Featured Cool Old Rocking Chair I am working on Restoring

WOW I dream of coming across a place like that, could spend days sorting thru stuff!

 

Yeah, I think that's right, looks to me like @DeAnne for one did very well.

 

Flexner is definitely the man when it comes to understanding wood finishes. I discovered his book back in the 90’s when I needed to strip and repaint our old house. Curious what the story is on antiques roadshow grunge movement? Missed that somehow - do you have a link?

 

About the finish, honestly I have never used anything other than Howard's and that is what I am going to do on this. I have honestly never used stains, lacquers or any of that fancy stuff. LOL

 

Howard’s is basically a mix of varnish and linseed oil with stain. Because you rub it on, it’s similar to linseed oil to apply, and it adds some stain plus a thin layer of varnish when it dries. Pure Varnish is harder to use but it gives you a thicker more durable layer. Personally I usually use shellac if I’m not using linseed oil or Howard’s/Watco, but I think Howard’s is a good choice for your chair.

 

YEP got to love Howard's can't go wrong with that. LOL

 

Well to be fair, Howard’s isn’t right for pre-Victorian furniture, where linseed oil and shellac are the best choices. But for most Victorian and later furniture where you don’t want to do a complete strip it usually works well.

 

I could just see myself using shellac where i live yep not a good idea

 

Yes, Bob Flexner fired off a letter to AR when he was editor of a finishing magazine about misinformation that some on AR (Keno brother was the target i think) where he challenged them to back up some rather specious info Keno was promoting on that show. AR backed down in a reply letter, it was HILARIOUS! Let me try & find AR letter.

I think Howards will be fine, DON't mess up that chair! It's quite valuable in my view, you SCORED!

 

Here is money quote, link below that to read entire letter, it's pretty long

"The answer, Leigh said, was that many high-end collectors - his
customers - wouldn't mind the addition of the second finish, and that the old look of the craque lure might even be appealing to some. Trying to remove the added finish to reveal the original underneath is easier suggested than done: The original finish might not even be there, and refinishing would likely make the piece look too new.

So where does that leave us? Let the record show that Antiques Roadshow generally agrees with this notion: Well-conceived and well executed refinishing and restoration usually enhances the value of just about any piece of old furniture. Exceptions are those rare (often museum-quality) pieces that have somehow survived in great `original' condition. If we say or imply the contrary, we should be called on it.

I thank Professional Refinishing for the chance to address the issue here, and I hope many professionals in the refinishing business will let us know from time to time what they think."

Peter B. Cook, executive producer of Antiques Roadshow, has been a writer and producer at WGBH Boston for 32 years.

http://furniturerestoration.com/blk...airing-antique-furniture-increases-it-s-value

 

The bottom line in AR is, many of the experts use that show to troll for new clients which is fine, Keno in particular though crossed over the line with his "original surface" nonsense, Flexner called him out on it, AR did the right thing in my view in correcting the record.
Naturally the damage had already been done and, how many know who Bob Flexner is or the letters exchanged? Let's see, there's you, me and maybe 5 other people......

 

Hi,
I was debating with myself when I stripped the woodwork in my 1810 house. The woodwork and stairs were chestnut. It took me almost a year to strip all of the wood in the house. The longest was the double staircase with four spindles on each step. When it was done I finished all the wood with tung oil. I wanted something that would not chip off or turn color from sunlight. There was just a slight sheen to the wood. It looked great for 7 years. We sold the house when we divorced. The young couple who bought the place loved all the woodwork. I went to see the neighbors a few years later. I told them I wanted to look in the windows of my old house. They said do not do it. I was puzzled but went anyway. The couple had painted all the woodwork WHITE. I almost stroked out. I wanted to burn the place down. Especially when the neighbors told me the couple was saving the money up to vinyl side it!!!
I stripped off aluminum siding when I bought the place under the siding was asbestos cement shingles, under that was asphalt siding then the original wood siding. I filled all the nail holes and restored the original siding. I thought horrible thoughts for months.
greg

 

That is awful

 

Yeah is but, it happens! The good news is almost anything can be restored.

