The Chest

Over the past five years or so, we taken on more repairs and restoration of worthy antiques for the folks in our area .... It's great work on a number of levels: it's a break from the routine; it gives us a chance to be heroes by saving or polishing items of, in some cases, extreme sentimental value; it's a quick project rather than something you work on for days or weeks ; and the work is often challenging and thought provoking. We've learned to try to 'do no harm' by doing as little as possible to get things back in shape. Over the last year and a half we have had the good fortune to work with a couple who suffered a pretty serious fire and have learned many techniques for cleaning smoke damaged furniture . The star of this post I have written about before. The client had it for a long time, having chosen it when his late grandmother's possessions were divied up.
Here's the only shot of it I have pre-cleaning ...
Here I'm about to start on the touch up ... We talked to about a million people about this piece ... It's old; as far as we could tell, no one has ever messed with the paintings; it's important to the client ... he got it from his grandmother and, though it's hard to photograph, in person you can clearly see his name (Chinn) and the date 1706, a year his ancestor married and built a large home in Virginia that still stands today. So, is it possible this chest has passed down on the male side of his family for over 300 years???? The client was floored when we found this. One dealer I spoke with felt maybe it was not quite that old....Others were not so sure ... Regardless, it was now an important family piece for sure ...
I have lightened the photo and changed the contrast, but here it is.... there are other writings on two of the other panels, but they are not as easy to translate.
Another view of it ...
After testing a small area of the paint (for about the third or fourth time), with a white paper towel and denatured alcohol, we rub coated the first panel with 'sealcoat', a dewaxed shellac.
That provided a barrier coat and I built and blended on top of that with three colors of latex paint on the same brush at the same time ... I often use this technique when recoloring antique finishes ...
dab it on ... smush it around and redab ... if you go too far, which I did a couple of times on this project, the barrier shellac coat allows you to 'erase' your mistakes by rubbing with alcohol to go back to the beginning ... recoat over the color when you're happy ..
I guess 'blot' is the right word. You kind of pounce it with a smushed up paper towel until it looks right.
The first end panel retouched ... note the difference between the side base and the front ...
Here the front is retouched on the right, but untouched on the left ...
The 'Chinn' end ..
The top looked like it might be a challenge, but we cruised through it to wrap it up ... When I delivered it yesterday, the client said it now looked better than it did before the fire, a high compliment for sure ...

For more information on our work repairing and restoring worthy antiques, see this link here... Or for two of our finest saves ... this link ...