PAINT

jacon4

jacon4

Well-known member
Since it's been slow on the forum lately i thought i'd ask about paint decorated pieces. One hardly ever sees paint as a finish discussed, how come? Considering that paint/dark stain dominated (according to john t kirk) until the last quarter of the 18th century in furniture finishing, one would think it would be an important topic. Is it because today's clients prefer clear finish pieces & paint just doesnt sell?
 
The majority of my customers prefer stained pieces.  A few will order painted items such as a corner cupboard.  Some want just the inside back of a cupboard painted or the base of a taven dining table painted.  In 25 years I did 3 painted beds.

Dennis Bork
Antiquity Period Designs, Ltd.
 
In my experience it's not that paint doesn't sell, in the antique market it sells as well as any thing else in this market, it's more that there are not many people around that do it very well. Most reproduction painted furniture to me appears too raw and too new. It tends to lack the richness that develops with age and I don't think people want to wait a hundred years for it to develop. I'm not talking about the faux distressed stuff but the kind of figural painting you see on early chests. I've seen a few thing done well but not many. I think if given a choice between new looking solid color paint and a clear finish people will choose clear most of the time, but I think if offered a resonable facsimily of old paint it would sell.
 
I should add that customers who do order painted items want it to be a two-color (one color applied over a different color) then crackled, worn and aged.

Dennis Bork
 
Painted furniture,
        My experience in todays market  with custom painted furniture is that most of it is ordered through decorators/designers with a specific look in mind. I don't think most ( not all) consumers  can visualize what the finished product will look like unless seen in a store, photo or magazine.  I do think that cabinet proportions and style have a lot to do with the overall look of a painted piece. 
 
"it's more that there are not many people around that do it very well"

Yeah, i suspect that's correct, particularly if applying a worn painted finish to replicate something old. Probably a more expensive finish to apply as well.
 
I agree that it takes a special customer to order a painted piece because of the 'country' label attached to it. The perception is that paint, like veneer, is used to cover or hide an inferior substrate. I have made a couple of pieces for a client here in central OH who is very knowledgeable about antiques since he deals with them daily. I build the piece, deliver it unfinished, then he sends it to a finisher on the East Coast. The result is very authentic, although there is something about painted walnut that I still haven't gotten past!
 
What prompted this post on paint goes back to an earlier discussion on Va eastern shore corner cupboards on another thread ( most of which were originally painted, then stripped  & finally re-painted through micro analysis) and in a few days 3 painted pieces of early american furniture up for sale at notheast auctions.

Linked below are 3 rather plain-jane forms, a Pilgrim blanket chest with no carving, a William & Mary blanket chest with ball feet both from Connecticut & a 6 drawer W&M chest from Essix Mass (forum wont allow an E). What makes these basic country furniture forms distinctive is the painted decoration.

http://northeastauctions.com/search/detail.php?l=574&a=fine2010

http://northeastauctions.com/search/detail.php?l=549&a=fine2010

http://northeastauctions.com/search/detail.php?l=616&a=fine2010



 
That's the type of paint work I was talking about. There's just not much of it being done, that I know of. Why, I'm not sure. I think possibly because it's a separate skill set from woodworking.
 
I think most woodworkers today feel that the painting of wood is a crime of sorts. I'm sitting in a Chippendale chair that I made 15 years ago, and it's painted black.......Paint enables you to see the form of the object sometimes, as in Windsor chairs, or it's the emphasis of the object, as in Japanned work-Al
 
It's interesting to note that in the second example, the WM chest of drawers, the keyhole escutcheons are missing.  Apparently, they were applied before painting the drawer, though!
 
I think most woodworkers today feel that the painting of wood is a crime of sorts.

AHHHHHHHHHHH HAAAAAAAAAAAA,lol, and we finally get down to it. Woodworkers today are depriving americans of her early furniture heritage. BAD woodworkers!!!

NAH, just messing around. Don't get me wrong, milling  curly maple, cherry, walnut, etc into an early furniture form can be very attractive but still, doing the same ol same ol forever can get a bit boring. Doing paint decoration most likely means adding another artisan after the piece is built, which means another expense, which is probably why it isnt done. To bad. Paint, if applied by someone who knows what they are doing can be quite spectacular.
 
Paint on a pine piece looks far better than a stained or clear finish IMHO.

I've done a few in milk paint using two different colours such as red over black.  The last piece I did took me about a week just for the finish.  A clear finish would have been done in two days or less, so it's certainly not less work to paint a piece.  I find that a coloured oil such as Watco light walnut over the final coat of milk paint adds depth and a degree of aging.  I do all my windsors this way.

An example, a linen press, can be seen here: http://veenendaal-period-furniture.blogspot.com/

Herman
 
Hi Herman.That Linen Press looks fantastic!.The finish really looks good.So you painted it black first.Did you use black milk paint or oil based or what?Seriously I did a couple of cupboards last year and painted them with the red milk paint and they turned out nice but nothing like yours.Thanks for the look see.
 
James, I did the black coat in milk paint as well.  For areas that might see wear, where I'll lightly remove paint with a rag I first apply a coat of NGR stain in an American Walnut color, then the black and then the red.

Thanks for the compliment!

Herman
 
While we're on the subject of paint, I've been experimenting a bit with areas of cracked paint on my work but have been disappointed with the results, which usually show either very little cracking or large rectangular cracks which I find hideous.

What I'd like to achieve is similar to what you would see on windsor chairs by Lawrence Crouse.  The cracking is very fine, with the paint elements no bigger than 1/8 inch, resembling very fine alligatoring. 

Anyone know how he does this?

Herman
 
Nope, not a clue here. I only have 1 piece of american colonial period furniture ( VA. blanket chest painted blue with wedged dovetails) that has paint on it. It's some sort of milk paint i assume but there is no crackle finish, its more like a layer of  colored stone.
 
I suspect that they are not using milk paint. The modern imitation acrylic milk paints all have a crackle product that is sold specifically for them. I have used two of them and they work like you described. I'm not in the shop now and don't recall the brand names. If you are interested I will get them latter today. I have gotten a crackle finish with real milk paint by putting a light coat of garnet shellac under the paint, then before the paint is totally dry going at it with a heat gun. If the shellac is too heavy you get adhesion issues.  I have heard you can do the same thing with gelatin instead of shellac, but I have not tried it. I like the heat gun because you can get better transitions from the crackle to the noncrackle areas. With the commercial products there seems to be less transition, where you put it there's crackle where you don't there's not.
 
With the commercial crackle product you can get different degrees of crackle (i.e. size of crackle) by diluting the product.  I've done this many times and it works well.

Dennis Bork
Antiquity Period Designs, Ltd.
 
Herman,

Many of the commercial Windsor chairs makers, like D.R. Dimes, all use sprayed on lacquer paint.  Therefore they must use a lacquer crackle.  For this type of lacquer finish the crackle is applied over the top coat of paint and not in between the two layers as in latex paint.  It is much easier to control the size of crackle with this method.  If they don't want crackle to appear in the middle of an already crackled area they simply re-spray this crackled area with the top color of paint. 

Dennis Bork
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top