I was squeezing myself through some narrow aisles at an auction house over the weekend, searching for some unusual pieces of furniture to aim my focus. I wasn’t having much luck. Everything looked so ordinary until I was headed out of one of the aisles.
There sitting atop a table at my eye level were the legs of a small two-tier table. They were in the shape and color of a stylized black swan with a brass head and thick feet that looked more lion than bird. It was an odd combination that actually worked (I suppose padded feet wouldn’t be sturdy enough).
Stopping to take them in, I realized that I had been looking at the whole of the furniture laid out on the auction house floor and ignoring the details of each piece. The details – as in the legs and feet of the table before me – were among the elements in the designs that made the pieces different.
I wondered what I’d find if I scoped out the legs of other furniture on the floor, and set off to wander and explore. I found that most pieces sat on legs with ball and claw feet, a style that I had seen often on antique furniture.
Here’s a sampling of what was there waiting to be sold – with feet that represented various periods in furniture history.
