What is a repurposed Antique?

Good question.

A repurposed antique is an old piece, usually furniture, that has been reworked to serve a purpose other than the one it was originally designed for.

A good example might be a reed organ or chord organ depending on where you grew up.

The one pictured above would be a common example. Organs like this one were being sold all across America from right after the civil war until about 1920. Many of them were actually sold by traveling salesmen from the back of a wagon. Everyone knew that to be cultured you had to have music in your home and the easiest way was the cord organ which was powered by pedals attached to a bellows system housed in the lower portion of the organ.  They were reliable, inexpensive, and could be made as elaborate as the customer desired.

Once electricity came to the country these leviathans lost favor and eventually their place in the parlors of American homes. Very few were thrown out, we’ve always been a save it just in case country. But many did end up in circumstance less than ideal in barns, or chicken coops of the more well to do farmers of the last century.

I was at a farm auction a number of years ago and they drug this carcase of an organ out of a horse stall. It was dirty, covered in bird poop, dust and dirty of decades hiding in the back of this barn. No one would bid on it and when they finally added several three tine hay forks to the lot I bid a dollar just to get things moving along.

The thing fell apart when I was trying to load it into my truck and I almost left the pile crap covered boards set but for some reason I shoved the remnants in and hauled them home to my shop.

They must have lain on the floor under my storage bench for several years before I hauled them out to sue a work surface while assembling a upper cabinet for a kitchen piece I was working on.  When I was wiping back the stripper crud I realized my “work surface” was solid walnut. So I dug around until I found the other side and both carved handles and set them up wondering what I could do with them as they were too nice eto just throw away.

Well an answer presented itself when after a particularly bad rain storm my parents fully finished basement got flooded with sewer water. Among the things damaged beyond repair were there small flat chests holding sterling silver flatware, one each from my mother and each grandmother. The silverware was easily cleaned but where to store three complete sets of silverware each with a very different pattern?

The answer. A new tall chest with drawers designed to hold them along with extra storage for other pieces my parents had collected over the years.

Take two sides from an antique organ, provide new structure to hold them together, build drawers for the silverware, refinish and
 viola, a repurposed antique.