French polishing

French polishing and furniture restoration in Dorking and Reigate

Recently, a client brought a piano stool into our workshops for French polishing and furniture restoration in Dorking. At the time, the piano stool looked pretty awful, frankly, and needed a great deal of work, including French polishing and general restoration. However, our client does not have a piano so, in a way, the piano stool had become somewhat redundant, despite being a rather nice piece of furniture. So, the point was whether it was really worth going to the trouble of having the stool restored or not! Well, after some thought, we came up with the idea that the piano stool could actually have a use, beyond being purely decorative – and our client decided that it would make an excellent bedside table. This was a rather novel solution but one that made some sense and more than justified the restoration and French polishing work involved in returning the…

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Stain removal from furniture in Surrey

Do you have blemishes or stains on your favourite furniture – did you (or, perhaps, one of your children!) carelessly place a vase of flowers on a side table not noticing that the base was wet (thus creating an unsightly ring)? Or has someone accidently let a cigar fall from an ashtray that has burned the top of your dining table or, (very common!) has someone placed a hot mug on the French polished surface of one of your pieces of furniture? It really does not take much to damage French polish and thereby spoil a perfect surface, which should be a joy of gleaming wood that shows off the grain to wonderful effect. The trouble is that anything that has been French polished has to be treated with great care, if it is to retain its perfection – and a French polished surface is all about perfection. Indeed, few…

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Furniture repair in Surrey, French polishing

French polishing is an almost daily part of our furniture repair in Surrey and it is, of course, an essential skill for anyone involved in antique restoration in Surrey – or elsewhere! French polishing is a ‘dying’ art and a skill that is particularly difficult to master. It became popular in the 19th Century together with mahogany furniture and was used extensively for a long time. However, it is very labour intensive and requires extensive training to achieve a satisfactory finish. This meant that French polishing became uneconomic as furniture making moved into the mass production age. Certainly, by the 1930s French polishing was being replaced by all the major furniture manufacturers by sprays and lacquers. These were much quicker to apply, required less skill and, generally, were more robust. However, few people would deny that wood that has been sprayed or lacquered looks as beautiful as a piece that…

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