Featured Proper ways to clean and care for antiques

Starting with a 'I think I found this object of big time monetary value' can be an entry point.............

Rarely if ever.............

Starting with......" I think I found this object.....& I'm not sure what it is.....but I luv it so much....it speaks to me so strongly that I must know what I have & you all can keep your cotton picken mitts off it cuz it's mine....4 EVER !!!!! "

That is usually a Great starting point !!!

 

I do agree with Bev aka Thelmastuff. As museum furnishings chairman for the Richards-DAR House Museum in Mobile, Alabama, I have make a list of the products that are allowed to be used in cleaning at the museum and those items are kept on hand in case someone has some time to polish a silver vase or clean off cup or china circles left on furniture at a tea. Never ever is a silver dip or any similar product to be used on silver or any metal item. After polishing metals, Renaissance wax is always used to avoid having a cough, spill, or sneeze land on the bare metal and cause corrosion and tarnish to begin. Also, if a piece of silver is picked up, the acid and oils from the hand will not cause tarnish to begin.
No product for polishing wood is allowed that has citrus or silicone in it; in fact the only polish allowed is Quest Beeswax and Mink Oil on furniture and that use is done sparingly. Spraying citrus products around can cause tarnish to begin on metals. Everyone knows what silicon does to tables and that it can cause slick places where the spray lands on wood floors. New additions of wood furniture are thoroughly cleaned from accumulated dust, dirt, and food and then repaired if needed by yours truly before putting on display. A Victorian home would never have a piece that was broken or dirty on display--stained and marred from use yes--but not coated with dust and dirt. Plain beeswax and mink oil are used for cleaning. If there are paint marks, glue bumps, and loose veneers then I might have to use other products and lots of elbow grease, not available at the big box stores.

 

Spot on, Komo.
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” -- Oscar Wilde

 

How much oil can one get from a mink ?

 

Spray furniture stuff is even more the work of Satan. My 1780 ish dining table gets dusted with a soft cloth. It has the patina of 240 years of hands touching it. All my pa ever did was a smear of lavender beeswax once a year. Old silk scarves work.

 

I would love to learn how Barbara first cleans the new antique furniture additions.

First I apologise for this overly long post. Skip to the summary at the end if you prefer.

How I got into antiques was incidently the route someone mentioned as rare. I began by looking at just porcelain in the very beginning, I think as an investment, I am not sure how I ended up there and it was not any porcleian it was Chinese asian porcelain. I used to follow the markets closely and traded in oil and gold and equities and grew tired of the market as it became less logical. You can look at the Dow and Nasdaq, and S&P at the moment and wonder at their extreme heights when the rest of the world's industries have been decimated by Covid, airline, tourism, shipping, cruiselines etc etc and yet when we had a slight bubble in property in 2008 they called it the great depression.

The Dow and S&P and other indexs are not grounded in reality. Imo We should have started a gentle bear market in 2017 and I always recall the argument between Fiat money system, and the origional Gold standard and people wanted to get rid of the Market and go back to the gold standard. So I wanting to take a break from it, I wanted to invest my money into something tangible, that i could appreciate.


I began my first purchase with what i thought was a big chinese vase, it arrived and it was 2 inches high that was my first lesson. Images and size. I learned about Chinese Asian porcelain and over time began to aquire Chinese Asian porcelain.. Kangxi plates were still relatively cheap and accessible, transition ware was always super expensive but Yongzheng plates could still be bought for a few pounds and they have such a diverse range. From Kangxi revival to 18th century Mandarin which i really liked and Daoguang Famille rose mandarin was my favorite and then Canton export famille rose as something to sell.

For some reason I really like Japanese Art the most, it was 1 very cheap, but not as available. I collected Satsuma and some the kaga-Kutani, and fukagawa particualry the 19th century fukagawa imari which is really outstanding, stunning detail and quality. Fukagawa for the agents for the imperial Palace.

So as Asian art became a passion, I could not but appreciate other Porcelain styles, sevre, Dresden, Royal worcester and some the english artists like Harry Stinton.

Then of course i need some rich Mahogany display cabinets to store and put all this beautiful blue and white porcelain. So i then attend antique auctions to get furniture for just that. Then of course i cannot but help notice how beautiful some of the furntiure is, and how cheap it is relative to its quality, and so i then get interested in Antique furntiture, then over time i began to put more value on furniture then i did on porcelain.

I know a good bit about Porcelain but I am only learning about Antique furniture.
I always find I have made a profit when i get a really beautiful piece of furniture which is not a feeling i get when I get 19th century Asian porcelain. I suppose when i get a lovely qianglong blue and white teapot, it's beauty overwhelms and is almost the same as when i get a lovley piece of furniture.

Furniture is more dynamic, Porcelain is limited in it's appeal. To someone who appreciates it then it is unlimited, but to most it is lovely porcelain full stop. With furiture it is more enigmatic and versatile in it's appreciation. There is also choice to what people like in a room fo furntire. Some wil love a table and a cabinet, everyone will like something. Furniture is endearing and acccesible and functional. I also collected many 19th century picture frames, the one with elbaorate gilt carving as they were so cheap. Not so much now, but they were really cheap about 2-3 years ago.

