Embossed? and stained table.

[John Brown]

Over at friends yesterday, and they showed me this very tired looking table. The surface appears to have been stamped or embossed, so it has a very shallow relief pattern, and the pattern was at one time stained, although now it's extremely faded. I can't remember seeing anything quite like it before(although I'm not Arthur Negus, I'm just a lowly ones and zeros guy), so I wondered if anyone knows the technique used, or any other info.

In the photo it looks almost monochrome(indeed I wonder if I accidentally selected "sepia toned"), but that's probabhly the flash. In the flesh it has got traces of colour left.

 

[xy mosian]

Inspect the edges along the crack very carefully before doing anything else. What you see may be paper! I was in a French Polishing class when the, long established, french polisher demonstrated the removal of a worn finish by stripping a printed surface.
xy

 

[AndyT]

I've read that in the late Victorian period there were lots of commercially developed processes aimed at making cheap, mass-produced furniture look expensive. There were machines to carve wood, or to scorch away the surface in imitation of carving. There were various formulas for mouldable blends of wood dust, glue and colouring. There were methods of printing fancy grain patterns onto cheap plain wood. And according to one book, this tendency was found far more in the USA than in GB, because they had a big shortage of skilled labour. Over here, craftsman could be made to work for very little; in the USA they needed to invent machines instead.

 

[NazNomad]

As Andy says above ... Something like this maybe? - not-what-it-seems-those-sneaky-mericans-t108161.html