacks, carving, etc... I'm sure a lot of "Original" horns had modifications in their lifetime not to mention the ones that are/were faked.

   Tim

I’ve seen staple holes on flat-faced horns that now have a pull or a simple wooden screw.

[Elnathan]

I figure that if a furniture pull was used on a new horn the pull would most likely be recycled off a broken piece of furniture, so I'd expect they would be most likely to show up on one-offs or country-made horns rather than the more expensive or professionally made ones - someone making horns for a living seems less likely to use a bit of old furniture that happens to be available, and the use of new-made knobs seems unlikely if there are cheaper alternatives that the horner could make himself.

I switched my approach and had a look at the 18th century design books written by Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, and then went and did a quick internet search search specifically on 18th century secretary desks. Okieboy, from what I can glean from pictures it looks like you were exactly right - those botton-type knobs were used at least from the Queen Anne period on for small desk drawers. Larger versions for visible drawers became fashionable towards the end of the 18th century, as shown in Hepplewhite and Sheraton (1787 and 1791 respectively). Dunno why none of that showed up in the books and internet sites I was looking through when I was examining the question earlier....

To sum up: Yeah, they are HC/PC for at least the second half of the 18th century. They would have come off a pretty fancy piece of furniture, though, and I'm not sure how common something like that would be in more rural areas, at least until the Federal period.

[Tim Crosby]

 So more as a repair part rather than original equipment?

     Tim

[Elnathan]

So more as a repair part rather than original equipment?

     Tim

I really hesitate to say, particularly since they aren't particularly common IIRC and I don't have my books available to review the ones I've seen illustrated. I will hypothesize that they are more likely to have been used for either new or repaired horns towards the end of the 18th and into the 19th century, based on my (possibly oversimplified) recollection that furniture with drawers only came into fashion at the end of the 17th century and my expectation that the kind of furniture that had small drawers with suitably small knobs was both fairly rare and consequently well-cared for outside of the major urban centers, so there weren't a whole lot of surplus knobs floating around and available to be recycled into powderhorn parts, but that is supposition on my part.

[Hungry Horse]

 A very interesting subject. My powder horn has an interesting knob on the plug that I ran on to and just thought it looked right. It is a fancy rear sling button from a Jäeger rifle. Many years ago I bought a lot of stuff from Turner Kirkland and his growing business Dixie Gun Works. He had been going through old warehouses in Europe, and had found an amazing array of old, and rare stuff. Now I don’t know how old these are, but they are hand cut threads, and appear to be turned on a treadle lathe. I bought five or six at the time, but now are down to use a couple.

Hungry Horse