Reproduction furniture has gotten good enough that finish and style alone won't tell you what you're looking at. The reliable tells are in construction: how the joints were cut, what kind of screws hold it together, and how the wood has aged — details a photo from an online listing usually doesn't show, which is exactly why they're worth checking in person before you buy.
Start With the Joinery, Not the Finish
Open a drawer and look at how the sides meet the front. A hand-cut dovetail joint — the interlocking wedge-shaped pins and tails that hold a drawer together — has real irregularities: the pins are unevenly spaced, one tail is often visibly wider than the next, and the angles aren't perfectly uniform. That's the signature of a person guiding a saw and a chisel by hand. A machine-cut dovetail is the opposite: every pin and tail is exactly the same size and spacing, cut by a die instead of a hand. The first practical dovetailing machine, the Knapp joint, was patented in the U.S. in 1867, and machine-cut dovetails were dominant in furniture production by the late 1880s. A piece with clean, uniform dovetails almost certainly postdates that shift — it can still be genuinely old, just not hand-built.
Check the Screws
Flip the piece over or open a back panel and look at the screws holding it together, if any are original. Hand-forged screws, common before roughly 1750, have irregular slots and blunt, off-center tips. Early machine-made screws, common through the first half of the 1800s, have more uniform threads but still end in a flat tip rather than a point. The fully pointed, gimlet-tipped screw — the kind still standard today — didn't become the norm until around 1846. A flat-tipped screw in original hardware is a reasonably strong signal that the piece is older than that.
Look at the Saw Marks
On an unfinished surface — the underside of a drawer, the back of a case piece, anywhere the wood wasn't meant to be seen — saw marks tell their own story. Straight, slightly irregular marks come from a hand saw or a pit saw, common before roughly 1830. Curved, evenly spaced arcs come from a circular saw, which became standard in furniture production after that. Circular saw marks don't rule out a genuinely old piece, but they do rule out hand construction predating the 1830s.
Wood, Veneer, and What's Underneath
Real antique furniture usually mixes woods: a show wood like mahogany or walnut on visible surfaces, and a cheaper secondary wood like pine or poplar for drawer sides, backs, and interior structure — that mismatch is normal and expected, not a red flag. What is a red flag is finding particleboard or MDF underneath a veneer, since neither existed in furniture production before the mid-20th century; a piece built on either one is a modern reproduction regardless of how it's finished or marketed. Hand-cut veneer, used before roughly 1860, also runs slightly thicker and less uniform than the paper-thin, perfectly even veneer that rotary and knife-cutting machines have produced since.
Hardware and Wear Patterns
Original hardware wears the way you'd expect from decades of actual use — pulls show handling wear at the exact points a hand would grip them, hinges show corresponding wear where they pivot. If hardware has been replaced, you'll often find faint discoloration or shadow marks on the wood where the original piece sat, slightly different in shape or position from what's there now. Reproduction hardware that's been artificially distressed tends to look too consistent — an even, all-over texture instead of wear concentrated where use would actually happen.
Patina Doesn't Fake Easily
Genuine patina builds unevenly over decades: more oxidation and wear on surfaces that got touched, sat on, or exposed to light, and noticeably less on protected surfaces like drawer interiors or the underside of a tabletop. That contrast is hard to fake convincingly. Reproduction finishes marketed as "antiqued" or "distressed" are usually applied in one pass and look uniform across the whole piece, without the variation real age produces.
When a Label Settles the Question
A manufacturer's label, brand stamp, or paper tag — usually found on a drawer bottom, the back of a case piece, or the underside of a tabletop — can confirm both age and origin outright when construction details leave room for doubt. It's worth checking every unfinished surface before relying on joinery and wear alone.
Where a Second Opinion Helps
None of this replaces experience, and even experienced buyers get it wrong on ambiguous pieces. VaultXL's Starter plan, $29 a month with a three-day trial, runs a photo of a piece — joinery, hardware, a maker's mark if there is one — against real identification data and recent sold comps, which is a fast way to confirm what a hands-on inspection suggests before you commit to buying.
The Bottom Line
Style and finish are the easiest things to fake and the first things most buyers check. Joinery, screws, saw marks, and wear patterns are harder to fake and far more reliable — checking them takes an extra two minutes with a piece in hand, and it's the difference between paying antique prices for a genuine piece and paying antique prices for a good reproduction.