The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Furniture Finishing
The varnish is a special one, made to give the proper color tone without rotting the fabric with age, and is readily obtained from most manufacturers. One or two coats may be applied according to the quality of shade, twenty-four hours being allowed for recoating or packing. Both the smooth and rough finish is usually decorated, either in free-hand or stencil designs, the latter shaded and filled in. This work is best done by an artist using oil tube colors.
Cloth Shades, Crystal or Beaded.—The method is the same as above given except that after the decoration a further coat of varnish is applied, which while wet is rolled on a bed of ground glass beads, mica or smaltz. The beads come in fine, medium and coarse grades and may also be sprinkled on with a device like a large salt shaker. When the varnish has dried, the excess is brushed off, the resulting roughness not only diffusing the light agreeably, but softening the outlines of the decorations and giving them a misty appearance.
Parchment Shades.—These are first dipped in paraffin or thin linseed oil to make the paper translucent, then are given a brush, dip or spray coat of white shellac, about two-pound-cut, then hand-decorated with oil tube colors, stenciled with japan colors or given a design by deealcomania transferring. Over this is applied a coat of pale varnish. A tracery or cobweb effect may be procured by substituting clear lacquer for shellac, then spraying on a coat of transparent crackle lacquer which docs not dry a? quickly as regular crackle lacquer enamel, but which may be speeded up with a low heat. This may be decorated as above described, protected by pale varnish or one or more coats of body lacquer when the decorations are thoroughly dry.
Shades for Piano and Bridge Lamps.—Where the light of the lamp is to be thrown down rather than generally diffused, the lamp shade may be painted or decorated in darker colors. Thus over the first coat of varnish a coat of black flat enamel may be applied as a base for decorating with a design marked off at regular intervals permitting the light to shine through sideways. Or lacquer crackle enamel in black or colors over clear lacquer will give a tracery effect operating on the same principle. The latter is best given a matte protective coat of flat lacquer.
Metal, lamp stands
METAL bases are usually assembled from hollow piping, cast iron or aluminum bases, wrought iron and brass. With respect to finishing, this is largely covered in the chapters on Metal Leaf, Gold Bronze and Polychroming in Book III.
