miraculous recoveries
RESTORING ANTIQUE LIGHTING
Likefixtures hemlines tend to and go film in and stars, out of lighting fashion. Count yourself lucky if any of the pendants, chandeliers, ceiling lights, or sconces hung and mounted soon after your house was built are still in place, even if a shade is cracked or the metalwork is black with nicotine. You’ve really scored if you find an original fixture stashed away like a broken toy in the back of a closet. No matter what its apparent condition, rehanging or restoring an original fixture is a way to honor the architecture of the house.
FIRST STEP: SAFETY
It’s natural to want to give a good cleaning to a chandelier coated with an amalgam of grease and dust. Before touching the fixture, however, assess its condition. Does it still have the original wiring? If so, it should be professionally rewired before any other steps are taken.
“If you rewire an old light fixture yourself, you’d better have a good idea what you’re doing,” says Nigel Barnes, manager of Antique and Vintage at Rejuvenation, which restores and sells vintage fixtures. “If you do it wrong, you could get shocked or blow an electrical circuit. At worst, it could burn your house down.”
Chris Jones of Historic Houseparts, a dealer in architectural salvage and reproductions, concurs: “For anything more than a single wire and socket, I would recommend sending it to a professional.”
That’s because it’s impossible to tell whether a fixture you’ve rewired yourself is safe; checking it requires testing equipment only a pro shop will have. A good shop can safely clean an old fixture and make repairs with sensitivity to its original character. They’ll know, for instance, whether arms that are bent can be reshaped, where wiring can or cannot safely go, and sources for missing components. They’ll offer expertise in matching or replicating finishes.
EVALUATION AND CLEANING
Sometimes a fixture only needs a light cleaning to remove superficial dirt, leaving the original lacquered finish intact. “If we know what the metal is, we know what cleaning approach to use,” says Jane Deimezis, owner of Appleton Antique Lighting. “If we don’t know, we take baby steps. Then it’s a matter of trial and error.”
Many early 20th-century lighting fixtures were made of brass, typically finished with a coat of lacquer. A surface cleaning for a brass light may be followed by a hand polishing, with or without a protective coating of wax that helps protect the existing patina.
In cases where the cleaned finish is uneven, the customer may opt for a more in-depth cleaning, taking the metal down to bare brass, with the option of re-lacquering. At the same time, it may be possible to add a patina to darken the metal slightly and give it a more consistent appearance or an aged look. “Every piece is different,” continues Deimezis. “You have to respect what the piece is and not make it worse than it was.”
Ultimately, most important decisions are referred to the client, who may have a desired look in mind or budgetary constraints to consider. Keep in mind that even a straightforward cleaning and rewiring usually requires taking the fixture completely apart. A good shop will document the process with photographs. “Sometimes there are multiple ways a fixture can be assembled,” says Jones. “You have to have that record of how it was put together.” [ text cont. on page 49]
MISSING PARTS
It’s a rare vintage fixture that comes to the repair shop with all pieces intact. “There are many parts that you just never have enough of,” says Barnes. “A really common one would be the canopy, the part that goes on the ceiling. I don’t know why it is, but people tend to save fixtures but not the canopy.”
Since many of the tubes, bodies, arms, shade holders, and sockets in lighting made between about 1880 and 1940 haven’t changed much, Rejuvenation started making its own reproduction parts long ago as part of its transition from architectural salvage dealer to reproduction lighting company. Even so, “we always prefer to use antique parts whenever possible. We rarely use replacement glass—we go to great lengths to find antique shades that fit the old fixtures.”
Restoring older lighting often means reversing poor repairs. “A fixture may have been Frankensteined together out of parts from more than one fixture,” Barnes says. Someone may have removed part of the light and discarded it, or turned arms meant to be upright upside down. “Our job is to assess whether we can fix it and make it whole again.”
SPECIAL FINISHES
The range of finishes that can restored is as varied as vintage lighting itself, from clear lacquer to enameling and gilding. With the exception of replating, which is subject to stringent environmental controls, most can be handled in-house by a reputable restoration shop (see “Should You Replate?” above). While some vintage finishes are forgiving, others are more fragile and require practiced hands.
Many Depression-era fixtures, for example, have delicate polychrome finishes that are easily damaged and hard to restore. “The reason they’re like that is that they were made from lower-cost materials, like pot metal, which were then painted in multiple colors,” says Barnes.
One example would be a pot-metal fixture with a gilt base, over-painted with jewel tones—cheap to make, but deluxe in appearance. “In some cases, these were exceptional, hand-applied finishes.”
In his 15 years at Rejuvenation’s shop, Barnes has worked with craftspeople who were really good at replicating these finishes. “Sometimes they’re so good that even I can’t tell whether the finish is original or restored.”
A few years ago, Barnes discovered that one of Rejuvenation’s suppliers had been making lacquer for lighting companies since the 1870s. The company still carried some of the historic lines. Rejuvenation now buys those historic colors direct from the source.
While many of the polychromed finishes from the 1920s and ’30s were hand rubbed, painted finishes popular just after World War II and into the 1950s were applied using the latest air-brushing technology. One of the artisans in the shop began to experiment with air brushing, with excellent results. “The fixtures look exactly like the originals,” Barnes says. “Same technique, same paint.”
Patinas, however, can be much more difficult to replicate. One recent project involved re-creating a large, stepped finial missing from a verde green (copper) fixture that was part of an otherwise intact set. Noting that techniques to create patina for statuary and bronze range from applications of baking soda and vinegar to burying the part in the ground for a week, the shop finally hit on a solution after a period of experimentation. “I think it took a month of different attempts to make that new, shiny copper turn verde green and look natural.”