The box in question has some history. We believe it was made by my Grandfather’s Uncle as part of his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker; sometime in the late 1800’s. The box came to me via my Mum. We took it to Australia with us and the heat didn’t do it too many favours. By 2019, somewhere around 140 years since it was made it sat there looking very sorry for itself. The glue had failed in places and the lid was in four pieces. The sun had bleached the colour from the wood. The veneer had come away in several places. All a bit sad.
The first task was to take it apart and inspect each part and develop a game plan. Pleasingly, the actual level of damage was minimal apart from where the lid had fallen apart. One lovely surprise was taking off the very worn pink velvet material on the bottom of the box. Underneath was a piece of padding cardboard which had a signature scrawled in pencil on it. We can’t say for certain that the signature was that of my Grandad’s Uncle, but we like to think that it is.
Re-gluing curved wood is often a nightmare as it is not always easy to get the jigs in place to hold it perfectly. The old glue came off ok which was a nice surprise. Old dental tools are brilliant for this task. We chose to use a modern wood glue over hot ‘stinky’ glue. This ups the ante to get it right first time, but we felt this was the way to go given the box was to live in a centrally heated house. Once this was done the loose veneer was fixed and we were comfortable that we had restored the integrity of the box. Time to focus on how it looked.
My Aunt recalls that the box was originally a red oak colour and we could detect some traces of this. We therefore used a wood stain featuring red oak in the cocktail to address the sun bleaching and create an even colour. We then French polished the external surfaces to recreate its original finish. The inside was originally black, so we used an ebony wood dye to refresh it. All the brass fittings were cleaned, and polished, and green baize replaced the pink velvet on the bottom. A piece of blue ribbon on the key finished the job.
Restoring pieces for others is a great thing to do, but there is something very special restoring something that a member of your family made many years ago.
