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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jeff Drum, post: 398986, member: 6444&quot;]Well, Kirks Impecunious Collectors Guide to Antiques came out in 1975, so I think he deserves a lot of credit and wasn’t really late to any party. That’s the book where he lays out his belief that it is a mistake to “improve” antique furniture by refinishing it. It is an excellent book by the way, and well worth adding to any library on antiques.</p><p><br /></p><p>And I disagree that only museum pieces should be left alone, and in fact Kirk would disagree with that as well. He was not a snob about the antiques he collected - for him it was about design and authenticity. He had plenty of 19th century furniture along with his older stuff - but it had to have a beautiful design and original or for some other reason beautiful finish.</p><p><br /></p><p>I’ll quote from his book:</p><p>I received a letter I thought about as I worked on this book. The writer loved old surfaces but friends kept asking when the pieces were going to be cleaned up, “refinished” and it had been hard to resist their pressure. This book is a reaction&nbsp; to such “friends” for it is about the art of looking: perceiving and understanding what is there to be seen, not what you can “do” to a piece.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for grunge:</p><p>We are so conditioned by colonial kitsch that it takes a leap of faith not unlike a conversion to see that a grungy, tattered, cracked, and beat-up surface is marvelous.</p><p><br /></p><p>By the way, there was an auction at Skinner of some of Kirk’s collection used in his book. Auction was several years ago in 2013, searchable if interested. I don’t think he ever changed his mind about leaving antique finishes untouched on antique furniture - he was still living with these pieces when he died before they went to auction.&nbsp; But I suspect he was bothered a lot by the “shabby chic” look which used new paint on vintage (not antique) pieces to simulate age. I think it was the fraudulent excesses of shabby chic more than anything else that led some people away from the aesthetic that he laid out in his book. But that hasn’t diminished the added value of original or old finish on antique handmade furniture.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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