Ebonized Shelf

I love Aesthetic / Eastlake ebonized furniture and I think it’s an acquired taste. My wife took a long while to warm up to it but now she loves it as well. I’d like to share a little project I did recently on a wall shelf that hopefully may help one or more of RV readers with an ebonized piece.

Looking at Victorian furniture for the past 25 years I’ve come across a fair amount of ebonized pieces. It seems that the better ones are hardwood such as maple or cherry with a dark stain which emulates actual ebony wood. Some pieces, generally cheaper ones are made of pine or poplar and merely painted black. I often see pieces of furniture that were originally stained to resemble ebony wood restored by painting them black. This may be a quick easy fix, painting it, but re-ebonizing I would think is a wiser choice. There are any number of good stains you could probably use to restore including Ebony stain by such companies as Minwax.

I’ve been looking for an ebonized wall cabinet for a while now. I have seen many nice ones over the years when I wasn’t looking for one but you know how that goes! At any rate my wife and I found what i thought was a really nice one in a shop that actually specializes in brass lighting. It had a nice form and was a good size being 3 feet high by 3 feet wide. While it was still very solid a good deal of the ebonizing had been worn or washed off probably due to over cleaning. A lot of areas on it no longer looked black.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1242.jpg

I though it would be a nice project for me and I didn’t think the $300 asking price was too bad, my wife didn’t feel nearly so positive about it. After much cajoling I convinced Helen that I could make it look nice again and she reluctantly gave in so we bought it.

What I did was to get a can of my favorite product, Howard restor-a-finish in ebony brown color. I put the shelf on 2 sawhorses in the driveway and started applying the restor-a-finish. That did a nice job of cleaning it up but the pigment in the restor-a-finish wasn’t nearly dark enough to make it look anywhere near black in the worn areas.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1310.jpg

I went to the stationary store and purchased a bottle of india ink. I added a very small quantity of india ink to the restore-a-finish and lo and behold it made the worn parts start to look a lot darker. As I gained experience in my mixing, I found that by varying the amount of india ink in the restor-a-finish I could feather and blend an even darkness over all with no blotches. Five hours later a final rubdown with a little orange-glo and she was ready to hang on the wall. Helen was enormously pleased with the job I had done and wasted no time “girling” it up.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1321.jpg

So for a 7 dollar can of restor-a-finish, a 2 dollar bottle of ink and about 50 Q-tips for getting into all those intricate galleries I made the old shelf look pretty darn spiffy.

I’m posting this really so anyone with similar furniture may want to try it. We also have a small ebonized etagere and I went over the whole thing with the same mixture and it did wonders for that too.

Quote from: zeke
I love Aesthetic / Eastlake ebonized furniture and I think it’s an acquired taste.

Ah, but once you've acquired the taste, you will never look back!  :)

Looking at Victorian furniture for the past 25 years I’ve come across a fair amount of ebonized pieces. It seems that the better ones are hardwood such as maple or cherry with a dark stain which emulates actual ebony wood.

Using just stain to ebonize is something I've never encountered in late 19th century furniture... is it a finishing practice peculiar to a region other than the Northeast?

Using just stain to ebonized is something I've never encountered in late 19th century furniture... is it a finishing practice peculiar to a region other than the Northeast?

By "Stain" I mean a dark finish where the grain and character of the wood is readily apparent. It is a process that is certainly not paint. Ebonized rosewood for example is still recognizable as rosewood. Perhaps my using the word "Stain" is misleading?

Quote from: zeke
By "Stain" I mean a dark finish where the grain and character of the wood is readily apparent. It is a process that is certainly not paint. Ebonized rosewood for example is still recognizable as rosewood. Perhaps my using the word "Stain" is misleading?

No, that is an apt and proper explanation of "stain," and I would use the term in exactly the same way. As I wrote previously, I have never seen a piece of late 19th century furniture with an ebonized finish of that type and as our furniture collection is mostly "black, " I am genuinely curious as to whether it is a regional "variant" on the traditional ebonizing techniques.

What I "know" about late 19th century ebonized furniture, in a nutshell:  The ebonized finish I am familiar with is smooth, with little or no visible wood grain; pigmented shellac or varnish is "rubbed out" and oft times waxed to a low sheen.  Because the finish is "on" the wood rather than "in" the wood, as with a stain, it is sometimes "flaky" or chipping off... a lot of what turns up on the market in these parts has been "refreshed" with touch-up or even a full coat of flat black paint.

