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There are probably many reasons Belter laminated the backs of his chairs and sofas, but the most obvious are the ability to curve the backs and to make the backs very thin yet very strong even when they are pierced. Belter glued up and shaped these curved wood chair backs and sofa frames out of seven (or more) individual one sixteenth inch thick sheets of wood veneer laid in a mold, or caul, the wood grain of each piece of veneer at a 90 degree angle to the grain of the piece above and below it. These separate pieces of veneer were glued together and shaped by being pressed in the caul until the glue dried. Belter patented an "improved method" of forming these laminated backs in 1858, but that improved method was never really implemented in his factory. There were apparantly very few chair backs ever made using the improved method. I have seen pictures of only one such chair, and it is my understanding that only six are known to exist.

While the backs of all Belter parlor seating furniture are laminated, the arms, legs, arm supports, front aprons, seat frames, and sofa back support struts are not laminated, but of solid wood. Side seat aprons are usually veneered solid wood, but are occasionally made of laminated wood.

When looking at Belter parlor seating furniture the general scale and shape of it is the first thing you will probably notice. It is not big and clunky like so much Victorian furniture, but rather, it is small, almost delicate, close to the ground, and it has style. If it is Belter it will be unmistakably Rococo. It might or might not be highly carved, but if it is carved the carving will be naturalistic. First impressions are important, and after you have seen just a few pieces you will have a good idea about whether a specific chair or sofa is Belter when you spot it across a room.

After that first important impression, though, there are several other details you need to look at to confirm that the chair or sofa is indeed made by Belter.

First, check the edges of the back. Even on most pieces with old dark finish there is usually someplace you can see the laminations. Count them. There should be seven or more layers of wood (laminations), and each layer sould be about 1/16 inch thick. The back itself should be about 1/2" thick if there are seven layers, thicker if there are more laminations (the back will of course be much thicker where there are carved flowers, grapes, or other ornamentation). It is my experience that the larger the piece of furniture the more layers of laminations there are, but there are always at least seven. Very large sofas can have as many as twelve or fourteen laminations, making the back nearly an inch thick. More is better, less than seven laminations is bad. The edges of the back should be tapered from front to back and form a crisp edge where the tapered front meets the back. While there will almost certainly be hairline seams in the exterior veneer where one piece meets the next, both chair and sofa backs made by Belter are one piece backs and there will be no joints where two pieces of wood are joined together.