No question this is a beautiful buffet. With great carvings and detail work. And it has it's flaws; although quite minor and cosmetic.
I really wanted to embrace the British Colonial era, and I knew I wanted to focus more on the finish of the body, rather than the center image transfer.
I think, on this piece, the image transfer is secondary. And because of that, I choose to mute the image.
My aim when working on a piece of furniture is never to make it look 'refinished' or 'as new'. I want my pieces to look authentically worn and to tell a story. I don't want 'originally'. So, I tend to step back and embrace the dings, and the chips. I wanted this piece to look as though it had lived in a hot, sticky, exotic climate. I used an etching by Thomas Daniell titled 'View taken on the Esplanade, Calcutta' (1797), to depict the era. With any type of furniture that has lived in a humid climate, you would expect that the finish is compromised; hence the varying hues of glazes, shellac etc.
It's a piece of furniture that depicts a window into another world, another realm. It's the 'Calcutta' buffet.