Period "recipes" sometimes (but not always) include an instruction to stain the wood (with mixtures concocted from logwood and/or iron bits, soot, or aniline dyes). They usually directed the finisher to fill the grain of the wood, which is why closed grain woods such as cherry and maple were preferred in the U.S.... most English ebonized furniture is made of mahogany or oak. Typically, the "recipe" would continue with something along the lines of: The stained and filled wood should then have several coats of the pigmented shellac or copal varnish brushed on, and left to dry thoroughly. When dry, it should be rubbed down with "glass paper" followed by another 2 or 3 coats of finish, left to dry and again rubbed down. A third 2 or three coats of shellac/varnish should be left to dry "perfectly hard". (I'm not sure how long they left things to dry, but for comparison, "perfectly hard" for a french polish is at least a week before rubbing it out.) The instructions almost always make the point that the desired effect is an absolutely smooth and  "dead finish," one without any gloss to it. Many modern decorative arts historians write that the intended effect was to emulate Japanese lacquer, for what that is worth. In period, the terms "ebonized" and "lacquered" seemed to be used interchangeably, although it is difficult to discern intent from a chronological distance of a century and a quarter.

In period, ebonized furniture was usually more expensive than the same items with a clear finish, as the process was more time and labor intensive. Some high-end pieces actually combine "bright" and "matte" ebonizing. (This cabinet is an example of mixed reflectivity in ebonized, although I'm not sure it shows up very well in the photographs.)

Stain or dye is the "finish coat" in areas of inlay or marquetry, such as panels or bands of decoration. A good (and easily accessable) illustration is the Gould desk illustrated on the cover of "the Herter book." The "black" areas of the marquetry panels have a brownish cast, the rest of the case does not. (The flaking or chipping of an ebonized finish I mentioned above can also be seen on the same piece, at the right edge of the fall-front.)

Your shelf/ cabinet looks good zeke.
(2) things I have used for a black ebonized finish is:
#1 - Gel stain. Oil based stains (like minwax ebony) will not be dark enough, or opaque enough. Wood Kote makes a nice black gel stain (Named Jel'd Stain. Here's their website to locate a dealer or see other colors/ products: http://www.woodkote.com/ ). Gel stains are very thick and paste like - and successive coats will get darker and darker and darker (unlike most thin - liquid stains). I really like gel stains and use them frequently. You can really build deep, dark colors quickly (like many antiques had). Because they are so thick, they also don't penetrate into the wood like oil, lacquer or alcohol based stains do, and therefore don't stain blotchy on woods that are difficult to stain (like Pine, Cherry, Birch, etc.). Try them - you'll be impressed.
#2 - Is tinted/ pigmented shellac. There are universal tints that can be used to mix with shellac. I've also used universal pigments from paint stores - if you know a paint/ hardware store well enough, they may sell you tints by the ounce. These pigments are used to tint both oil and latex paints - they are universal tints that will also tint shellac (which is alcohol based). Try it - it creates an absolute black finish that doesn't fill the grain or look like paint. (don't try adding black oil based paint, stain, or latex paint - they will not dissolve or mix with the alcohol base in shellac). You could even put a black tinted finish over a black gel stain to make it as black as possible.    woodwright

Peacock room, Woodwright...

Thank you so much for taking the time to type out your comments. I feel like I have learned so much from them.

Sharing all this knowledge and the great people that post here makes this the most awesome and freindly site on the web.

Peacock Room

I examined that rago ebonized cabinet first hand and i can see exactly what you mean by mixed reflectivity. This piece was stunning and I think it sold for $2500? At any rate it was the bargain of that auction. I am a little dubious of the K&C attribution but who knows?

Quote from: zeke
Peacock Room

I examined that rago ebonized cabinet first hand and i can see exactly what you mean by mixed reflectivity. This piece was stunning and I think it sold for $2500? At any rate it was the bargain of that auction. I am a little dubious of the K&C attribution but who knows?

Yes, it sold for a flabergastingly low $2500. Your dubiousness at the attribution is well placed, IMO. We own a related cabinet, and while we do not have any idea who did make it, we have no reason to believe it is by K&C.

Thats a beautiful job, Zeke! Eastlake peices are what I usually see that have been ebonized and I like the finish a lot. Our one downstairs bedroom is very formal and has a small bath that I would love to make  feel as if it actually belonged to the bedroom. I would love to find a fancy shelf like yous rs to use as a medicine cabinet. ;D

Hey Rayman,

These shelves aren't all that hard to find, especially smaller ones. Cost, unless the shelf/cabinet really elaborate is not bad either. Searching on ebay or in antiques shops will turn one up for you. Now you have me thinking of finding a small one for our bathroom. The black would look great as our tiles in there are yellow and black. Perfect for tissue boxes, decorative soaps etc.

My posts generally focus on Victorian on a budget.

Wait a minite, Yellow and Black? This calls for a photo! We just inherited a Orchid bath set made by american (sanitary) standard co. from 1928 and have been thinking about using black as an accent color. this would be in a guest bath and I`m thinking of keeping it all art deco in styling.

Speaking of Deco bathrooms, Yellow, and Black.  Some of you have seen these before but I took pictures of Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West and his house has Yellow and Black deco tiles:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67005936@N00/2163942924/in/set-72157603621406972/

all the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67005936@N00/sets/72157603621406972/

WOw, that tile is amazing! Something also interesting is that none of the furniture looks anything like whats represented in the current Hemmingway collection by Thomasville. :o
http://hemingway.thomasville.com/

I can attest to the fact that there is no similarity.

Probably Indonesian