Get Dimensions From a Photo

One method to make a copy of a piece of furniture.

In the last 26 years, I’ve made only three slavish copies of historical pieces of furniture.

Instead of duplicating a beautiful piece, I prefer to decode the form and find the rules governing that type of furniture. This is, for example, exactly what I did with all of the pieces in my book “Campaign Furniture.” None of the pieces in that book are historical copies.*

Instead, I worked out the proportions and whole-number ratios that exist in the campaign chests (and officer’s trunks and folding tables) I adore. Then it was easy to design the two campaign chests in that book and every other campaign chest I’ve built since.

But sometimes a piece of furniture hits me so hard in the gut that I have to just accept it as it is and try to make it as best I can.

Such was the case with the small wall cabinet shown at the top of this entry. It was posted to John Cornall’s Instagram feed on Sept. 24, …