Cleaning Smoke Damaged Furniture

My man Jim, my jack of all trades assistant, has just received his honorary 'doctorate' from the 'Dorset Custom Furniture School of Restoration' for his recent work in mitigating smoke damage to a large and diverse group of objects, from elephant spears to light fixtures to 18th century painted blanket chests. I met with the clients last Friday and we reviewed the work he had done on their stuff in July and August. They will not be back in their home, which was damaged in a linseed oil fire, until the spring but they are thrilled with the progress he is making. We still have quite a few items left to restore, but Friday he rewired and fitted the paper replacement parts and new bulbs to some of their beautiful Danish chandeliers that they had actually considered, for a moment, to be a total loss. Anyway, the rewiring presented me with a great image as I was leaving for the day. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Looking through the finish room door with the chandeliers temporarily plugged in and hung from the ceiling ...

Before

After

Chairs before and after .. we will have to renew the French polish as there is no way we know of to clean the smoke from shellac without also removing the shellac ... Anybody out there know??? We have two fourposter shellaced beds to clean ....

Jim is also now working on other desmoking jobs like this fireplace surround in the house restoration project we're working on ...

After some thought, I have decided not to post our cleaning methods here as, while they work for us, and after some considerable trial and error, Jim knows the right approach and the appropriate precautions for each type of object, I'm not sure we should just stick them up here and laet you have at it. If you would like to contact us regarding what we have learned for your own use, leave a comment below, or email or call me through my website and I would be happy to share what we have learned along with our many precautions and disclaimers ...