The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Furniture Finishing
Where clear lacquer is to form the protecting coat, the oil mixture is not desirable; no top coat at all is really needed over lacquer enamel or japan colors if reinforced with a little varnish or oil color hardened by the addition of pale dryer. The gun should be played up and down over the work, alternately approached and withdrawn from the work, closing and opening the trigger, so as to throw a variegated light and dark mist coat, uniform in general pattern. An artist's gun is best for very small work.
WHERE USED
Stipple glazing is particularly effective on overlays or when framed by a moulding, vein line or stripe to imitate the overlay effect. A skillful color mixture and hand stippler can closely approximate birdseye maple, brown or gray. It is also used for the flat solid tops of wicker tables, for breakfast room furniture, as a background on panel fronts for hand painting and transfer decorations and on novelty pieces of all kinds. Where two or more colors are stippled over the same background, the procedure is more apt to be described as Polychroming, which is described in Chapter XI.
VENETIAN WORK
This is a variety of stipple glazing which follows the manner of rococo originals produced in Venice during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is seen chiefly on expensive bedroom suites and pieces notable for their swelled, bowed or serpentine fronts and ornate design and earring. The wood is first given two coats of finely ground flat oil undercoater tinted to a light ivory or lettuce green shade, each coat being allowed at least eighteen hours to dry, then surfaced smooth with 4/0 or 5/0 sandpaper. Over the last coat is brushed a thin mixture of equal parts drop black and burnt umber in japan. While still wet, this coating is stippled by hand with a roll or wad of clean waste moistened with benzine. On borders the waste is kept dry in order to produce a darker shaded effect.
The japan colors are applied with a wide camel-hair brush and are reduced with equal parts turpentine and boiled oil, the latter to prevent too quick setting. The proportions for the mixture are about two teaspoonfuls of the combined japan colors as taken from the containers to a quart of the turpentine and oil.
When hard dry, two coats of white shellac are applied, sanded and followed by two coats of pale varnish rubbed to an eggshell lustre or a coat of pale coach varnish and one of flat for cheaper work. Usually floral hand painting is applied to drawer fronts and bed panels with plain or fancy striping of green, brown or gold japan color around the borders, all applied over the flat ground coat and just prior to the japan color glaze stipple coat.
