In Progress: Restoration? 1800's Childs Dish Cupboard/Sideboard - Suggestions?

[Brent Ring]

All,

Please find below various pictures of a project that a friend of mine asked me to complete. It is a child's dish cupboard/sideboard that has been passed down from within her family sine the late 1800's. It currently has a paint/decoupage/antiquing finish on it that is coming off well with Citrustrip. It, from all appearances, seems to be pine. I have a source who is willing to sell me some 100+ year old pine from an old hospital for $1/lf for this project, where pieces and parts need to be salvaged.

Her priorities are:

1. She wants her little girls to be able to play with it.
2. She wants to see the original grain of the wood.
3. She wants to have it last longer so that her children can pass it down as well.
4. She does not want it to cost alot. Cost won't be a factor as far as I am concerned. This is a favor for a friend.


I am going to post the pics and get your suggestions. So far, I have planned to:

1. Strip it down to bare wood
2. Clean and reglue joints where necessary
3. Remove and replace the back
4. Rebuilt the drawer boxes with hb and through dovetails.

I am interested in all suggestion, but espcially finishing ones. My thoughts are to use amber shellac, with maybe a coat of BLO first.

Thanks

[Brent Ring]

More pics for review - Inside top doors - drawers, bottom door panels

[Brent Ring]

Last 4 pics - doors, bottom cabinet interior, and drawer boxes

[David Keller NC]

Brent - you're not gonna like this, I suspect, but it strongly looks like you've a very early piece of Southern vernacular furniture, and if so, it's worth money, and a lot of it. But not if you strip it.

Particularly if it's a child's press cupboard made in the South (and the SYP drawer bottoms and potentially red oak panels make me think so).

There are some clues here - feel the bottom of the drawers. If they're scalloped, it's pretty likely to have been made completely with hand tools.

Another way to date it is the nails - if the majority of them are cut nails (not wire nails), that's another indicator. If they're t-headed and rose-headed nails, then it's likely to have been made prior to the 1830's.

If your customer is insistent, then so be it, but there's at least a slight chance that this is something that would bring in the tens of thousands of dollars at Brunk auctions in Asheville.

[Brent Ring]

David,

Thanks for the reply. I went out and looked at the drawers. One of them is missing half of the bottom, and the other does not look to be scalloped as you suggest. This piece does not appear to have much, if any oak, but I have never seen 100+ yr old oak either.

I spoke with the owner after reviewing your post. As far as we can tell, the piece was built by her mothers aunt's father, and based on birth and death dates that would put the piece being built between 1880 and 1909.

It looks like many have added misc. repairs to the piece throughout the years. The nails look like wire nails. However, one piece of glass is a poured pane for sure.

In the interest of making sure that we do not do much more to change or alter the piece, I will be researching the potential antique value of it. I am not very good about where and who to go, and since most of Utah was populated from 1847 on, there are not as many antique dealers here.

Any dating and valuation suggestions are welcome!

[David Keller NC]

Brent - Given what you've noted about the nails in the piece (that's not always diagnostic, by the way - sometimes drawer bottoms and backs were removed and replaced with modern nails), the lack of scalloping on the drawer bottoms, and the drawer pulls (assuming they haven't been replaced), your owner's family history might be correct.

The oak comment is based on the drawer fronts and the one door panel you showed a close-up of; the figuring strongly looks like quartersawn white or red oak. The puzzling thing about this is that if her family is from Utah, the wood choices seem odd. To my knowledge, so-called southern yellow pine and oak are pretty much East coast species, though I wouldn't be surprised that oak grows as far as the Mississippii and Missouri rivers.

It's also possible that I'm wrong about the drawer bottoms and they're Douglas fir - it can be hard to distinguish those species in photographs.

Nevertheless, there's little doubt this is a really old piece - the drawer bottoms look like one continuous board, and that definitely suggests an earlier date - most of the East coast forests were logged out by the 1860's, and a good bit of the Western forests as well.

This would be my suggestion - find a dealer in early Americana in the area. That might not be so easy in Utah (I'd think most of the antique dealers are into Western, "cowboy" furniture). However, you might get lucky in a major city like Salt Lake that has ski resorts frequented by wealthy customers. I'm not sure what someone with this expertise might charge you, and it may not make sense to the owner of the piece either.

If that's the case (it costs too much to evaluate), I would suggest doing a "sympathetic" restoration. In other words, save as much of the original wood and original surfaces as possible. It may already be too late to save the interior painted surface, though possibly you could try to match that with additional paint. On the outside surface, one would typically clean it with mild dishwashing soap and a damp sponge, and where wood must be replaced, repalce it with the same species that's dyed to give you a close match.

[Brent Ring]

After having a visual analysis of the pictures I have taken - 2 separate sources indicate that this is "Mormon Pine" furniture, and has some relative value ($1K to $3K) to it. It was very common, according to the the two antique experts I visited with, to imitate the faux wood grain painting on pine furniture, similar to what was actually done on the columns in the tabernacle that sit on Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

Since this is a childs piece, it has some greater value than a normal sized piece from that era.

So, I am glad I held up stripping - I had stripped on small door front, but that can be repainted.

I am interested in any suggestions for making repairs to the drawers, doors and slides. Do I shoot pin nails and use TBIII or should I purchase some hide glue and try to find some headless brads and capped nails?

Since I wont be re-finishing - can I put any wax or anything else to protect any of the exposed wood?

Thanks

[Neal Clayton]

neither.

you should get authentic nails to match the old ones.

houseofantiquehardware.com has rough cast iron nails.

if you need to touch up the paint, http://www.solventfreepaint.com/ has a linseed oil paint that is aesthetically similar to lead paint, but it won't have the same patina, that you'll have to work on by some other means. heat might work to dull it, or perhaps scuffing it with something to remove the gloss, not sure but there are probably techniques for that. no new paint will look the same, you need a paint similar in properties to lead paint if that's what's on there. it might be a milk paint too, that you can also get.

any repair should be a visual match to the original, if it won't be, leave it broken, imo.

[David Keller NC]

Brent - I would not attempt to repair exposed wood that's cracked but otherwise sound - like the cracked door panel in one of your photos. Generally speaking, the less you can do to the outside the better when it comes to an antique. Similarly, I would not take the back off unless you absolutely must.

On the interior surfaces, there's various schools of thought. For the most part, museum conservators try to replace like for like when it comes to wood and hardware, but do not attempt to color match the new wood. What one typically wants is to be able to tell what's original and what's not, and on the inside, the new wood doesn't detract from the aesthetics.

On the outside, most restorers and conservators will attempt a color match as best as can be done. Unfortunately, though, you've a Faustian dilemma here - if you match the color nearly perfectly so everything appears to be the same now, the aniline dyes necessary to that process will age differently than the original wood, so it will not match 10 to 15 years down the line. If you don't attempt to match the color and just use the same wood and similar finish, the repairs will be really obvious now, and not so obvious 10 to 15 years later.

When I've done this, I'll admit to taking the easy way out and matching everything up now, knowing that it won't match several decades from now. But it's a heck of a lot easier to satisfy the customer by doing it this way.

[Mike Cutler]

Brent

I have a slightly different idea, based on the intrinsic value of the piece. Make another, identical, one for her daughters to play with, and restore this one as time permits.
A piece that has that sort of value really isn't a child's playscape any longer.