26/07/2025
Sometimes you see a cupboard that’s so beautiful, you wonder why nobody else has noticed it.
Yes, it’s been badly painted and needs a bit of repair, but the bones are good. (The curved cornice is hiding behind the cupboard in the photo.)
This will be the most beautiful larder cupboard once I’ve finished it.
A grand Victorian cupboard with three lovely internal drawers with chunky k***s, pull out linen shelves and a hanging space to the left which we’ll convert to more shelving. The inside is lined with silk, but sadly way past its best and looking pretty shabby, so that will need to be removed. The silk will have a worthy replacement though, most likely a beautifully printed wallpaper by Lewis and Wood. Expensive yes, but totally fitting.
I wasn’t going to ever paint furniture again, especially to sell, which this will inevitably have to be. Selling hand-painted furniture is notoriously tricky, I should know given the amount of years I did it for before moving towards kitchens.
Sadly, even beautiful antique furniture is still seen as ‘second-hand’. It’s so easy to buy cheap furniture now, we’re constantly encouraged to buy into new ‘trends’, (which if we’re honest with ourselves, we know are only in existence to keep big business churning out even more cheap products out to the masses). Furniture is built cheaply for exactly that reason, it’s not designed to live for more than a moment. The quality of older furniture is incredibly high, it was always built to last a lifetime.
The other problem is the expectation that a piece of high quality, painted furniture will be ‘cheap’. It won’t be.
When it is finished, this lovely cupboard with good bones will look soft and age appropriate, beautifully finished and restored. We only paint traditionally using multiple fine coats of high quality primers and paint. A paint system that lasts. I will only use a unique, hand printed wallpaper, it’s not an ordinary cupboard, so it deserves more than that. There’s a fine piece of furniture hiding under that awful gloopy chalk paint.
I can guarantee though, it will be totally bespoke and a statement piece. A stunningly individual addition to any room it inhabits in the future.
Better too than any modern equivalent. Buy what you love and you will never get bored of it.
The jury is still out on colour. Depending on the paper I choose, the internal drawers and shelves will be something mid toned and the outside will be much lighter.
Thank you to the Prospect Shop for taking this in and seeing its potential, despite a few misgivings. I will show you what we do with it.
