Furniture designs from the 18th century have remained popular through the years. The first major revival of the style was in 1876, when the United States was celebrating its 100th birthday. A Colonial kitchen and other rooms were displayed at the Centennial in Philadelphia. Women started searching for similar furniture to use at home.

Antique collecting was not popular; well-to-do families wanted new furniture, not old. So a few makers created new pieces that resembled old ones.

Wallace Nutting (1861-1941), a professor and historian, created a suitable “18th-century” setting for a few women in Colonial dress and took photographs that he later colored and sold. To create the settings, he made copies of 18th-century furniture.

There was again great interest in Early American furniture in the 1920s. Nutting found many customers for his furniture copies. The pieces were made using old methods and old tools, and they were exact copies. As time passed, many of Nutting’s copies fooled collectors.

Fortunately, Nutting branded his name on every piece of his furniture. His reproductions are easily identified. But the workmanship and authenticity are so good that collectors pay a premium for Windsor chairs, high-post beds, Queen Anne chairs, block-front chests, hutch cupboards and other Nutting pieces.

Among my grandparents’ belongings, we found a two-part stoneware water filter that’s painted bright red. It has a spigot at the bottom. We removed the paint and were amazed to find several impressed words on the front. Among them are: “Fulper Germ-Proof Filter, Improved Natural Stone, Fulper Pottery Co., Flemington, N.J.” There is also a testimonial signed by a Kansas City doctor.

My father remembers that the filter was used in the early 1960s at the County Road District office in Bedford, Iowa. Can you tell us when it was made and what it’s worth?

Fulper Pottery Co. was incorporated in 1899, but the pottery was working as early as 1814. Fulper concentrated on stoneware until 1909, when it started making art pottery.

Your water filter  a forerunner of the modern water cooler  was one of Fulper’s most popular products. It dates from before 1910. Demand for the filters was so great that Fulper asked other potteries to help fill orders.

The water filters could be found in railroad stations, office buildings and stores all over the country. Water that was poured into the upper section passed through a specially made stone filter into the lower container. Inside the lower container was a smaller jar that held ice to cool the water.

Because the water filter was made by Fulper, a famous art pottery, it sells for about $450.

I found an unusual picture in a family album. It is a matted piece of ribbon 2 1/2 inches wide by 6 inches long. On the matting is the title “Columbus Leaving Spain, Aug. 3rd, 1492” and the additional words “Woven in Pure Silk.” Is it rare?

You have a Stevengraph, a woven picture that looks like a fancy ribbon. Stevengraphs are named for the man who manufactured them, Thomas Stevens, of Coventry, England. During the 1860s, Stevens started making bookmarks and pictures from woven silk.

Your ribbon is a bookmark made as a souvenir of the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in 1892 in Chicago. Depending on its condition, it is worth $300 or more.

A 12-inch porcelain candlestick that belonged to my grandmother bears the signature “Paschola,” hand-carved in the base. The mark on the underside is a printed blue crown with the initials “EW” inside and the words “Made in Austria” in English and in German.

The stick itself looks like a tree branch. A woman with long hair and a light-blue off-the-shoulder dress is posing on a stand that reaches out from one side of the candlestick. Can you give me any information?

The crown mark was used by Ernst Wahliss between 1897 and 1906. Wahliss, who owned retail stores in London and Vienna, acquired a factory in Turn-Teplitz, Bohemia, in 1894. Bohemia was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. Paschola might have been the artist who designed the candlestick.

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