Every trade has a private language, and the antiques trade has one of the richest. Spend an afternoon at an estate sale or a specialist auction and you’ll hear dealers trade phrases like “married piece,” “cold-painted,” and “foxing” as casually as a mechanic discusses torque. None of it is meant to exclude newcomers — it’s simply shorthand that developed over centuries of buying, selling, and describing objects with precision. Once you know the vocabulary, though, everything changes. You start reading catalog descriptions the way a dealer does, spotting the difference between an enthusiastic listing and an honest one, and asking sharper questions before you commit your money.
This glossary gathers fifty terms you’ll encounter constantly, grouped by category so you can use it as a reference rather than a straight read-through. Keep it bookmarked. You’ll find yourself returning to it every time a listing description throws an unfamiliar word your way.
Furniture Terms
Case piece — Any furniture item built primarily as a box or container, such as a chest, cabinet, or wardrobe, as opposed to seating or tables.
Carcass — The basic structural frame or “skeleton” of a case piece before veneer, drawers, or decorative elements are added; dealers inspect the carcass to judge original construction quality.
Veneer — A thin layer of high-quality wood glued over a cheaper substrate to achieve a decorative grain pattern; not inherently a mark of poor quality, since veneering has been used on the finest furniture since the 17th century.
Solid wood — Furniture built entirely from one type of timber with no veneer layer; often, though not always, considered more durable and repairable than veneered work.
Patina — The surface character a piece develops over decades or centuries of handling, waxing, light exposure, and gentle wear; genuine patina is one of the most valued and hardest-to-fake qualities in antique furniture.
Married piece — An item assembled from two or more originally unrelated parts — commonly a chest-on-chest where the top and base didn’t start life together — now presented as a single unit.
Cabriole leg — A curved furniture leg that flows outward at the knee and inward at the ankle before flaring at the foot, associated with Queen Anne and Chippendale styles.
Ormolu — Gilded bronze or brass mounts applied to furniture as decorative hardware, particularly common on French Empire and Louis XV/XVI pieces.
Provincial — Furniture made in a country style outside major urban centers, typically simpler in construction and ornament than its city-made counterparts, and often prized today for its honesty of form.
Escutcheon — The metal plate surrounding a keyhole or drawer pull, both functional and decorative.
Joinery & Construction Terms
Dovetail joint — An interlocking joint with trapezoidal “pins” and “tails” used chiefly to join drawer sides to fronts and backs; hand-cut dovetails are irregular in spacing, while machine-cut examples are perfectly uniform.
Mortise-and-tenon — A joint where a projecting tongue (tenon) fits into a matching cavity (mortise), the backbone of chair and table frame construction for centuries.
Dowel — A round wooden peg used to reinforce or align a joint; heavy reliance on dowel construction, especially visible ones, often signals later or lower-cost manufacture.
Pegged joint — A mortise-and-tenon joint additionally secured with a wooden peg driven through both members, common in earlier and rural furniture.
Ceramics & Glass Terms
Glaze — The glassy coating fired onto ceramic ware for both decoration and waterproofing; its texture, crackle pattern, and pooling tell dealers a great deal about age and origin.
Crazing — A network of fine surface cracks in a glaze, which can occur naturally with age or be an early warning sign of instability; not always a defect, but always worth noting.
Biscuit (or bisque) — Ceramic ware that has been fired once but not yet glazed, leaving a matte, porous surface.
Hallmark — A maker’s stamp, usually on the base of ceramics or on silver, used to identify factory, date, or silversmith.
Lustreware — Ceramics decorated with a metallic-oxide glaze that produces an iridescent sheen, popular in 19th-century English pottery.
Pontil mark — A rough scar on the base of blown glass left by the iron rod (pontil) used to hold the piece during finishing; an unpolished pontil mark is often a useful, though not definitive, sign of hand-blown, pre-industrial glass.
Cut glass — Glass decorated by grinding facets into the surface with an abrasive wheel, distinct from pressed glass, which is molded to imitate the same look at a fraction of the cost.
Millefiori — An Italian glassmaking technique producing small floral or star patterns visible when a cane of colored glass is sliced crosswise, commonly seen in paperweights.
Metalware & Silver Terms
Sterling — Silver alloyed to a minimum purity of 92.5%, the standard for fine silverware in Britain and the United States.
Plate (silver plate) — A base metal, usually copper or nickel alloy, coated with a thin layer of silver through electroplating; visually similar to sterling but worth a fraction of the price.
