Tosh will work on furniture from other periods, but he admits that MCM is his personal favorite and his specialty, since he began collecting long before he made his living working with wood. He has an affinity for Danish Modern and Heywood Wakefield, and his mastery of the Heywood Wakefield wheat and champagne finishes has become nothing short of legendary.
Tosh started his career at Lakewood Furniture doing the "gruntwork" of sanding, stripping and a little staining. Eventually, he opened his own shop and now is the go-to guy of many of the major designers and mid-century dealers in the area. He mixes his own toners and stains and claims that a great deal of trial and error went into perfecting them.
Calling some designers people who "like to do bad things to good furniture" in the name of making everything match and covering imperfections, he generally discourages "ebonizing" and encourages using many different types and colors of woods in the same house or even the same room.
When asked for one top secret trick of the trade, Tosh offers several, including steaming dents out of furniture with a wet paper towel and an iron and using heavy, uncut carnuba wax as a cleaning and waterproofing agent. He advises people not to try refinishing unless they know what they're doing, as it just makes his job more costly and more difficult, but his best tip for lovers of beautiful furniture is a simple one: Use a coaster!
From interviews on decordallas.com and dfwmcm.blogspot.com
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| Dunbar rosewood cabinets toshmahal.com |
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| Herman Miller thinedge cabinet toshmahal.com |
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| Robsjohn-Gibbings table toshmahal.com |
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| Heywood Wakefield hutch toshmahal.com |
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Ooo ahhh I'll take Before and After #1!
ReplyDeleteAmazing design!
Didn't he literally raise that from the dead? Looking at his site made me remember how many great pieces of furniture got "antiqued" in the late 60s. For those of you too young to remember what I'm talking about, you painted the piece a base color...light red, country blue and light olive green were popular...then painted a black glaze over that, which you partially rubbed off before it dried. (Something similar is still made for the primitive and shabby chic folks, but it's not quite the same, from what I read when I Googled.)
ReplyDeleteI had a pair of the tables shown in the Fourth "before / after" They were sweet. They had a metal detail sort of like the trim down the side of a mid Fifties domestic car. The center wood was a very DEEP flame maple. I sold them for $80 / pair. They were straight from the thrift store and I did nothing to them, less hitting them with some Pledge. I'm just starting to get into refinishing. Maybe someday people will be blogging about me saving stuff like this!
ReplyDeleteThat Cherner arm chair has me drooling.