Cardboard Covered Trunk

We work on a lot of trunks.  I mean, A LOT of  trunks.  Right now we have 4 trunks, plus 2 chests in all in different stages of restoration.  We have a really old, all wood trunk, we have a metal trunk, and we have two cardboard covered trunks.  Now I know  cardboard sounds a little flimsy, but trust me, this is a very sturdy trunk, and large enough to fit a grown person inside.  
Around the turn of the last century, trunk makers started using cardboard to mimic leather for their less expensive trunks.  They would still use leather handles, and fancy metal corner caps and nail detailing, but the main covering would be cardboard.  This way a person with a more limited budget could still get a really nice piece of traveling equipment.

One downside of a cardboard trunk is that when you peel your traveling sticker off, sometimes it takes a bit of your trunk with it.  At least that is what happened in this case.



We began our repairs by filling the ripped areas with a form of putty and then smoothed it so that the trunk surface was level again. We then had to do color touch up work to blend the new patched area with the rest of the trunk.  The real trick here was to not make it perfectly black, but to make it's appearance match the aged look of the rest of the trunk.  In addition to the top surface repairs, we replaced the broken leather handles and straightened out the lock.  We left the traveling sticker on the front and suggest that no one tries to take it off!  It is a cool piece of history, and we would have a new hole to patch!

Cautionary Tale Against Modern Furniture

This is yet another cautionary tale against purchasing newly made furniture.  Old furniture you can count on, when it looks like wood, it is wood.  But new furniture, a person never knows.  That is what happened to the unfortunate owner of this coffee table.  It appeared to be made out of wood, then painted  black.  It even had a noticeable wood grain. The coffee table was made with just two legs,  one on each side, and they ran the width of the table.  One of them broke off.   It was only then, that the true nature of this piece of 'wooden' furniture was truly revealed.

This 'Wood' was actually ground wood pulp which had been pressed into hard 'boards'.  The outside of the 'boards' was given a wood grain pattern.  The inside of each board is hollow and actually, (I can hardly believe I am going to say this) actually filled with strips of cardboard! CARDBOARD! I am horrified that someone out there is making this product and calling it furniture!  They are essentially selling fancy painted cardboard furniture and calling it wood.  I wonder what they would say if you asked them what type of wood was used?  Would they try and claim whatever variety was used to make the wood pulp?  

The truly sad thing about this is that an average consumer would have no idea, from looking at a piece like this (with out the break) that this was anything but wood.  They could easily believe that they were actually purchasing a sturdy, genuine wooden coffee table.  And that is where I get back to my original point.  Take buying older furniture seriously my dear readers.   It will actually last, and if some child dances on your coffee table a little to often, and a leg breaks off, at least it is made out of something that can easily be repaired,  wood!