Every professional cleaner has a list. They may not write it down, and they will almost certainly not volunteer it to a new client, but it exists – a mental catalogue of the pieces that make you set down your bag, look at the item in question, and take a very slow breath before doing anything else. I have been cleaning antiques in London homes for long enough that my list is fairly well developed. I know exactly what is on it, I know why each item earned its place, and I have made a kind of uneasy peace with all of them.
The interesting thing about professional dread is that it is not the same as ignorance. Quite the opposite. When I was newer to this work, I would clean almost anything with reasonable confidence, because I did not yet know precisely how many ways there were for things to go wrong. Now I know. And so I approach certain pieces the way I imagine a bomb disposal technician approaches their working day – with a great deal of respect, a well-rehearsed method, and a private acknowledgement that today could, theoretically, go differently.
Here, in the spirit of honesty that I hope has characterised this blog from the beginning, is the list.
The Lacquered Ones
Japanese and Chinese lacquerwork, along with its European imitations – the French vernis martin pieces, the English japanned furniture that filled the drawing rooms of eighteenth-century London townhouses – represents, in my professional opinion, the single most anxiety-inducing category of antique surface in existence. I say this having cleaned silver, gilded mirrors, and hand-painted porcelain. The lacquered ones are worse.
What Makes Lacquer So Unforgiving
Genuine Asian lacquerwork is built up from urushi – the sap of the lacquer tree – applied in dozens of thin layers over months or years, each dried and polished before the next is added. The result is extraordinarily beautiful and almost pathologically sensitive to the wrong treatment. Solvents dissolve it. Alcohol dulls it. Moisture trapped beneath the surface causes it to lift in flakes so fine you might not notice until you have already wiped them away. European japanned pieces use entirely different materials – shellac and varnish compositions over gesso – and are, if anything, even less tolerant, because the ground beneath them is softer.
The particular difficulty is that lacquered and japanned furniture looks robust. The surface has a depth and hardness that suggests durability. It is, in fact, fragile in ways that are not visible until you have already caused the damage.
The Only Approach That Hasn’t Ended Badly
My method for lacquerwork is so minimal that it barely qualifies as cleaning. A dry, very soft brush – the sort used for pastry, if you want a useful kitchen analogy – to lift loose dust from the surface and from any carved or raised decoration. A barely damp, lint-free cloth for any actual surface contact, using distilled water only and nothing else whatsoever. Immediate drying with a second soft cloth, gently, without pressure. For raised gold or painted decoration on the lacquer surface, the brush only – never a cloth. I do not use any polish, wax, or product of any kind on lacquered surfaces. The piece looked after itself for two hundred years before I arrived. My job is to introduce as little disruption as possible and leave the room.
Gilded and Ormolu-Mounted Furniture
Gilded furniture – pieces with water-gilded or oil-gilded surfaces, or with applied ormolu mounts, the gilt-bronze decorative castings that feature so prominently on French and English Regency furniture – is the second item on my list, and it arrives there with some very specific memories attached. None of them involve catastrophe, precisely. All of them involve moments I would rather not repeat.
Gold Leaf and Why It Hates You
Water gilding – the technique used on the finest antique gilded furniture and frames – involves burnishing gold leaf onto a gesso ground that has been wetted with a size solution, creating a surface that can be polished to an extraordinary brilliance but that has essentially no tolerance for moisture once it has cured. Water re-activates the size beneath the gold, causing the leaf to lift and separate. This means that the most natural instinct in cleaning – using a damp cloth – is the one most reliably guaranteed to do harm. I have watched colleagues with excellent intentions remove gilding from a chair leg in a single wipe. It is not a sight that leaves you.
For gilded surfaces, I use the same dry-brush approach as for lacquerwork, working with extreme lightness around any raised or detailed areas where the gilding may already have become slightly loose with age. Loose areas are left entirely untouched. A gilded surface with a small area of lift that has been stable for decades will survive being left alone. It will not survive being cleaned.
