I found an 18thC table in the attic - pictorial

[Lucky Strike]

My fiancée and I went up to see my parents last week, and to show her where I partly grew up. So I showed her around, and we opened up an old outhouse on a farm that was last inhabited in the early fifties.

Seeing this gave me quite a start:

It turned out to be a late rococo/early Louis XVI tea table, with an unflattering, later white coat of paint, and cracks in the (one solid piece of wood) top. Worst of all, one little piece to the side of one leg and even worse: the raised, profiled edge around the top are contemporary to the white paint; this was probably done in the twenties or thirties.

Tea was still a relatively new and fashionable drink in Europe when this was made, and quite expensive, so at least in the Scandinavian countries, the theory is that these "tea tables", as the antiques trade here calls them, were made for the particular purpose of serving tea. The size, proportions (perfect for a small desk, btw) and the raised table-top edge are typical. The more up-market versions had porcelain or sometimes silver trays that would fit into the table top.

The legs are oak, to achieve slenderness, while the rest is pine. Also, the table top's original surface, under the white paint, is beyond salvage:

I instantly phoned my father, asked if I could help myself to it, stashed it in my car and took it to my parents' house. Further investigation showed that the original paint was a faded Prussian blue, on a reddish primer:

The "nails" seen in the last pic are actually wooden plugs. This, the blue paint and the one-piece top places it in the 18th C.

And so, we started (very carefully) removing the layer of white paint, - this took four full days of meticulous scraping, or rather, "picking off" white paint:

Here's a detail of the general result - of course, the reason for the white overpaint was that the original blue was quite worn and scratched:

Tools:

Halfway there:

And the result so far:

I took a drill with a rotating-sandpaper-flaps head to the top and edge, as it was unsalvageable and without original paint anyway.

It's now in the garage, awaiting shipping. When I get it delivered, I'll have to show it to some specialists, who will probably advise me to take some linseed oil and ultramarine blue, make a "wash" out of it, and just lightly rub this into the blue-painted surfaces. The table top will be painted with a similar solution, only with far more colour in the oil.

Eventually, I'll have a black glass plate fitted to the table top, I think.

I know I'm going on about this, but when you spend four long days slowly picking paint off something, you want to show it off, I'm afraid.

 

[DeaconKC]

Nice job. It takes a LOT of work to restore something that far gone.

 

[Sefton]

What a wonderful "find". I love to see a rescue like that and I'm looking forward to the pictures of the end result. Good luck!

 

[Brinybay]

Start digging up the outhouse. You'll probably find some treasures there too, most likely antique bottles.

 

[Lucky Strike]

Nice job. It takes a LOT of work to restore something that far gone.

Thanks! Most of the work is done now, though. The table isn't really that far gone, actually, - the table is tight and stable, and all the legs are the same length.

What a wonderful "find". I love to see a rescue like that and I'm looking forward to the pictures of the end result. Good luck!

Thanks, will do!

Start digging up the outhouse. You'll probably find some treasures there too, most likely antique bottles.

Ah, yes, there were a few crates of old bottles - I almost took a few 19th C champagne bottles with me. The contents of this one went untried:

Other stuff; here's a German-Norwegian phrasebook, printed for the German army in 1940, some forestry publication and a Norwegian infantry handbook, printed in 1921, also a cannonball for a small saluting cannon:

There were German POW camps dotted around in the area, mostly Russian and Serbian POWs, so the ground floor of my grandfather's house (main house on the farm) was commandeered for a colonel's quarters and offices. I think my family and the Germans had a very awkward co-habitation in the house.

There used to be a lot of old German stuff lying around in the woods around the farm; when the Germans were disarmed after the war, a lot of equipment was just dumped in assorted piles in the area. You can still see remnants of it:

There supposedly were gallows in this spot (I don't think they were ever used, but just raised as...motivational tools):

Here's some allied stuff, from the liberation period:

 

[Lucky Strike]

Down by the sea, sticks of solid gunpowder are continually washed ashore:

Other stuff in the same outhouse (it was originally quarters for farm labourers):

A silver tray, found in the main house basement:

Also from the main house, this organ, amazingly, still worked:

And I liked the stove:

Here's a few carts (my great-grandfather's everyday buggy) and sleighs (there's a single-seater, built for speed, and a family model):

 

[dhermann1]

Astounding!

This is one of the greatest threads I've ever seen on the Lounge. You must hold onto every scrap of stuff you can. You have your own little private museum there. Thank you so much for sharing this truly astounding collection of artifacts.
You really did a remarkable job restoring that table as well.

 

[Cricket]

Wow! Your hard work really paid off. This piece is beautiful. Now, when are you going to invite me over for tea?

 

[Lefty]

This is one of the greatest threads I've ever seen on the Lounge. You must hold onto every scrap of stuff you can. You have your own little private museum there. Thank you so much for sharing this truly astounding collection of artifacts.
You really did a remarkable job restoring that table as well.

:arated:

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

 

[sixsexsix]

very cool thanks for sharing! can't wait to see the finished product

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Astounding! What a great find, LS! And that table will be spectacular when it's finished!