 

People who would paint chestnut....argggh!

I found two old side tables today in the local ReStore. Some from church happened to be in there at the same time and grabbed one, and was contemplating the other. The first one was country-made pine, age I'm not sure, that was probably painted originally. Someone stripped the paint off (!) and refinished with oil. The good part was someone wrote inside the drawer about where they bought it. I'd imagine it could be painted again, since it's already not as it was meant to be. The other table hand hand cut dovetails, and possibly the original varnish. Price? $20 each. The antiquer in me was screaming, but it's the way things are these days.

 

The only reason i know about Flexner and the AR fiasco is, many years ago (maybe 10-15) i decided to find out who in the hell started this "grunge movement" thingy on american antique furniture. Interesting journey looking back but, the founding father of that movement was John T Kirk although he wasn't trying to be & was shocked at the reaction one his books had. Kirk was a furniture historian at Boston college. Interesting & very knowledgeable guy, he died a couple years ago. In the 1970s Kirk wrote a book (among many) that had a chapter titled "buy it ratty & leave it alone" and BAM! BOOM!!! a movement was born.

 

The car guys got there first; rat rods and "crustorations" have been a "thing" for years. "It's only going to look this bad once" and "It took this car X years to look this bad". Rat rods are frankencars, built out of busted pieces from multiple models often from many manufacturers. Some cars they take apart and restore from the wheels up. Some are just put back into running condition with as many of the original parts as possible, and without fixing up the paint. The furniture junkies were late to the party.

 

Well, Kirks Impecunious Collectors Guide to Antiques came out in 1975, so I think he deserves a lot of credit and wasn’t really late to any party. That’s the book where he lays out his belief that it is a mistake to “improve” antique furniture by refinishing it. It is an excellent book by the way, and well worth adding to any library on antiques.

And I disagree that only museum pieces should be left alone, and in fact Kirk would disagree with that as well. He was not a snob about the antiques he collected - for him it was about design and authenticity. He had plenty of 19th century furniture along with his older stuff - but it had to have a beautiful design and original or for some other reason beautiful finish.

I’ll quote from his book:
I received a letter I thought about as I worked on this book. The writer loved old surfaces but friends kept asking when the pieces were going to be cleaned up, “refinished” and it had been hard to resist their pressure. This book is a reaction to such “friends” for it is about the art of looking: perceiving and understanding what is there to be seen, not what you can “do” to a piece.

As for grunge:
We are so conditioned by colonial kitsch that it takes a leap of faith not unlike a conversion to see that a grungy, tattered, cracked, and beat-up surface is marvelous.

By the way, there was an auction at Skinner of some of Kirk’s collection used in his book. Auction was several years ago in 2013, searchable if interested. I don’t think he ever changed his mind about leaving antique finishes untouched on antique furniture - he was still living with these pieces when he died before they went to auction. But I suspect he was bothered a lot by the “shabby chic” look which used new paint on vintage (not antique) pieces to simulate age. I think it was the fraudulent excesses of shabby chic more than anything else that led some people away from the aesthetic that he laid out in his book. But that hasn’t diminished the added value of original or old finish on antique handmade furniture.

 

No, i would say you have some of this incorrect, Kirk was talking about stripping PAINTED furniture, a totally different thing. Around 2000 he published an article about what became of this movement he inadvertently started. I'll try and find it.

 

OK, dang mag antiques! they will NOT let me access their old issue archive! They want to sell me the old copy!
When it was still available online, i posted quotes from the article on another blog, it's kinda long, sorry!

The "original surface" fetish started in america during the 1970s when a relatively obscure art history professor, John T. Kirk, wrote a book with a chapter titled "Buy It Ratty And Leave It Alone". Mr Kirk was trying to stop the then disgraceful practice of some who were stripping PAINTED furniture in an attempt to sell it as something else. Naturally, some dealers/collectors took what was a good thing and turned it into a bad thing. In 2000, Kirk published an article in The Magazine Antiques commenting on the movement he inadvertently started 30 years before. Below are some excerpts from that article.

"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."