Ormolu Mounts and the Patina Question
Ormolu presents a different dilemma. The gilt-bronze mounts on antique commodes, clocks, and cabinets can be cleaned – unlike gold leaf, they are a metal alloy and will tolerate careful attention – but whether to clean them is not straightforward. Ormolu develops a patina over time, a warm, slightly darkened tone that collectors value and that significantly affects the piece’s appearance and value. Cleaning it aggressively returns it to a brightness that looks wrong against aged wood and cannot easily be reversed. My approach is to remove surface dust with a soft brush and leave the rest as I found it, unless the client specifically requests otherwise and understands what that means.
Furniture Made of Too Many Things at Once
Some antique pieces are so structurally complex – so composed of different materials, each with different needs, arranged in intimate and inseparable contact with one another – that cleaning any one part of them risks damaging the rest. These are the pieces that make me wish, briefly, that I had chosen a different career.
Boulle, Marquetry, and Inlay Work
Boulle work – the seventeenth-century French technique of inlaying tortoiseshell and brass in elaborate patterns, named after the royal cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle – is perhaps the most extreme example of the multi-material problem. Tortoiseshell and brass expand and contract at different rates. The adhesive holding the inlay is old animal glue, which softens with moisture. Any product introduced to one surface will contact the other. A cloth that moves too quickly can catch a lifted edge and remove it entirely. I clean boulle work with a dry brush, I do not breathe too heavily in its direction, and I move on.
Marquetry and parquetry surfaces – furniture decorated with geometric or pictorial veneers in contrasting woods – present a related challenge. The veneer joints and any existing lifting edges are vulnerable to moisture penetration, and the thinness of the wood means that any sanding or aggressive treatment by a previous owner may have removed the grain pattern irreversibly. Dry brushing, a barely damp cloth on flat and clearly stable sections only, and considerable restraint.
Cane, Rush, and Upholstered Antique Seating
Antique chairs with cane or rush seating occupy a special place on my list because they present a cleaning challenge that cannot be fully solved. The woven surfaces trap dust in every interstice, they cannot be wiped, and they react to moisture by stretching and warping in ways that are permanent. The correct tool is a low-suction vacuum with a soft brush attachment, used with the kind of gentleness that most vacuum cleaners do not naturally facilitate. Rush seating should not be vacuumed at all if it shows any sign of brittleness – it should be dusted with a soft brush only and left to the considerable mercy of the atmosphere.
Upholstered antique chairs add fabric fragility to wooden fragility, and I approach them with the same hierarchy as in any antique fabric situation: dry methods first, damp methods only on clearly stable sections, and nothing that cannot be immediately undone.
The Pieces I Simply Hand Over
There is a final category, beyond the dread list, which I think of as the refusal list. These are the pieces I will assess, photograph, and decline.
What Experience Actually Teaches You
The longer I have worked in this field, the more clearly I understand that knowing what not to do is the greater part of expertise. The pieces on my refusal list are not there because I have not encountered them – they are there because I have encountered them enough times to know that cleaning is not what they need. A severely deteriorated lacquered surface. A gilded frame with active lifting across more than a small area. A boulle panel with missing inlay. These pieces are telling you something. The correct response is to listen.
What a Conservator Does That I Cannot
A furniture conservator works with adhesives, consolidants, and reversible materials that are outside the scope of cleaning. They can re-adhere lifting lacquer, stabilise gilding, replace missing inlay, and re-line fabric supports – not just remove what is on the surface, but address what is happening within the structure. When I refer a client to a conservator, I am not admitting defeat. I am making the correct call for the piece, which is the only call worth making.
The furniture I dread most has, in almost every case, survived because previous owners also treated it with care – or, perhaps more accurately, because previous owners also found it slightly alarming and left it mostly alone. There is a long and honourable tradition of benign neglect in the antique world. I am not above it.
