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WELCOME > GALLERY > BEAUTIFUL OR INTERESTING PIECES
All text and graphics Copyright 2001 - 2010 Craftsman Furniture Service | ||
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This is a Japanese Tansu. A Tansu is a chest of some sort. This one is comprised of three stacking sections. Tightly fitting interlocking joinery is characteristic of Asian furniture making and can be seen on the center swinging door and upper sliding door miters. The down side of this practice is that wood will shrink, especially when moved form the hot and humid east coast of Asia to the dry west coast of America. The tight joints hold part of the wood in position forcing the shrinkage to create long cracks in line with the grain. You can just make out a repair we did filling such a crack with a wood spline in the picture to the right. Notice the faint darker vertical line crossing the grain at the left side of the handle on the upper chest. We did other work on this tansu as well but none of it shows up in the pictures--which is probably a good thing! | ||
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We and our customer were both pretty happy with how the refinishing of this bombay chest turned out. Staining, a little glazing and shading and a beautiful piece became beautiful again. | |||||||
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We refurbished these two chairs--cleaned, waxed and polished. They obviously had potential when they came in, but as we have stated elsewhere, photography is not our main work so we didn't catch the before picture. When we were done, they were clearly stunning pieces and so we clicked. The photo of the pair of them below is with flash, so the color is a bit off. There is some wear on the lion's heads which we left as is--we could have repaired the gilding but the customer preferred the look you see. | ||||||||
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We both refinished this kidney shaped desk and replaced the leather on the top. | ||||||||
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The owner of this rocker came in with the intention of having it stripped and refinished. This is an example of one of the rare instances where we do our best to persuade the customer to take a different approach. The alligatored finish on the seat of this chair is not a worn out aged finish, but a very intentional decorative design. She was easily persuaded and after we had cleaned, waxed and polished the chair she was glad she decided to save the original. | ||||||||||
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This very ornate throne chair was brought in by the same customer who owns the rustic rocker to the right. Imagine finding a way to incorporate both into a decorating scheme! Our hats off to her. The throne chair was also refurbished, not refinished. It went next to have an upholstered seat put in place. Even with that we can hardly imagine spending any length of time sitting in this chair. | ||||||||||
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Before reweaving. | ||||||||||||||
After reweaving. | ||||||||||||||
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One of the delights of our work is giving new life to an old piece of furniture. This rocker dates from the mid-nineteenth century, we guess 1860s. It is a lady's rocker, having hip rests not arms. These are also called nursing or sewing rockers. As can be seen from the photo upper right, as it came to us the finish was worn and the weaving atrocious--both broken and very poorly woven the last time around. What you can't see is that all the joints were also loose. So, we completely disassembled the chair and re-glued it, stripped it, rewove it and refinished it. We used tung oil for a finish and then paste waxed it to yield the beautiful and original appearance it now enjoys. We figure with reasonably good care this rocker should be good for at least another fifty if not one hundred years. | ||||||||||||||
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