Featured Heavenly glove box - shall I varnish it?

It should be ready now, 3 days is ages but it will depend on how thick the coating is. A good way of telling is using a finger nail and see if there is any give in the coating, it should be hard and leave no impression. Remember you are only very lightly taking off the shine, no pressure at all with the wire wool and then wax polish. How did you find using French polish?

 

He does have some very nice boxes but he does take them all the way back to new. On some of the boxes he has taking them back to new is a great skill and adds to their value and some imo the value can be lost a little.

 

This one has lost the lining altogether and he has replaced it with marbled paper, I also do paper marbling, great with the kids.

 

Thanks! It's easier that I expected, I only took on afternoon doing 5 layers approximately(forgot to count)? I'm actually happy with how it looks right now haha, but will wire wool it and wax polish it tomorrow( I fingernail scratched it just now and no marks), It can't go wrong anyway!

 

Agree, I find that tea caddy bough from him too glossy, I also wire wooled it a bit, it now looks more like another tea caddy of mine which has no restoration at all

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364832151190
Are you interested in tea caddies? This one in my watching list is about to end, I already got a similar one and guess this one requires more work, but still a lovely one

 

Everyone thinks French polish is hard to use but it's easy, I think it's about the easiest finish in the world to use and no it can't go wrong but if it ever were just take it off and start again.

 

Personally tea caddies aren't my thing, I have over 100 boxes and none are tea caddies lol. When I first started collecting it was the time all manor of antiques were being faked so I made a rule not to buy antiques that could be easily faked. This ruled out many English and European antiques because they can be made cheaply and without huge skill, my focus went onto lost skills and technics or materials that are now banned. The tea caddie is too far gone, woodworm can kill a antique and you don't know how bad it is, it can have 3 small holes but most of the inside of the wood has gone. The hardest part of restoration on boxes is to find the right metal wear, hinges, keeps and locks are all very hard to find in the right size.

 

Hoho okay, if you said so, I'll just forget this one! But I'll keep looking for boxes that even I could save

 

I just finished waxing it this afternoon Hard to really see the difference, but now I won't worried about veneer getting damaged again!

 

Very nice, soon you will be refinishing all sorts. Do you see how a duller shine makes it look antique as it should be?

 

Thank you I'll see if there's any old fabrics to refurbish the interior

 

I often come across this dilemma with boxes, what do I do about the inside, do I restore it or keep the age? Ink stains, ripped or threadworm silk, if you change it will it still show the age?
I have come to the conclusion that a box is often displayed shut, if I can restore it so it looks natural and old then I'll do it but if it has silk or another material changing it will make it look new so I leave it knowing it will almost never be seen.
If I have to do a complete restoration I try to keep some of the age, I restored a table a few months back and had to refinish the whole outside but I kept all the filth and age on the inside of the draws and underneath.
People expect antiques to be restored but often a restoration can go too far and lose any connection it once had to the past.

 

BTW the first Mostly boxes video I posted where he says "the box has the original finish and interior" he is lying, either that box has been somewhere devoid of oxygen, no tarnish on the brass or knowing him he has replaced it all and refinish it. 1830's brass goes black after that amount of time. He has also repaired inside the lid, you can see when he opens the lid in the top left hand corner the veneer has been replaced where the lid meets the base.
I am not disrespecting his skill in restoration, he does an amazing job but every box he gets he restores everything.

 

I agree, what I might do is to make a removable sheet of fabric which fits the dimension of the box, so that it could be used as a display box while not completely erasing or replacing the original lining. Or maybe simply stuff some loose silk in? Should still look great

 

Hmmm, yeah when i bought my tea caddy I was not told it was restored, just knowing the interior was replaced by themselves. But later when I bought another tea caddy I realized it was impossible without later refinish. It's still a lovely box, but yeah if I could choose I won't revarnish it like new. Imperfection should be kept as respect to the people who crafted, owned and used it through the ages. Eliminating them is like erasing these tiny proofs of people once lived with it.