The story of modern chemistry is in fact more romantic than all the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, yet people generally speaking cannot be stirred by it. Tell them how the old craftsmen of Gothic Europe, hundreds of years ago, stained oak planks a beautiful rich brown by burying them for weeks or months under manure and you will interest them deeply. Tell them how American craftsmen, a generation ago, got the same results with the fumes of ammonia and a leaden vault and you will barely hold their interest. Tell them how other craftsmen today squirt a preparation of coal tar and water from one spray gun, and a preparation of wood pulp or old rags from another to finish fine furniture, and they will probably cancel the order.
In the late sixteenth century, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and other cabinetmakers employed a process of staining, or rather of softly bleaching fine woods through the action of decomposing salts of chromium, followed by French polishing with oils and waxes. True varnish, a solution of resins in hot oils, was discovered in America in the middle nineteenth century, and achieved an immense popularity. Modern lacquer, which is totally unlike the Oriental lacquer, is a twentieth century discovery which combines gun cotton (nitrocellulose) with butyl alcohol, a byproduct in the manufacture of acetone.
WOOD FINISHING
The salesperson should learn that honest construction and careful finishing of a piece of furniture often count for more than the kind of wood used. Beautiful wood, however desirable it may be, is never the chief source of value. No piece of furniture is really completed until it has been given an appropriate and artistic finish.
What May Be Expected of a Finish.
There are at least three characteristics of a good wood finish.
1. Appropriateness.—The finish should be adapted to the needs which the piece is meant to serve. The polish of a piece of wood should not hide the beauty of the wood but should enhance it. Furniture should never make itself obtrusive. If furniture is noticeable, its artistic quality is usually to be questioned.
2. Serviceability.—The finish must protect the surface against the most common difficulties encountered in furniture finishing, such as bleeding, blistering, blooming, blushing, checking, caking, grain raising, bubbling, pitting, livering, and sweating.
3. Beauty.—Good finish should retain the characteristics of the wood rather than destroy their identity. Usually the natural wood needs to be softened and enriched to produce the most pleasing effects in keeping with its different nature and traits.
Beauty of finish depends to a great extent upon knowledge of how a surface should be prepared and the skill which is used in carrying out approved practices. The workman who understands the structure of wood, its mechanical and chemical properties, and has the right tools and equipment for preparing the surface, is not likely to use poor methods. He will understand that great care is required to produce a smooth surface on a piece of wood; that coarser defects of an improperly finished surface under the microscope reveal undreamed-of roughness on a carelessly scraped or inadequately sanded piece of wood. Also he will know that for permanence of finish and lasting qualities of construction, the wood must be properly seasoned and remain in a proper shop-dry condition during the entire construction and finishing periods.