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Message:: [QUOTE="James Conrad, post: 3400199, member: 5066"]Oh Boy, don't get me started! Many on this forum are grunge people I suspect, misguided souls but maybe good-hearted? I did as well, many years ago so I researched the subject to find out just where in the hell all this "grunge" movement stuff was coming from. Here is the article posted in The Magazine Antiques in 2000 by Kirk, the reluctant "father" of the "grunge" movement. "In this article I wish to explore in detail the evolving understanding of what is today near the top of the list of questions most scholars, dealers, and collectors ask themselves when looking at an early piece: Is the surface original, and if so, how should it be treated? In 1975 I wrote in The Impecunious Collector's Guide to American Antiques a chapter entitled "Buy It Ratty and Leave It Alone," addressing the then-current practice of removing original paint and its patina from furniture." "Many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painted pieces were made of two or more woods because each had a special structural quality needed in the design. A windsor chair, for example, might employ maple for the turned stretchers, legs, and supports under the fronts of the arms because its closed-grain character turned beautifully; pine, yellow poplar, or another soft wood made the shaping of the saddle seat easy; and springy ash or hickory might be used for the back spokes and top rail. A unifying coat of paint gave the chair a strong silhouette while covering the varying colors and grain patterns of the woods. The late nineteenth-and twentieth-century collectors who stripped the old paint, and the reproducers of early forms, reveled in the contrasts the different woods produced." "After I wrote "Buy It Ratty and Leave It Alone," many collectors, and therefore dealers, took the ideas it expressed seriously, and, for a time, an untouched, grungy surface became more in demand, and even came to be known as a "Kirk surface." "During the late 1970s and early 1980s the love and monetary worth of the ratty and dirty expanded from painted furniture to pieces that were highly styled and made to show off expensive woods, such as walnut, cherry, and mahogany. By the late 1990s the acceptance of the grungy was so widespread that on December 10, 1999, the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled "Collecting, Today's Art Lesson: Grime Pays," with a subheading announcing "A Status Symbol: Filthy Furniture." "The presence of dirty varnish on an object made to exhibit grain color and pattern as well as carving and pattern can help determine if parts have been changed, but it may unnecessarily reduce our ability to appreciate the maker's original vision." "Dirt on a painted piece almost always means leaving it alone, for any cleaning normally diminishes the quality of the surface, but what about high-style pieces? Should they ever be cleaned of dirty varnish so that one can more dearly see the intention of the maker?" "Thus, what to clean is really a two-part question. Painted pieces usually should not be touched because their surfaces are like those of early bronzes, where the original finish has become pitted, encrusted, and discolored, and we generally accept that it cannot be altered. In most cases it is even inadvisable to remove the finishing coat of varnish given to many painted pieces to make them brighter and easier to clean: in most cases the paint, varnish, and dirt cannot be separated from one another and leave a surface worth looking at. On the other hand, objects that were originally covered with a clear varnish to enhance and give a gloss to beautiful wood can be cleaned and revarnished without diminishing the maker's final aesthetic statement. (Undoubtedly, one of the reasons the cleaning of varnished pieces became unfashionable is that in the past many objects were ruined by drastic overcleaning.) Museums will probably take the lead in such cleaning, and there will undoubtedly be an outcry against it, as happened when restorers began to remove much of the famous golden light from Rembrandt's paintings by cleaning away yellowed varnish." " The present high value of a dirty varnish on beautiful wood will diminish when connoisseurs begin to want to see clearly the maker's original choice of materials and design features and the glowing patina the wood has achieved."[/QUOTE]

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