Furniture Restoration

The art of furniture restoration and conservation involves many different crafts and skills and APC understands the vital difference between restoration and conservation and will know what technique an individual piece requires.

Conservation involves the preservation of a piece so that it does not deteriorate further. This may involve reviving a finish, for example, where fading has occurred. Conservation must be done with extreme care to ensure that the natural / original colour and patina is not lost.

Restoration involves the recreation of missing or damaged parts or restoring the piece to its former glory. Some pieces may only need minor cosmetic repair, for example, where the surface of the piece has been damaged by water. Other pieces may require more extensive work such as those that have broken or been damaged by fire.

Restoration often involves replacing veneer which is then reapplied by hand. Sections of marquetry or veneering could be missing so this will need to be recreated. These sections then need to be sympathetically coloured and polished to recreate the original appearance of the piece.

Some of the skills involved in restoration are listed below:

Marquetry, parquetry & hand veneering

These are highly skilled techniques requiring diligence and effort, with each piece of veneer individually cut and coloured by hand in order to blend with the original. Ivory, bone, brass, mother of pearl and tortoise shell inlays can all be restored, repaired or replaced where missing.

• Marquetry is the craft of covering furniture with pieces of wood veneer forming decorative patterns, designs or pictures. The technique may be applied to desks, tables, decorative small objects or to free-standing pictorial panels
• Parquetry is a similar technique to marquetry: in parquetry the pieces of veneer are of simple repeating geometric shapes, forming tile type patterns such as parquet flooring or forming basket weave, brickwork or trelliswork patterns.
• Hand veneering is a traditional skill employed to cut and re-lay veneers, using hide glue and traditional tools. This is usually used for larger areas such as wardrobes, dining tables and other bigger pieces of furniture