By
admin on March 15th, 2009
Posted in FAQ | No Comments »
If it’s an antique, find and use the appropriate wax remover at hardware stores, but not just the build up, all of it.
As an authentic English antique, it should be French Polished, not waxed.
You can use any alternative, oils, polyurethane, wax, but it’s objectively wrong and anyway, not even close to being as nice.
And if value is important to you, and it should otherwise why care for antiques, a nice English antique piece of furniture made after the late 1700s until the 1930s should be French Polished with no doubt at all.
Not only British antiques, also many non English high end pieces were, and therefore should be, french polished.
By
admin on April 21st, 2008
Posted in FAQ, Restoration and refinishing | No Comments »
Yes, if they are real antiques in need of attention, they definitely should.
But it’s not simple to answer in a exhaustive manner.
Basically it can be said that antiques are meant to be restored if they have lost the original looks and functionality, therefore become impractical to use and/or unpleasant to see.
Unless the piece needs for any reason to show its signs of aging, for show and educational purposes for instance; but that’s quite an exception and happens in museums, for restoration classes and so on.
Common is instead the case of “not so antique” pieces and of low end items where, although it still would be nice to have them restored, but the cost of a decent restoration job is far too high compared to the actual and final value of the piece after being restored.
Some pieces do have an added emotional value, specific to few people, and that’s another case in which it might be worth a good job, since the commercial value of the piece is not a priority in this case.
Keeping the above points in mind, the answer, again, can be that if the antique (authentic) is worth it, restore it, if it’s not worth it, leave it as it is, use it in the actual conditions or store it away, with care, and one day, sooner rather than later, it will be worth a restoration job.
In any case, rather than a cheap, messy and uneducated restoration process, leave it alone, don’t even fix it, let alone refinish it, since in that case you might actually devalue the piece, destroy the important signs of aging (patina, usage signs, damage) and make it even more difficult and expensive to restore properly.
Many restorers do not know, for lack of education or just to save time and money, how pieces were finished originally, and simply have no idea as how to restore them. Many just are not capable. They are often still very expensive.
Quality English antiques for instance, were finished with shellac only, since the late 1700s, when it’s use was discovered in southeast asia, and the finish was so successful that it replaced waxing and oiling.
The good materials and beatiful woods that were available to English cabinet-makers were the ideal pieces for shellac. It makes the beauty of the veins and grain really stand out and adds warmth.
No fine piece of furniture was ever finished in any other way than applying shellac, obviously by hand, mostly by rubbing a cloth previously dipped in liquid shellac, in a procedure known as French Polishing.
French Polish is therefore not a product or material, but the way shellac was applied with a very labour intensive method.
The process was abandoned in approximately the second quarter of the 20th century, when synthetic resins became very cheap and labour very expensive.
You will see no high end pieces restored in any other way than by using shellac.
Our pieces are all restored in the historically correct way, adding value to the piece, by applying our own prepared shellac.