Musings

Conserving an Anglo-Indian Table — The Starting Point

Along with The Lute Player I had two other projects from the same client that were as wildly different as you can imagine.  One was a folding teak table with ivory inlays that had belonged to his mother decades before, so it was a heartfelt heirloom for him.  I found it to be a fascinating piece given that it folded flat for transport, much like the campaign furniture Chris Schwarz and Andre Roubo have written so much about.

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Here’s the starting point for the project.  There were two major areas of interest.  First was the three sections of missing carved teak in the lower panels of the folding base.  (Somehow I cannot find the images of the missing sections, so these images of an intact and complete section along with the layout of one of the repairs will have to suffice)

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Second was the slew of missing ivory inlays on the top.

In coming posts I’ll walk through the treatment decisions and execution, including an exposition on the choice of non-traditional non-original materials for part of the work.