Restoration Work

What does a furnituremaker do when the immanent collapse of capitalism threatens to turn his telephone into a paperweight? I like to take the opportunity to get to the restoration projects I’ve been collecting. Though many furniture guys turn up their collective noses at restoration work, I have a real fondness for working on old pieces; in the past twenty-seven years I’ve worked on over two hundred. I like to see how they were made, what’s good and what’s bad about them; it’s the bad part that usually delivers them up to me.

There’s an artfulness required for good restoration work that sometimes goes far beyond what’s necessary for new work. The artfulness is born of respect for the work and the piece; a knowledge of arcane woodworking and finishing techniques; and a judgment of how far to take the work without damaging the value or the spirit of the antique.

Take this Chinese camphor wood chest. It’s not a valuable piece: the hinges and the hardware were changed long before it got to me, and its somewhat inelegant construction has resulted in numerous splits and cracks, and an ill-fitting top. Rather than try to disguise these, I have chosen to celebrate them as part of its charm. The finish was badly damaged; after a gentle sanding and thorough cleaning I used a combination of dewaxed shellac, varnish, and paste wax to give it a nice glow.

Oops

When your designs push the limits of your technical abilities, sometimes problems emerge: pyramids implode, arches fall down, bridges collapse. In the rarified world of hand-made furniture, problems are fortunately less catastrophic. I made a swoopy, wing-like top for part of Catherine's Buffet, and one day Catherine called to say it had started to come apart -- water damage, she thought -- and luckily no one had been injured in the process.

It turned out the construction I had originally used was unstable -- no reflection on the maker -- so I'm building her a new top. I am changing techniques, though: I made a form in the shape of swoopy part, and laid up a stack of purpleheart veneers, each glued to each, on top. Then I stuck the whole thing in a vacuum bag; there it is, in the photo. When it's dry and I've cleaned it up a bit, I'll glue on the fancy face veneers (Karelian birch burl).

It's going to work fine this time. Promise.

Bedroom Set

We’re working on a bedroom set this month, which includes two nightstands, a large headboard with storage, and a ten-foot-long by seven-foot-high, built-in dresser (actually, I’m not sure you can call something that big a dresser -- maybe an extremely large dresser, an ELD).

All the pieces have an Asian presence, which adds to a feel of serenity appropriate for the bedroom. The work is framed in ebonized Honduras mahogany with panels veneered with quatersawn African mahogany. The regular, straight grain of the veneer has almost an hypnotic quality, making it a good choice for the room where we hope to sleep.

The frame pieces are subtly curved in cross section, and joined with a three-way miter at the corners. You can see a close up of the joint. All the miters have loose tenons in them.

These are not flashy pieces, but I like them: nice design, nice details, nice materials. Just right for the boudoire.

Drop-Leaf Table

This is a new little piece I recently completed: a swing-leg, drop leaf table in honduras mahogany with wenge accents and white pine drawer parts. It started out like most commissions: someone who knows my work approached me about designing and building something for her. She specified the size and the drop-leaf style, though left it to me exactly how it was to function. She also wanted a "rich" wood and a design that was simple and traditional, but with a details that rendered the piece distinctly new and handmade.

Among furniture people there's a lot of mystique surrounding the rule joint. That’s the hinged, curved edge where the leaves meet the top. If it’s not laid out just right, the joint binds or ends up with an ugly gap. The rule joint on this little table is, if I may say so (and I can -- it’s my damn blog) pretty good. Here’s a little secret: it’s really not very hard. In fact, it’s just like most things I do: it doesn’t require any real talent, just a willingness to be careful. Anyone with patience and practice can do good work. You could apply the sentiments of this entire paragraph to the knuckle joints on which the legs swing and the dovetails joints that hold the drawer together: both pretty well done, and in the final analysis, not really brain surgery.

All told, the table turned out pretty well: great wood, simple design, nice details. Not the flashiest thing in the old portfolio, but very satisfying indeed.