Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER

"Grunge is good," that would be a great t-shirt. I think about grunge on furniture is that it's like an archeological site, you have the original varnish that was put on what is made which is usually a plant resin varnish. Then you have the oil maybe that was put on the table I'd say in 1830. And then another butler put some varnish on and then and then somebody else put some spray stuff on in the 1940s and all this creates an archaeological layer which literally, under a microscope, looks like red, orange, blue, green, you know, just like a psychedelic layering of - and these are all different surfaces that are on the piece. And that authenticates the piece completely. So you don't even have to prove it because even visually looking at the surface and as we looked at the piece that day it didn't have to have a label but it did have a label. And it had the original finish. it was a great, great example of its type. It was covered with grunge. It had that wonderful surface, but underneath this wonderful surface, these layers of varnish, and dirt that authenticated the piece completely, if that's been taken away, scraped away, and you've erased the tape you know of his life.