Ah the dangers of guessing what a species of wood may be from a picture! It's interesting to note that most guessers were applying names of species more or less local & familiar to you. Discovering it's an African piece chucks a whole lot more possibilities into the guess-pot. It may well be 'real' teak (Tectona grandis) which is plantation grown in Africa, or a species that looks enough like teak to get the moniker (& there are quite a few around the world!).
I live in a country where invaders from the northern hemisphere applied names of trees from "home" on the slightest of pretexts. The bark or leaves may bear a faint resemblance to a Fraxinus sp., or the wood to a Quercus sp., and so we have all sorts of trees unrelated to each other, let alone the trees of the northern hemisphere, branded as "Ash" or "Oak"! And don't get me started on the confusion of names for grain patterns in the English-speaking world - we can't even agree within countries, let alone between them....
Whatever, it looks to me like you have a rather nice example of mid-20thC "Scandahoovian" furniture, Venny, in remarkably good condition for its age. It doesn't appera to need any major surgery (other than putting the left drawer back where it was intended, as already suggested). It's far too straight & true for its age to be solid wood (apart from the legs), so be very careful trying to 'fix' anything if you are not very sure of what you are doing.
It's your piece & you have to live with it - the undercarriage looks fine to my eyes, but if you don't like it, then you don't like it, at least it's easy to change that without touching the carcase. It seems to me that from the 50s to the 80s there was a gradual shift in preferences for undercarriage in this genre, from rather skinny round or elongated "lozenge"-shaped legs (often splayed), to straighter & eventually quite short & blocky, plain square legs (although James Krenov went t'other way!), A short, blocky set of legs could be made by someone without extensive cabinet-making skills (or tools). So in a way, you wouldn't be changing the style of your piece too radically by lowering it, just "doing an update"...
From the frontal pic, I can't see an easy way of lowering the existing undercarriage. The rails are on the top & bottom so one or the other has to go if you cut it down. I wouldn't touch the bottom of the structure, if you make that narrower in its current style it will affect stability. Cutting off the top means finding a new top rail because the existing piece will be too short to re-use, but at least it's out of sight & will be even moreso in a lowered version, so any wood that's 'close enough' would do the job. Or, just put the legs in the attic as suggested, & start from scratch.
I reckon one of the best bits of advice you've had so far is to live with it a while before doing anything other than a clean & polish. It's remarkable what grows on you (aided by a soupcon of procrastination) over time......
Ian
I live in a country where invaders from the northern hemisphere applied names of trees from "home" on the slightest of pretexts. The bark or leaves may bear a faint resemblance to a Fraxinus sp., or the wood to a Quercus sp., and so we have all sorts of trees unrelated to each other, let alone the trees of the northern hemisphere, branded as "Ash" or "Oak"! And don't get me started on the confusion of names for grain patterns in the English-speaking world - we can't even agree within countries, let alone between them....
Whatever, it looks to me like you have a rather nice example of mid-20thC "Scandahoovian" furniture, Venny, in remarkably good condition for its age. It doesn't appera to need any major surgery (other than putting the left drawer back where it was intended, as already suggested). It's far too straight & true for its age to be solid wood (apart from the legs), so be very careful trying to 'fix' anything if you are not very sure of what you are doing.
It's your piece & you have to live with it - the undercarriage looks fine to my eyes, but if you don't like it, then you don't like it, at least it's easy to change that without touching the carcase. It seems to me that from the 50s to the 80s there was a gradual shift in preferences for undercarriage in this genre, from rather skinny round or elongated "lozenge"-shaped legs (often splayed), to straighter & eventually quite short & blocky, plain square legs (although James Krenov went t'other way!), A short, blocky set of legs could be made by someone without extensive cabinet-making skills (or tools). So in a way, you wouldn't be changing the style of your piece too radically by lowering it, just "doing an update"...
From the frontal pic, I can't see an easy way of lowering the existing undercarriage. The rails are on the top & bottom so one or the other has to go if you cut it down. I wouldn't touch the bottom of the structure, if you make that narrower in its current style it will affect stability. Cutting off the top means finding a new top rail because the existing piece will be too short to re-use, but at least it's out of sight & will be even moreso in a lowered version, so any wood that's 'close enough' would do the job. Or, just put the legs in the attic as suggested, & start from scratch.
I reckon one of the best bits of advice you've had so far is to live with it a while before doing anything other than a clean & polish. It's remarkable what grows on you (aided by a soupcon of procrastination) over time......
Ian
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