RE: Okay so I bought this stupid antique...
January 15, 2015 at 1:12 am
(This post was last modified: January 15, 2015 at 1:15 am by Aractus.)
(January 14, 2015 at 4:44 pm)Alex K Wrote: Oh I thought the (green?) Top was some other materialOn that's just a piece of black cowhide leather. It's been installed better than the green one, on a floating board, or whatever you call it. Oh and inserts are always replaced as they get worn out, they're never expected to be original. The one that's been put in is entirely plain, it could have been done by a joiner with no interest in doing any gold artwork etc on it, again that's trivial.
(January 14, 2015 at 4:17 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: If they hadn't refinished it it would be worth at least $100,000.No it wouldn't, no Australian antique is worth that much.
(how many times have I heard that on Antiques Roadshow ??)
Whoever restored it did an excellent job. One small section in the top, smaller than a business card, has been replaced. Quite a bit of work has been done inside the desk itself to hold it all together, etc, the kind of work that Green-top over there needed. The front of it, as you can see in the photo, has been shortened at some point in its near 90-year past (not by the restorer), possibly because it got damaged, or possibly because its present owner wanted more leg room. As you can see the back is full:
![[Image: l3EgAvH.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i.imgur.com%2Fl3EgAvH.jpg)
To get back onto the issue of the finish, I could of course have the desk refinished back to its original colour without too much trouble (that would probably cost about $500-600, since the existing finish has to be removed first), so in the grand scheme of things that's fairly trivial. I could get a restorer to get or make the correct mixture for the finish, and then a joiner to correct it. It'd be close to two-days labour for a joiner to do that. You never know I might go down that path. Whoever refinished it how it presently is was, in my opinion, just a joiner who had no contact with a restorer. The joiner didn't even bother to fix the handle screw holes in the drawers (that's trivial, I can do that myself, but it proves it wasn't done by a restorer).
(January 14, 2015 at 7:48 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Do you suppose he had room to hump his secretary on top of it?Yeah, if it had been owned by Bob Hawke.
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The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
