A NEW HOME FOR YOUR CHERISHED ANTIQUES
Do I take it to the tip or give it away. Many of us may have reached the time with an old or unloved piece of furniture when the only option may seem to be the nuclear one! It was at that point that a neighbour spotted the Oak writing Bureau and asked about it’s future, when I told him of its impending demise he was shocked and asked if he could restore it for his next project at night school!
A few weeks later and the transformation was complete, its colour had been considerably lightened so that it blended in well with other furniture in my home, the tatty and torn leather of the fold down front had been replaced with beautiful new leather with gold tooling (we even got to choose the design) and all the bumps and scrapes accrued over the years of less than careful ownership were now history.
My neighbour had turned the ugly duckling into an elegant and beautiful Swan!
Each time I walked down the stairs where it now stands, the skill of the craftsman and warmth of the oak and pine materials used gave me an inner glow. Something else happened over the weeks and months, my thoughts turned to an old oak dining table and chair set that I had paid £50 for ten years earlier. Perhaps it too needed the restorer’s magic to revitalise it.
Similar to thousands of other pieces of furniture up and down the country it was stained dark as was the fashion when it was made in the 1930’s, an attempt to give it age and a Jacobean feel, but what if I could transform the table myself and give new life to something which for years had been covered up with a large tablecloth to hide it’s outdated style. I needed to go to night school and my helpful neighbour pointed me in the right direction, we were most fortunate to have evening classes in my local village tutored by a pair of master restorers and French polishers, Philippa Barstow and Alan Waterhouse.
http://www.french-polishing.net/
So in January 2010 I started classes and was immediately hooked, there was one constant nagging complaint by my fellow restorers, and that was that although many of their pieces were for the family and rejuvenated for love and practice, a number were producing top quality restored furniture with nowhere ideal to sell them. An antique dealer understandably needs a reasonable cut of the price to cover their overheads, auctions were not cheap and could deliver extremely variable results and on line auction sites could be even less reliable often with little or no interest in the pieces of furniture offered.
Within weeks the transformation of my extending oak dining table was complete, the dark stain had been replaced by a lighter shade that emphasised the beauty of the grain. I realise that I’m still an apprentice with a huge amount to learn over the coming years- but with half a dozen projects completed since the table, I have a new passion for the quality of fine furniture and the rest of my life to improve my skills.
Also I have created an online marketplace for antiques – including furniture, the site offers everyone from the private owner to the full time dealer a simple, reasonably priced means to buy and sell any type of antique, including what today may be dismissed as brown furniture –but at some point in the future be once again appreciated for the sheer quality of the workmanship and beauty of materials.
Rick Simpson