The market is improving in bits and pieces. Books and picture frames, and other items are gaining appeal. Brown furniture if people really are painting over it and stripping it then it will one day be unique and rare and have great value.


In summary:
I went from Trading in Commodities in the Market to 18th century Porcelain and from there ended up appreciating Antique furniture and really most things that required great craftmanship and work with quality materials.

 

When a new piece arrives, I check if for loose areas at joints and hinges. Knowing what might need repair, I use a barely damp piece of T-shirt type material to wipe over all of the surfaces to remove the loose dust and any food type materials that might be on the piece. Often there is sticky from spilled drinks or milk and the cloth immediately shows those areas so that you can continue to wipe them until they are removed. Then, I take a liquefied beeswax on the same type of cloth and start rubbing small sections of the piece at a time until the cloth no longer is picking up dirt. You can tell this by folding the cloth over and over again until there is little or no dirt being transferred onto the the cloth. Then with a clean soft cloth of the same material, I rub the area just cleaned to polish the beeswax to a soft shine and move on to another area. It takes a long time to do this, but it is worth it. After all repairs are made, I use the T-shirt material to make a hand size pad that I cover with slip into the foot of an old nylon and use this pad to apply another thin coat of beeswax to a large section, but no more than a 4' by 4' area, and let that dry. Then with another and size pad of the material I cover with pieces of silk from old ties or blouses or dresses that I find at the thrift shops to cover the pad, I polish those sections until the beauty of the wood with all of its history shines in all it beauty. We have tours and events at the museum and often have to clean some of our pieces afterwards from hand prints, cup and dish circles, and spilled or dropped foods items. This is when we us the spray, not on the piece itself, but on a T-shirt cloth to remove the problems that were left. Sometimes we see "bloom" (whitish areas) start to appear on furniture arms and our mahogany stair rail and we clean those areas with spray on the cloth, too. It takes work, but the effort is worth it. We do not allow he use of any terrycloth toweling or cloths or the new micro-cloths to be used any where in the museum because they can snag loose pieces of wood and wood veneer, ceramics and porcelains, and gilded gesso on mirrors or furniture and cause serious damage. I hope this helps.

 

Probably not much, but my family has used mink oil on leather shoes for years because that is what my granddaddy told us to use and he was a master cobbler.

 

I agree the spray stuff is not good especially when it has silicon in it, but when you have volunteers working at a museum who need to clean up after a tour or event, having them spray the cleaner/polish on a T-shirt type cloth to use to dust and wipe up spills, etc. is better than having extreme build up of wax on items or having them use soapy (dish soap like Dawn) rags or paper towels to cleanup the spills.

 

This was a huge help. I occasionally get new antique furniture and want to simply clean it. Not neccessairly polish it but just clean it. I assume you do this for the inside too.

Like, I have a 'new' georgian chest of drawers and the drawers were a little stiff and heavy, so i took them all out and used olive oil and a cloth ( cotten i think) and used this this to clean them, I was both cleaning it and also using the oil to help the drawers move more fluidly. The inside of the georgian chest was filthy, and i did wonder how is the best way to clean this. The olive oil approach did work,and perfectly as the drawers are smooth light to push. I know there is Murphys oil and other products, but i wondered how you clean the inside of say a chest of drawers that no one is really going to see, as it is here where the years of dirt is.

Also i find with some antique furniture items, they have a horrible or strong odour smell in them. So i want to thoroughly clean out that old smell they have.

I use olive oil on the inside when i do not know what else to use as i have this gut feeling it is good for the wood.

 

I was told by 1st nations artists never to use food oils on wood as it can attract bugs............but WDIK ??

 

Olive and other "food oils" will go rancid. I would never use for "cleaning" much less lubricating drawers.

 

I've never had olive oil go rancid, but my drawer trick is candle wax.

My dad swore by silk remnants for polishing wood.

 

Neither have I.

I use rice bran oil a lot, nice and thin. It never attracts bugs. (Knock on wood )

 

With so much thought, care and regard for proper conservation of surfaces, as a former museum curator myself, I'm rather shocked that your institute's policies allow patrons to touch objects and have food and drink in the exhibit spaces!

 

Excellent advice!

 

I understand what you are saying and I totally agree with you; however, our museum normally has tours daily where we serve cookies and our House tea in the gift shop and and we have large group tours where we serve the House tea or water to the guests in the dining room. Plus, were have to rent out our House for events (weddings, receptions, luncheons, parties, etc.) and so we cannot rope off certain areas and "Excuse me, but you cannot sit there or touch that." One of our goals is for our guests not to just walk through another Victorian house, but for our guests to feel or sense what it was like to live in a Victorian home in 1860-1890 in Mobile, Alabama. You can see our museum at richardsdarhouse.com. You can see our reviews on TripAdvisor and note that we seem to touch our guests in a different way than most museum house, especially in our area. Yes, this make for a lot of wear and tear to our furniture, but we seem to be able to keep these precious items in good condition. Thank you for your concern and expression, Darkwing Manor.