I love
restoring things. Anything. However, my love for wood tends to often nudge me
in the direction of furniture.
Restoration
differs from making something totally new, from scratch, in the sense that with
restoration the product is already there. You do not come with a design or plan
and apply the wood accordingly. The challenge in restoration is to work with
the given. To bow to the wood and the previous craftsman and do the work in
such a way that the end product says something of your respect for them. That
is done through all the stages – the stripping, dismantling, making of new
parts, mending what is broken, applying the finish.
For me
restoration has a deep spiritual quality to it. It is the art of second
chances, of seeing potential and helping what has been discarded or forgotten
to be beautiful again. Of looking deeper and behind. It is the art of patience
and ingenuity. It is the art of discovering. It is the art of listening to what
an old chair or table is saying to you. It is about learning from craftsmen who
have gone before me.
A year
ago I restored a table as a birthday gift for Matilda.
The
gift in itself wasn’t a surprise for her. The transformation was. She was
present when we bought the table two years earlier for R180 from a second-hand
dealer who specialises in office furniture. When we saw it standing there with
its lame leg we also saw written over it: potential.
I have
often said to Matilda that I would love to know the stories behind the
furniture pieces that we restore. The fact that we find them in old barns or
amongst other stuff in store rooms filled with second-hand furniture bought at
auctions helps us to understand something of their immediate history. There
where we meet them for the first time.
But
the history before that, what did that entail? This was an old TED table (Transvaal
Education Department). The well-known TED stamp can be seen at the top of one
of the legs. It stood somewhere in a classroom, an office or staff room.
Judging by all the pieces of old gum stuck to the underside of the top, I would
say that it was a classroom. There,
listless learners went through this all too human sticking action at the start
of a class, before the terror of a teacher could reprimand them about their
choice of food. 
And
then, after the years of service in a school, what happened to it then? Did
they replace the furniture in the school? Was the school closed? Was there an
auction? Where did the huge round water stains on the top come from? What caused the damage to the structure of the
table?
The
apron at the upper end of the legs, directly underneath the top, was damaged in
a strange way. Someone or something must have applied such a heavy blow to it
from the inside that the tongue part of the one tongue and groove joint was
torn out. At the other end of the particular apron section the leg was badly
cracked. 
Without
dismantling the table completely, I removed the top and by working from above,
made a new tongue and groove joint. That I did by making an insert or extended
tongue that runs across apron and leg. At the other end of the apron, where the
leg was damaged, I used the compressor and blew glue into the cracks. It was
then clamped.
The
top was sanded and strengthened underneath by two thin cross-beams. The finish
consisted of three layers of varnish sprayed onto the surface. It was done in
such a way that the table has a shining quality without being glossy.
I may
not know the detail of this table’s history. What I do know is that it is now a
dining room table in a house in Pretoria. It seems appropriate that a piece
with such wonderful intrinsic qualities should be treated with the dignity it
deserved throughout its life.
George
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