This also belonged to my mother-in-law. I remember her telling me she purchased it for $125 at an antique store near Ocean City, Maryland.

It's a beauty - Stands 70" tall and is 52" wide. All glass shelves.... beautiful carved detailing....

Would love to know how to research....

Thanks much -

Close-up of detail work -

and another -

OK, we'll try this again...

Hi Wallis.

This is another beauty, from a bit later--maybe 1900 to 1910, but the inspiration comes from a much earlier style than that of your table. All those roiling curves & naturalistic (well, sort of)carved flowers are gone, replaced with strict rectilinearity, classic egg-&-date molding, a fluted frieze & scrolled brackets.

This hybrid style--the original, again, not your Edwardian version thereof--was first seen in the Renaissance, when the the last vestiges of northern European medieval grotesquerie (the scary faces) were mixed up & combined with isolated (and, generally, misunderstood) motifs fom the classic world (the elongated scrolls with their overlapping, lobed scales), and as time went on, the balance changed more in favor of the classic, ending up in the dignified & grandiose but occasionally overbearing style of Louis XIV.

The case of your vitrine is quarter-sawn oak (the 'espresso' of a hundred years ago), the applied shells & scrolls on the front panel of the frieze are probably a type of molded wood-putty finished to match, and the carved brackets & hairy paw feet were probably roughed out by machine and finished up by hand.

Thousands of these massive cabinets--as far out of style, by then, as anybody could imagine--were broken up for firewood during the depths of the Depression (somewhere, there's a picture of my grandfather doing exactly that) and even as late as the 195Os, when these pieces were starting to be rediscovered, they generally went cheaply. Even so, your MIL probably ate macaroni-&-cheese for a month to pay for this baby, and I'm sure she was the laughingstock of the more conservtive members of her bridge club for wasting her money on a hideous monstrosity like this. But who's laughing now? M.

gorgeous pieces - I would venture to say they were made abroad. Austria maybe.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: real estate lady,

That is just beautiful!! I have one but it is much plainer. We paid nearly $1000 for it several years ago so yours would be worth much more.