In today’s busy world, it is easy to take our items of furniture for granted. We sit on chairs and sleep in beds, and it has always been so. The evolution of furniture styles through the ages, it becomes clear how the role of furniture has changed from a functional item of necessity to a luxurious form of art and design.
Antique furniture, unlike much of the furniture available on the market today, was built to last. Even though a single piece today might be hundreds of years old, there’s a good chance that, if it’s kept in the right conditions, it will last for hundreds more years.
Antique wooden furniture has four main enemies: heat, direct sunlight, dryness and dirt. All of these can be avoided simply and effectively.
Antique furniture should never be placed near a heat source, such as a radiator; this will cause the wood to expand and crack. A minimum of two feet from all radiators has been suggested.
As well as heat sources from inside, direct sunlight will also cause problems for antique furniture. Partly this is about heat, but also because light and UV radiation from the sun will discolor the surface of the wood, and can even cause the veneers to ‘lift’ and peel off.
Some discoloration is perfectly normal in a piece of furniture, but too much direct sunlight will accelerate this aging process and cause it to happen unevenly. This is particularly important when only part of a piece of furniture is exposed to direct sunlight – for example, if one side of the piece is placed in front of a window.
HOW TO CLEAN ANTIQUE FURNITURE
Some amount of dirt and dust on your furniture is inevitable, and your antiques will benefit greatly from occasional – but not overzealous! – cleaning.
Below are the major materials used to make up antique furniture, and the techniques you’ll need to use to clean them.
\”How to clean antique wood \”
Antique wood should be dusted frequently with a soft, dry cloth. Dusting is important not only to maintain the appearance of your piece, but also because contaminants in dust can cause longer-lasting damage.
Water will cause discoloration, rot, and will eventually dry the wood out, and we would also not recommend using vinegar – as you might sometimes hear recommended – as the acid can sometimes cause the surface to dissolve.
As well as regular dusting, wooden furniture should be polished once or twice every year, using beeswax which you can buy from most DIY shops or online. You can even get waxes that correspond to the colour of the wood: black waxes for ebony and lighter ones for oak.
The wax is best applied to a soft, light cloth and spread evenly over the surface of the wood. You should especially never use household polishes, or spray polishes, and never soap or detergent, as they will leave oily deposits on the wood which can darken and erode with age.
\”How to clean antique bronze and ormolu mounts\”
As well as wood, ormolu and bronze are common materials used in the making and decoration of fine antique furniture.
Bronze and ormolu mounts, like wooden surfaces, should be regularly dusted with a light cloth or soft brush to maintain brightness. For tougher bits of dirt in harder-to-reach crevasses, a toothbrush softened by a small amount of wax will also work.
Ormolu should never be polished. Polishing a metal is not a means of removing dirt, but of removing tarnish and corrosion (chemicals that react with the surface of the metal, causing it to change colour). Gold does not tarnish – which is one of the reasons it is so valuable – and therefore does not need to be polished.
Moreover, household metal polishes often contain abrasive chemicals that can dissolve the gilded layer on the surface of the mount.
It’s for this same reason that ormolu mounts should not be touched, if at all possible, as acid in your fingertips can erode the gilded layer.
You should also should be especially careful about getting ormolu mounts on your furniture wet.
Some mounts, on older pieces, were gilded using a technique known as ‘water-gilding’ (though this was much less common than the most-used technique, known as ‘fire-gilding’). Water gilding involves the application of a gold solution to the surface of a bronze, and it’s for this reason that water-gilded pieces are soluble in water.
Silver and silvered bronze mounts, occasionally found on pieces of furniture, can, however, be polished, using silver polish, methylated spirit, or white spirit. This is because, while gold does not tarnish, silver does.
\”How to clean antique upholstery\”
It’s possible to apply a vacuum cleaner to upholstery on antique seating, but this should be done gently, and you must particularly look out for any loose threads or pieces of fabric.
For more gentle cleaning, dust and hairs can be lifted off upholstery using a short length of sticky tape.
Leather tops on antique desks and tables can also be polished using wax occasionally but for splits, cracks, and peels in the surface, it’s best to speak to a professional restorer.
\”How to clean antique marble\”
Many pieces of antique furniture – especially commodes, vitrines, and console tables – will have marble tops. These are generally easy to maintain, as many of them will have been built with a protective seal to prevent dirt from getting into the porous stone.
Marble tops can therefore simply be wiped clean with a dry, clean cloth.
Sometimes dust and dirt can seep through the seal, and cause discoloration in the marble. A serious build-up of discoloration will require the work of a professional marble restorer.
\”How to restore antique furniture\”
There may be times, however, when antique furniture requires more serious attention than simple dust or wax.
The veneer may have lifted; the wood may have split along the grain; the mounts may have corroded.
You should never attempt to fix these more serious faults yourself unless you are a trained restorer. Amateur or incompetent restoration will not only ruin how the piece looks, but will also reduce its monetary value in the long-term.
If your antique furniture needs restoration, then always take it to a professional restorer. If any parts are missing (such as pieces of the veneer or chipped pieces), try, where possible, to keep these safe, since replacement pieces can be extremely hard to find and may not look the same if they are replaced.
