An Interview with Bob
Bob owns Restoration Furniture, a Manhattan store where he breathes new life into antiques on site. He’s a kind of wood connoisseur, in addition to being a character fixture in the neighborhood. He’s been working with wood for over half a century.
When did you start doing furniture?
In 1958 when I was 10 years old in my father’s basement.
What was the first piece you ever restored?
Cleaning up and organizing the workbench.
What’s the most interesting wood that there is to work with?
There’s no most interesting wood. They’re all interesting for different reasons. They all have different assets, different qualities, and different shortcomings. The beauty and grain in mahogany, the strength and the color of ebony. The practicality of pine. And the absolutely clean, void less surface of basswood. Some are too soft, and some are too hard. Each one has its own unique qualities.
How do you feel about that kind of crap, those kinds of composites, changing the furniture making industry?
Well, its basis is obsolescence. It has a huge commercial value and trade because people buy it and throw it away. It ends up in a landfill, rotting away, leaking that formaldehyde and other commercial substances. Furniture that lasts is - well, in fact, nothing lasts if not given proper care and oversight. The beauty about true American-made furniture, even into this century, we still have furniture being recovered from 100, 200 years ago. The beauty about real wood furniture, 100% wood furniture, is that it will last forever. It’s very serviceable, and that’s what we do in my business. We restore, we redeem, if you might say we resurrect furniture that might otherwise be left to the side, devalued.
Wood has different kinds of smells. Oak is rich, cherry is sweet…
Cherry is sooty. Mahogany smells – it’s very hard for me to determine. The most aromatic? Pine. Because of the oils in it, because of the resins. Teak is very, very serviceable. You can oil teak, and it will resist stains. Water, etc. They’re all different.
If one wants to keep her wood looking good, what do you recommend she do?
Three hundred coats of polyurethane. [laughs] No, just kidding. Tung oil. If it’s a good solid hardwood, tung oil. Multiple coats of tung oil, rubbed down with steel wool in between. It’s must more waterproof than common shellac, or even varnishes in some cases. Varnishes sometimes have a tendency to disassociate from the wood. Even though you get penetration, it can still lift if moisture gets under it.
What’s the majority of American-made furniture made of?
Stuff that came of the Victorian era was walnut – ugly walnut. Pre 20th century furniture was made of indigenous hardwoods, or imported hardwoods like Honduran mahogany, or Philippine mahogany. This was higher quality furniture. Indigenous American hardwood is pine, maple, oak, and ash. Later in the 20th century, because we were working with composites in wood, plywood came about. We used plywood in one of the first huge seaplanes ever made, the Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes’s plane. Plywood was easier molded for making lightweight forms of water transportation, like in the case of PT boats in WWII. Wood has always been in a state of evolution. Quality furniture will always for the most part be made of hardwoods, solid woods.
Purists and high end furniture will always be made in hardwood – whether indigenous or exotic. You can take an environmental twist we’re all talking about green, but now, in sometimes as little as six months – when the student changes his dormitory room – furniture ends up on the street. Like with other material commodities, we build based on price and obsolescence. Fifty years ago, things were built to last fifty years. Today things are built for a night on the town. That’s an interesting thing about green, and pre-green. At the beginning of the 20th century, we weren’t filling landfills with furniture. Now, every garbage day, they’re picking up Jennifer Convertibles and other crap. It’s a commodification based on how many times you can recreate this moment in furniture.
Photos by Lisette Johnson