A tale of two Lowboys

I purchased an estate sale last year with about (25) items I originally sold to a good customer in the late 80's. He passed away and his kids didn't want the pieces, so I bought them all back. Among the group was an Eldred Wheeler New Hampshire Lowboy in tiger maple, which was a piece they made for about 4 years as I recall, from around 1987 to 1991. I've always had people ask for this item over the years and was glad to get one back in the store. It wasn't here but a few weeks when it sold to a collector, however that customer really wasn't thrilled with the piece because there was very weak figure in the piece. She asked me if I could have one built exactly like this one, but with good tiger stripe and add a pegged-on top rather than just a screwed-on top as was the original. So yes, we could do that, and I took the Eldred Wheeler piece back and gave it to John Buchanan with those instructions. Today he brought me the result of his work, and I'm really pleased how it turned out. As you can see, having decent figure and a deeper, richer finish really makes the piece 'pop'. Notice the hand-cut legs on the Buchanan piece, which have more grace and flow than the production leg on the Wheeler item.

The original E.W. Piece is for sale in my store at $ 1,650
The Buchanan piece can be made again for $ 2,700

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A couple more photos. Here's a lesson in 'hand cut' dovetails as well. A 'scribe' mark is something you always look for in a hand-cut dovetail, and you will see these on both drawer stiles of both the Eldred Wheeler piece and the John Buchanan one. However, only the Buchanan piece is really hand-cut, the Wheeler piece was done on a jig with a router and the scribe mark is 'faked' in by E.W. You can tell because the 'pins' on the Buchanan dovetails are correctly lined up and spaced, whereas the Wheeler piece has only a top pin and middle..there is not bottom pin and they didn't reset the jig for a small drawer such as this one. This is one of the things you try to look for when buying or identifying pieces as collectible.

Buchanan drawer is the 2nd photo (middle), Wheeler drawer is the last photo.

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