The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Furniture Finishing

For nursery furniture there suggest themselves animals, toy soldiers, birds, fruit, landscapes and the like. For older children's furniture there are conventionalized groupings of flowers, leaves, fruits and wreaths. These are also appropriate for breakfast room furniture where they are apt ;o be carried out with striping or banding to set them off. Occasionally a border line of the stenciled type will also be seen.

Where the furniture is in a walnut or mahogany finish and not of the painted or frosted oak kind, stencils may be employed to reproduce the effect of scrolled overlays or marquetry in arabesque and foliated patterns. Sometimes this is done with flat olors in soft greens, blues and tans then varnished or lacquered over. A new bleaching lacquer has been developed which, when sprayed over the stencil, seals the wood so that when stained and filled, the design appears as a very effective imitation of lighter pattern inlay (See Chapter VII).

Decalcomania Transfers


AS THE art of cabinet making passed in a century and a half from the individual handicraft of the joiner's shop to the mass production of modern furniture plants, so the hand-painted decorations of the Georgian period have developed into the decalcomania transfer of today. In the days of Hepplewhite it required months to turn out a single suite that now passes in a single week from unshaped lumber to a complete, finished unit ready for shipment.

METHOD OF MANUFACTURE

In the making of modern transfers few realize how freely the designing artist may choose his colors; no matter how intricate or delicate his elaborate figures, landscapes or flowers, the mechanical equipment will reproduce them as faithfully as the original. Decalcomanias once were confined to flat effects—now by a patented process held by a leading firm, the most minute hair lines of the artist's brush are duplicated and by running the hand over the finished transfer the relief of the design may be felt exactly as with oil hand painting. Many an expert has to examine closely in order to tell the difference from genuine oil colors.

Yet the process of decalcomania manufacture is by no means simple. The design is first painted by the artist on a lithographer's stone or on a copper plate with special heavy pigments, but in the reverse of the way it is to appear when applied from the transfer. It is then printed in series on special gummed paper which must be strong enough for ordinary handling but porous and yielding enough to come off readily upon being dampened. Finally each transfer must be trimmed so as to leave the minimum amount of paper surrounding the design consistent with keeping it intact and rendering it easy to lay.