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There is a large body of American Rococo Revival laminated rosewood furniture with laminations that are about one-eighth inch thick, twice the thickness of the laminations in furniture we know was made by John Henry Belter. The furniture with thicker laminations is different from Belter furniture in many other ways, too.

The furniture with thicker laminations is typically built differently than Belter furniture. Belter used one piece backs on his laminated chairs and sofas. The backs of most sofas with thicker laminations are made up in three pieces and glued and dowelled together later. Some thickly laminated chairs are made of two pieces and glued and dowelled together. The joining of thickly laminated backs to their seat aprons and arms is done in a less sophisticated way than in documented Belter furniture. Most thickly laminated parlor furniture has round back legs that are joined to the seat apron differently than in documented Belter furniture. The crests in thickly laminated parlor furniture are typically vertical in design, while Belter crests are horizontal. Thickly laminated backs do not use arabesques in their design and their edges are not usually tapered from front to back, as in Belter furniture. In fact, most thickly laminated furniture is not even designed in the pure Rococo Revival taste, but appears to be a hybrid of Rococo Revival and the later Renaissance Revival style.

Despite all these design and construction differences all laminated furniture was lumped together as "Belter furniture" until very recently. While no one currently knows with certainty who did manufacture the thickly laminated furniture, it is pretty obvious it was made by more than one person or firm.

The largest group of this furniture is believed to have been made by the Meeks furniture manufacturing company. John and Joseph Meeks & Sons was a well established furniture manufacturing company in the 1850's. To the best of my knowledge there are no labelled pieces of laminated rosewood "Meeks" furniture, and there are no pieces that have descended with original receipts. It does make sense that this furniture was made by Meeks because there is a very substantial amount of it still around, indicating it was made by someone capable of large scale production. Meeks was probably the largest furniture manufacturing business around at this time. If Meeks didn't make this furniture, who else could have?

All "Meeks" laminated furniture is attributed based on a single set of furniture that has descended in the Meeks family with the verbal history of having been given to Joseph Meeks' daughter Sophia on the occasion of her marriage to Dexter Hawkins in 1859. Furniture matching the set purportedly given to Sophia Meeks Hawkins at that time is now referred to as being in the Hawkins pattern. There are four patterns of parlor seating furniture typically attributed to John and Joseph Meeks & Sons based on their similarities of construction and appearance to Hawkins pattern furniture. These four patterns are commonly referred to as Hartford pattern, Hawkins pattern, Henry Ford (or Lincoln) pattern, and Stanton Hall pattern.

There is another group of thickly laminated furniture attributed to Charles Baudouine, based upon at least one labelled example.
One other chair is attributable to Charles Klein of New York , based upon an identical or nearly identical chair that has descended in his family, and another group of thickly laminated furniture is generally attributed to George Henkels of Philadelphia. No one knows for sure who might have made the furniture not included in the above categories.

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