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A Brief Note on Secret Hiding Places in Antique Furniture
People learn at an early age to squirrel their treasures away in creative hiding places. Even young children follow a deep-seated instinct to tuck their favorite belongings into a shoebox and hide it under the bed or in the back of the closet. This urge to hide a sparkly hair bow or a Matchbox car can carry over into adulthood. The existence of secret hiding places comes as no surprise, as architects, furniture makers, and jewelers have created secret niches within houses, furniture, and even the smallest pieces of jewelry for centuries.
Medieval castles contained secret passageways meant for escape, an old house can have secret doors, rooms, or panels meant for hiding people or objects within, then why not construct a piece of furniture with a secret compartment as well? The human race has always kept secrets; whether political secrets of global significance or a clandestine token, such as a love poem from an unacceptable suitor, there is no shortage of things that need to be hidden.
The most common pieces of antique furniture in which to search for hidden compartments would include a variety of desks, chests of drawers, blanket or storage chests, and portable boxes. Occasionally, you might run across a wardrobe with a secret drawer across the bottom, a sideboard with a secret panel hidden beneath a piece of carving, or even an eighteenth-century headboard containing a hollow area in which the master of the house could conceal a weapon—many pieces have the potential for secret hiding places, but the trick is to discover them!
An antique desk created with the purpose of storing documents is a hopeful place to begin. In fact, a desk containing pigeonholes, such as fall or slant-front desks, secretaries, kneehole desks, plantation desks, and ladies writing desks, might have been built with at least one hidden compartment. If your antique desk has a central cupboard in the pigeonhole area, check the panels of wood called pilasters flanking the cupboard. As in A Fatal Appraisal, one or both of these pieces might slide out to reveal a vertical hiding spot. Put your fingers inside the cupboard and search for a button or a pin. Either press the button or pull the pin to release these "document drawers."
Sometimes the secret space is located behind the cupboard. Again, see if your forefinger can discover a depression in which some kind of release latch is built. Press with one hand and pull out the entire center section with the other. If your desk has no cupboard or central section, check any horizontal facing panels near the pigeonholes for a false drawer. Sometimes the hidden area is actually located beneath the writing surface. This area might resemble a small, shallow well in which documents can be tucked away.
In the case of a chest of drawers, sometimes one of the strips of wood separating the drawers is actually a secret drawer itself. Created without pulls or handles, this hidden drawer is meant to fool anyone but the knowledgeable owner as to its existence. Sometimes the skirt of a chest of drawers is a false drawer and can be pulled out by grabbing it underneath and pulling forward. This is called a "slipper drawer." Always check for a release mechanism before pulling out the false drawer.
My mother owns a case piece with an unusual secret space; it is a North Carolina tall chest or a "High Daddy" as it is called locally, dating to circa 1800. When my mother was examining the piece, she noticed the top back board was attached with screws made much later than 1800, yet the other horizontal back boards were attached to the case with old cut nails. She then carefully removed the board with the "newer" screws to discover two small drawers tucked into the open cavity behind the crown molding. In one of the drawers was a yellowed piece of paper dated 1911 detailing the family history of the High Daddy. What a find! My mother speculates that the drawers were added at the time of the Civil War in order to keep valuables safe from marauding soldiers.
Boxes of all shapes and sizes are a great place to look for secret hiding places. The best way to check a box for a secret compartment is to look at its overall shape. Now open the lid and see if the compartment inside looks as deep as the overall height of the box. If not, you might find that the box has a false bottom. That false bottom can be pried upwards using a thin blade or even a long fingernail to reveal a space below. Sometimes the hidden space is actually in the lid and is covered by a thin piece of wood or a fabric lining.
Pressing a button or moving a lever can reveal some hidden places in boxes. For example, my father owns a mahogany box in which a tiny button is cleverly placed near one of the hinges on the back. You can only see this button if the box is open. Once the button is pressed, a thin, secret drawer pops out on the front of the box, towards the bottom. I won't mention how my father learned to regret his decision of proudly showing his three children where he hid the "emergency money." He found himself short a twenty or two more than once afterward.
A good rule of thumb when seeking out hidden panels is not to force anything. If glue cracks or wood starts groaning as you are prying at what you hope to be a secret panel in your grandmother's eighteenth-century secretary, you might be completely ruining the value of your antique by tearing it apart. Slashing the silk lining of your two-hundred-year-old document box in the hopes of discovering gold coins or letters written by Benjamin Franklin might only result in a damaged box with an empty secret compartment.
Keep in mind that like a child's treasured purple crayon or hoard of stale Halloween candy, some of the valuables placed in a secret hiding place may not be valuable to you at all. We'd all like to pull out a false drawer only to discover the signature of the piece's maker (along with the date of course), or a jeweled ring used to poison a villainous character ages past (ideally with a cyanide tablet still intact). These instances are unlikely, however.
So as you examine the hollow legs of your antique dining room table with a flashlight or insist upon watching over the upholsterer's shoulder as he replaces the fabric on your federal side chairs, I hope that your antique does yield an undiscovered, untouched secret compartment. If it does, I also hope that you find something that sparks your imagination—a baby's bootie, a simple bracelet engraved with two sets of initials, a wrinkled photograph of a beautiful and haunting young face. Whatever you find, I hope your discovery brings a bit of excitement and mystery into your life. After all, isn’t that what a good secret is all about?
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About The Author
J.B. Stanley taught sixth grade language arts in Cary, North Carolina for the majority of her eight-year teaching career. Raised an antique-lover by her grandparents and parents, Stanley also worked part-time in an auction gallery. An eBay junkie and food-lover, Stanley now lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, two children, and four cats. For more info please visit www.jbstanley.com.
Table of Contents
A Fatal Appraisal
Table of Contents
Copyright Information
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Fredericksburg, Virginia 1778
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Fredericksburg, Virginia 1778
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Richmond, Virginia 2006
A Brief Note on Secret Hiding Places in Antique Furniture
About The Author
A Fatal Appraisal Page 21