THE NEEDLEBAR

Restoration Section


RESTORATION – THOUGHTS FROM THE FENMAN

Chapter 2 – DEFINITIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Hello, sewing machine people, and welcome once again to the Needlebar restoration pages. In this article, I’m going to discuss what we actually mean by the term “restoration”. I suppose some of you will be wishing I’d stop waffling and get on with some real work – but it’s important that you understand some of the implications before we start getting our hands dirty. Let’s warm up with a few dictionary definitions –

DEFINITIONS -

- Preservation – to keep safe from danger or harm
- Conservation – to keep from change, loss or injury
- Restoration – the act of restoring to a former or original condition.

(Collins Concise Dictionary – second edition, 1988. 1.6 million words of text for nine pounds and ninety five pence – those were the days!)

The definitions of “preservation” and “conservation” are so similar that we can, for the sake of this article, just use “conservation”.

So, which are we going setting out to do – conservation or restoration? Well, whilst the main focus of these pages is going to be on restoration, it will be very worthwhile to discuss conservation first.

CONSERVATION –

I have a passion for 18th century furniture. If an item were to come into my possession that was fairly late, not terribly rare and not of particularly great monetary value, I consider that I have enough skill, knowledge and experience to be able to perform a perfectly satisfactory restoration. If (please God!) I suspected that an item was by a certain Mr Thomas Chippendale; I would not be so arrogant as to even begin to think of restoring it myself. I would also most likely not be able to afford to have it restored by one of the specialist restorers.

That would leave me with two options – either sell it to someone who could afford to restore it, or if (selfishly) I couldn’t bear to part with it, make sure that its condition does not deteriorate any further – i.e., conserve it, so that it could be restored professionally at a later date. Some parts of our sewing machines are prime targets for restoration – particularly the woodwork. Other parts cannot (realistically) be restored – for example, the decals – but we don’t want them to deteriorate - so part of our restoration programme will involve conservation.

RESTORATION –

When you begin to contemplate improving the condition of an old sewing machine, you are - like it or not - entering the world of “antique restoration” – a strange, mystical and shadowy place inhabited by all sorts of secret practitioners and black magicians (or so they would have you believe!).

There are lots of different creatures lurking in the amateur regions of this world. Amongst the most prominent are –

- The Guru – actually does very little. Usually says that “amateurs shouldn’t be attempting restoration”, to hide the fact that he doesn’t really possess either the knowledge or the skills required. This person is also often an Expert type 2 (see chapter 1). Not dangerous – just annoying.

- The Amateur Expert – usually knows quite a bit and is often pretty good – but may not be quite as good as he or she likes to think. Can be dangerous to rare and high-value items.

- The Clueless – for some reason, these always seem to be really likable people. Sometimes having the sense to ask for advice – but often not - they blunder onwards, the possible historic value of an item only seeming to occur to them after they’ve destroyed it. Potentially quite dangerous.

- The Enthusiastic Novice – the most common type of amateur – and by far the most dangerous. Also sometimes referred to as “The Terminator”, as most antiques will be rendered worthless within minutes by this creature. Enthusiastic Novices can be created en-masse simply by writing articles such as this about restoration and publishing them on a web site!

An antique or vintage sewing machine is an item that is old and has two histories. Firstly, it is a part of our social history. It has influenced the progress of mankind in many areas of industry, and significantly altered the life of the ordinary housewife. Possibly only the gun and the clock have had a more profound effect in changing the lives of so many people over the last 150 years. But each individual sewing machine also has a history of its own. Who were the people who made it - who bought it when it was new – were they really proud to own it - where did they live – were they rich or poor – was it passed down through their family – what happy times or tragedies has it been a witness to? In most cases, we’ll never know, but we should respect the fact that it has survived wars, pestilence and goodness knows what else - and hope that it survives us! We need to have respect for the skilled crafts people who gave it life and for the owners who have cherished it during its years of hard work.

Whilst technically, we “own” the sewing machines in our collections, I prefer to think of us as “custodians”, looking after the machines for a period of time before they are passed on to future generations. We’re only passing through this world before going on to a better or worse place (your beliefs – your choice etc.). Those machines were working hard long before we were born. It’s our duty to try to make sure that their existence is a little less transient than ours.

APPROACHES TO RESTORATION –

Your approach to restoration will almost certainly be influenced by whereabouts on the planet you happen to be standing. The two main styles that I’ll talk about here are those accepted in America and the U.K. These tend towards being the two extremes; thus the restoration styles found in most other countries usually fall somewhere between the two.

Our American cousins tend to like their antiques to be as near perfect as possible – “as new” sells well over there – they like ‘em to shine! Although I’m English, I have a great deal of sympathy with the American philosophy. Most antiques were made by highly skilled craftsmen or women. Those people took great pride in their work and went to considerable lengths to make their products beautiful as well as functional. When the products were new, they looked new – and that’s the way the makers intended them to look. If an antique ends up in a rickety and dilapidated state, it no longer looks the way its maker intended it to look, nor does it fulfil the function for which it was created. It can be argued that we show the greatest respect for those long-dead craftsmen and women if we restore the item to its original condition and make it capable of again doing the job that it was built for. If we simply conserve the item in its dilapidated state, it could be considered that, although we are arresting its decline, we are showing little respect for its original creator, who most certainly wouldn’t want his or her name associated with it in that state!

American restorers will go to great lengths to make antiques look as good as new – which I can applaud. To achieve this, many of them will use the best materials available today – epoxy adhesives, synthetic varnishes etc.

This is where the British restorers fall-out with their American counterparts.

The British approach is much more minimalist - the art of doing nothing …… but making a very good job of it! The British taste is for an antique to be in very good condition – for its age. If it’s 150 years old, they like it to look 150 years old and show the signs of having been used throughout its long existence – but still to be in “nice” condition. The fundamental rule of British restoration is that any work done should be reversible, so that developments in the field of restoration can be applied in the years to come. Also, British restorers usually use materials that are as near as possible identical to those used originally. Work carried out using such products as epoxy adhesive is most certainly not reversible. In addition, we don’t know what the long-term effects will be on the original wood and metal. It’s simply not known if these modern materials will degrade the original wood etc. more quickly than would otherwise have happened.

So these are the two extremes of thought. Neither is right – neither is wrong, so take your pick. I, being English, will be mainly using the British approach in these articles, but this will make little difference to those of you from other, far-flung lands across the sea, because although the glues, varnishes etc. may be different, the processes used are substantially the same.

I hope that the above thoughts will help you to develop the sense of responsibility that will be needed if you are to not end-up joining the ranks of the “Enthusiastic Novices”, destroying all before you!

“Yes – very nice – but when are we going to make a start?” I hear you say, straining at the leash! Well, there’s just one more area that we need to explore before taking the plunge, this being the tools and materials that we will be using for our restoration work. In the next article, we will be discussing these, along with examining the ways in which wood behaves (or misbehaves) under various conditions. We will also look at the skills that we will need to develop in order to produce work that we can be proud of.

See you all again soon.

Fenman
Feb 2004.


© Paul Hayes 2004. All Rights Reserved
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