Tue, Aug 1, 2006, 5:06am (EDT-3) of_the snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Todd=A0the=A0wood=A0junkie) doth lament: This is plaguing me. I naturally think it's a bad idea.
I pretty much agree. 99% of the time someone takes perfectly good furniture and turns it into crap. Unless something really old was made like crap in the first place it normally doesn't survive looking as beat up as most "distressed" furniture does. I will admit, there are exceptions, few and far between, say for restoring a really old home. But, the "artistes" don't know what they're doing and just wind up going waaaay overboard, and just turn decent furniture into crappy looking "stuff". Did I mention I hate "artistes"?
The other day I was going thru a magazine listing farous peoples work for sale. Included, and listed at a hefty price I might add, was some "primitive" furniture. It had been thru the "distress" process, sanded paint, et al. I've seen better paint jobs on 75 year old cars that've never been repainted. Bad enough, but you look at the stuff and you see gaps, poor fits, etc. Besically it looked like somehing very poorly made, used very hard, with no atempt at being maintained, then tossed, and pulled out of a dump somewhere, cleaned up, and put up for sale.
I've got a child's rocker at home, bought new in the 1940-41 period by my parents for me. It looks aged, yes; and it's probably had some hard use, but it's sill in excellent condition, and doesn't look distrssed - just looks old. I like it and I like it's looks. If I were to make a similar one I would make one that looks new, and let it look aged on it's own.
Somehow I kinda think that the people who lived in a house 100-200 years ago, say that their family had already been living in for a few hundred years, when they bought a new chair, to go along with their maybe 100+ year old furniture, they bought a new looking chair, and didn't worry about it looking new and not matching their old furniture. Buy the furniture to match the style, and color/hue, yes; to match the wear, no. I would much rather go thru an old house, with original old furniture, and maybe a few well made and non-distressed replacement pieces than to go thru such a house with a new "distressed" replacement piece.
Way I figure it, anything I make, you look at it and you can tell it's new. Might be made in an old style, with old style decoration, but still definitely can tell it's a new piece, and most definitely not beaten up. Someone buys it, they can do whatever the Hell they want to to it.
JOAT Politician \Pol`i*ti"cian\, n. Latin for career criminal