Background
Furniture with a distressed finish is any furniture deliberately marked or damaged to suggest it is not brand new. The practice goes back at least to Victorian times when the country’s phenomenal rise in wealth and global dominance spawned a fascination with its past. Collecting and owning antique furniture became fashionable, so the practice of distressing newly-built furniture arose to meet a demand that could not be satisfied by the genuine article.
This largely covert, and not always entirely honest, practice began to lose its stigma in the 1950s and 1960s when the look of furniture became more important than its pedigree. Several stories appeared in the press and on television about furniture traders who, much to the bemusement of the older generation, were openly ‘distressing’ furniture with the use of chains, darts and various other tools. Nevertheless, alongside the opening of stores like Habitat and, in Sweden, IKEA, demand steadily grew for distressed furniture.
Today distressed furniture is widely accepted and regarded as highly desirable for interiors where a ‘brand new’ piece of furniture would look out of place to contemporary tastes.
Getting the look
At Right Price Furniture there are several collections of furniture in our rustic category and elsewhere suitable for achieving the right look. Distressed painted ranges in styles known as Baroque, Rococo or simply French style include the
Bergere,
Epernay,
Canterbury,
Provence and
Victorian collections.
For a traditional English country furniture style, choose from the
Rustic Oak or
Cottage Cream Pine collections. Going back further, to perhaps the late 17th Century, the timber changes from pine to oak and the choice becomes
Trafalgar,
Brampton or the
Heartland Oak collection.
If the late Victorian / early 20th Century period is the aim, then consider the
Hampshire ranges as the overall style and finish is very in keeping with the period. Decorative touches include the ornate Victorian-style handles while an unusual feature is the decorative ceramic inlays on some items that are perhaps reminiscent of the famous enamel signs for Pears Soap or Colman’s Mustard
Did you know?On the subject of distressed furniture, people who want to have a go at distressing furniture for themselves often start on a
blanket box. This is a fairly simple and inexpensive item, as most boxes are just four sides and a top. It is a good idea to experiment with the harshest of the planned distressing techniques on the back of the
blanket box. It means that if the effect looks worse than envisaged the
blanket box can still be used by placing it against the foot of a bed or a wall. The back panels of more expensive items like chests of drawers are often different to the front and sides, so the same test is a much higher risk strategy!