Woodwork: How to Get That
Nineteenth Century Glow
by CATE CORCORAN
Perhaps you live in an historic house with perfectly intact,
never-painted wood. You can just leave it be, or gently clean it
with a rag dipped into water with a squirt of Ivory liquid soap.
How to refinish wood that has been stripped? Shellac is one of
the most authentic, easy to work with, and rewarding options.
“It is a very beautiful finish,” says Bed Stuy resident Daniel
Thompson, who has stripped and refinished what turned
out to be exquisite burl veneers hidden under paint in
his 1880s home. The shellac saturates the wood, fills the
grain, and refracts light. “It makes any rich or patterned or
figured wood—like bird’s-eye maple, burled walnut or mahogany—
come to life. It gives a three-dimensional effect
like you can almost put your hand into it.”
The vogue for natural woodwork with a clear finish peaked
in late Victorian houses from about 1870 to 1895 and has
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Photo by Susan De Vries.
enjoyed many revivals since. At its height, “critics generally
recommended staining hardwood trim in some natural color
and painting softwood to correspond with the overall color
scheme of the room,” Roger Moss and Gail Caskey Winkler
write in “Victorian Interior Decoration.” In expensive
and fashionable homes, the best woods would be displayed
on the parlor floor, with painted poplar relegated to upper
bedroom floors. In more ordinary homes, the wood on the
parlor floor would be poplar stained to resemble mahogany
while, particularly in the 1890s, dining room woodwork on
the garden level might be semi-transparently faux grained
to resemble oak. Furniture, newel posts and mantels mixed
woods such as mahogany, walnut and oak. Even kitchens
and baths during this period often mixed wood tones, with
dish cupboards and moldings resembling aged pine or oak,
while fir beadboard was stained dark walnut.