Lee

 

[Mr_Misanthropy]

Wow! This is an awesome thread. You've got a goldmine there (not literally, a goldmine of history I guess). Great photos too... that's great you know so much about the history of the area.

 

[Brinybay]

In the picture with the silver tray, in the lower left corner in that pile of odds and ends, do I see on old-style skeleton key?

 

[Mr_Misanthropy]

That's what it looks like to me...

 

[ideaguy]

great find!
and do hold onto things before you either toss or sell-
that mundane phone will fetch a pretty penny...

and I've got a home for the Blue sleigh in the rafters.

A serious note: try and get the provenance of each piece, trace
things back as far as possible-and check with local historians,
official folks that kept records- like tax people, assessors, etc.,
and get the best possible picture of what occurred when, who
owned what, what Allied units came through, etc.
In doing this, you'll find a bit more moneys ( and a lot more fun)
in tracing the movements of these objects that speak-we need
only to listen.
Please keep us posted with your progress- keeping a log might be
an entertaining and worthwhile endevour, giving potential buyers a
glimpse of what's been done to present a piece to the marketplace...

 

[Lucky Strike]

Well, it's time for a three-year thread revival, I suppose, - I completely forgot about this thread, it seems. My apologies, and thank you all for kind words!

Update: I had two glass sheets cut and chamfered, one to go into the "bottom" of the table-top, the other one to rest at the outer, higher edges, to make for a shallow display case. It's a pity it turned out too shallow for almost all my watches, so I'll keep some old Chinese jade plaques and pendants there, some bronze table medals, etc.

Like this:

The bottom glass was eventually painted dark blue on the underside:

This is one of the greatest threads I've ever seen on the Lounge. You must hold onto every scrap of stuff you can. You have your own little private museum there. Thank you so much for sharing this truly astounding collection of artifacts.

You really did a remarkable job restoring that table as well.

Thank you! Most of the stuff in the outhouses there have since been given to a local war museum, they got a truckload of stuff earlier (including my grandfather's medals and his brother-in-law's RAF squadron "yearbook" with a lot of funny cartoons ("Beware of the Hun in the Sun!") and lots of signatures from his co-pilots. Grrr.)

The WWII stuff that was left there is mostly too far gone now to make for anything much of a display, and it's fairly common stuff anyway, except the radios you saw, which I also handed over to the museum.

The civilian stuff is also mostly too far gone to make any use of, but I'll have a better look at it the next time I'm up there (it's a ~24 hour drive, straight North). Some stuff, like the silver tray, has been taken care of, but most of it will probably just rot gently until someone makes the effort of getting rid of the remnants. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Wow! Your hard work really paid off. This piece is beautiful. Now, when are you going to invite me over for tea?

The kettle's on!

Wow! This is an awesome thread. You've got a goldmine there (not literally, a goldmine of history I guess). Great photos too... that's great you know so much about the history of the area.

Yes, my grandfather absolutely refused to discuss his own war. He was in the battle of Narvik and skirmishes after that, taken POW, released and returning to his property and a humiliating co-habitation with a German colonel in his own house - I've pieced most of it together myself, with the help of my grandmother's diary. Also, the German colonel headed several prison-camps for "non-Aryan" POWs like Russians and Serbs, and they were treated just as badly as you would fear, according to my late grandmother.

His brother-in-law, the Spit pilot, died when swimming near Brough Head in the Orkneys in 1941 - he dived, hit a rock and broke his neck. The irony of that has always struck me as brutal.

In the picture with the silver tray, in the lower left corner in that pile of odds and ends, do I see on old-style skeleton key?

Yes, there's buckets of them, it seems they saved any key, in the hope of one day finding a lock for it?

great find!
and do hold onto things before you either toss or sell-
that mundane phone will fetch a pretty penny...

and I've got a home for the Blue sleigh in the rafters.

A serious note: try and get the provenance of each piece, trace
things back as far as possible-and check with local historians,
official folks that kept records- like tax people, assessors, etc.,
and get the best possible picture of what occurred when, who
owned what, what Allied units came through, etc.

In doing this, you'll find a bit more moneys ( and a lot more fun)
in tracing the movements of these objects that speak-we need
only to listen.

Please keep us posted with your progress- keeping a log might be
an entertaining and worthwhile endevour, giving potential buyers a
glimpse of what's been done to present a piece to the marketplace...

Oh, there are lots of documents and other sources, the local war museum has most of it.

That telephone is a thirties Siemens model, I think, probably used by the Wehrmacht for local closed lines between the various prison camps they had in the area. They don't fetch that much here - I'd say about $50 on a street antiques market. The little blue speed-sleigh, on the other hand, should probably fetch around $1000 at auction here - they're cumbersome obejcts to own, so the market is limited. I've seen them used as bases for Christmas flower arrangements - I think I'd rather leave where it is, rather than subject it to that indignity.

The military radios could possibly be intersting to collectors, but I believe my father has turned them over to the same museum.