Assay mark — An official stamp certifying that a piece of silver has been tested and meets a stated purity standard.
Repoussé — A decorative metalworking technique where a design is hammered into relief from the reverse side of a sheet of metal.
Chasing — The companion technique to repoussé, refining and detailing a design from the front of the metal after the initial relief work.
Patina (metal) — The oxidized surface tone that develops on bronze, copper, or brass over time; collectors of metalware distinguish carefully between natural patina and artificially applied “instant” aging.
Condition & Value Terms
Provenance — The documented history of an object’s ownership, which can significantly affect both authenticity confidence and value, especially when tied to a notable collection or estate.
As found — A trade phrase meaning an item is being sold exactly as discovered, without cleaning, restoration, or repair — buyer takes on all condition risk in exchange for a lower price.
Restoration — Any intervention intended to return a piece closer to its original appearance or function; honestly disclosed restoration is normal and often necessary, but undisclosed restoration undermines value.
Conservation — Work aimed at stabilizing an object and halting further deterioration, as distinct from restoration, which aims at visual or functional improvement.
Foxing — Small brown spotting found on paper, prints, or book pages, caused by oxidation of impurities in the paper or fungal growth; common on 19th-century paper stock.
Craquelure — The fine cracking pattern that develops in aged paint or varnish, especially on oil paintings; forgers often struggle to replicate its irregularity convincingly.
Cold-painted — Paint applied to a finished bronze or metal casting without subsequent firing, as opposed to enameling; associated particularly with Austrian bronze animal and figural sculpture.
Rebuilt/Replaced — Trade shorthand indicating a component — a clock movement, a chair leg, a lock — is not original to the piece, whether or not it’s period-appropriate.
Sleeper — An item significantly undervalued or misattributed by its current seller, representing an opportunity for a knowledgeable buyer.
Reproduction — A piece deliberately made in the style of an earlier period, without intent to deceive as to its actual age; distinct from a fake, which is made with intent to defraud.
Sale & Trade Terms
Provenance letter — A written statement, sometimes notarized, documenting an item’s ownership history, often included with higher-value pieces at auction.
Hammer price — The winning bid amount at auction, before the buyer’s premium and any applicable taxes are added.
Buyer’s premium — A percentage fee added to the hammer price by the auction house, paid by the buyer, typically ranging from roughly 15% to 30% depending on the house and sale.
Reserve — The confidential minimum price a consignor has agreed to accept; if bidding fails to reach it, the lot goes unsold (“bought in”).
Estimate — The auction house’s pre-sale prediction of likely selling price, given as a low-high range and intended as guidance rather than guarantee.
Consignment — An arrangement where an owner places an item with a dealer or auction house to sell on their behalf, typically for a percentage commission.
Provenance gap — A missing period in an item’s documented ownership history, which specialists flag as worth investigating rather than automatically distrusting.
Condition report — A detailed written assessment of an item’s physical state, usually available on request for higher-value auction lots.
Lot — A single item or group of items offered together as one unit within an auction sale.
Attribution — A scholarly opinion assigning an unsigned or unmarked work to a particular maker, workshop, or period, typically phrased with qualifying language (“attributed to,” “in the manner of,” “circle of”) reflecting the dealer’s degree of confidence.
A dealer who is precise about “attributed to” versus “by” is doing you a favor, not hedging. That single preposition can represent a tenfold difference in value.
Putting the Vocabulary to Work
None of these terms exist in isolation — they combine to tell you the real story of an object. A listing that reads “solid mahogany chest, hand-cut dovetails, honest patina, minor restoration to one foot, provenance from a documented estate” is communicating a great deal in a single sentence, and now you can parse every word of it. Conversely, vague listings that avoid this vocabulary entirely — heavy on adjectives like “beautiful” and “rare,” light on specifics like joinery, glaze condition, or hallmark details — deserve a second look and a direct question or two before you buy.
The best way to cement this vocabulary is to use it. Next time you’re examining a piece, narrate it to yourself in these terms: What’s the carcass made of? Is the veneer intact? Are the dovetails hand-cut? Is there a hallmark, and does it match the period claimed? You’ll find the language sharpens your eye as much as it sharpens your conversation, and within a few months of deliberate practice, you’ll be reading condition reports and auction catalogs with the same fluency as the professionals standing next to you at the preview.