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Furniture Finishing

COLORING

Applied carvings are apt to be of relatively small dimensions, baskets, wreaths, floral groups, vases and urns for panel centers, garlands and rosettes for post and aprons. Where stained with the piece they may be antique shaded, high-lighted and dusted, but frequently they are picked out in color over the shellac coat.

A rosette for instance may be colored in with an artist's brush and japan color, green, red or both, wiped over with gold bronze, as for polychroming or painted with gold bronze mixed with dry burnt umber and varnish for a plainer aged effect; a relief moulding may be left in body stain color or painted, then coated with gold bronze, wiped off while wet and antique glazed, or it may be ebonized with black shellac to separate a two-tone effect. In fact, the variety of coloring is limited only by the amount of hand work the cost of the piece will stand.

Half-round and border mouldings are usually simply highlighted on raised parts by hand sanding after the stain is dry.

Imitation metallic effects on wood carvings, as for hinges, Spanish plaques and the like, are obtained in various ways. The wood may be stained an orange yellow with a weak solution of water soluble anilines and then varnished over, or simply given a coat of orange shellac and varnished, a natural filler being used if the wood is open grained.

The varnish is not rubbed but frequently antique glazed by hand. A hammered gold effect is obtained by applying stippling paste of heavy brushing consistency. (See also Chapter XV and XX.) This is stippled to a rough surface then allowed to dry and painted with pale gold bronze in varnish; when dry burnt umber in japan reduced with turpentine is stippled on by hand in a fine pattern to give the illusion of hammered indentations. The whole is protected with clear lacquer. It is also possible to apply a coat of dry burnt umber mixed with gold bronze in varnish bronzing liquid to get a metallic effect.


Inlay and Marquetry


INLAY is a process whereby strips of rare wood are set into veneered tops and fronts, these being first sawed out for straight lines and machine routed or hand gouged for curved patterns so as to permit the inlay to lie flush with the surface.