One of the first things I do when I am onsite for an appraisal of antiques is touch the furniture.  While the owner is showing me what needs to be appraised, I am already feeling the exterior edges looking for a soft touch.  Of all the senses, the sense of touch or tactioception can quickly tell you more about an antique than ophthalmoception, audioception, gustaoception and olfacoception combined.  If a piece’s exterior edges are soft, then there is a good chance that the piece is old.  Old wood loses its crispness and softens as it ages, because of the same natural and manmade factors that produce a fine patina.  Much like patina, the most important ingredient in the softening of wood is time.  That is why it is often hard to fake.  After about one hundred years, all exterior edges should be soft to the touch.  Everything from air gently flowing to the repeated dents and dings of a broom slowly erodes the once crisp edges of a piece of furniture.  If your fingers find a crisp or sharp edge, then up goes the red flag.  The hard edge may be an old repair or restoration, or it may be telling you that the piece is newer than it appears to be.

“You’ve grown soft.”  Every edge on this Chippendale mahogany drop leaf table, of Salem, Massachusetts origin, circa 1770, is soft to the touch.

Riddle me this, antiquist…What is the result of care (dusting, waxing, polishing) & the result of neglect (dirt, grease, grime)?  What is both man-made (scratches, nicks, dings) & natural (sunlight, chemical changes in the wood & its surface).  You guessed it - Patina!  The best definition of patina comes from the Godfather of American Antiques, Israel Sack (1883 - 1959) - “Patina is everything that happens to an object over the course of time.”  Sack is said to have used the following analogy to help define “patina” for one of his senior female patrons: “Today you are a lovely woman of sixty.  However, who you are today is not who you were when you were twenty.  The difference is patina.”  Patina refers to an antique’s finished surface.  Patina is the mellowing of the finish in the wood’s pores.  It cannot be faked, reproduced or replicated, because the most important ingredient is time.  Patina is what gives an antique character.  The soft glow & depth of color of a fine patina will make a collector weak in the knees.  It remains the Holy Grail for antiques collectors.  And it adds value.  Once an antique has been stripped or refinished it loses its patina forever.  It may take a couple of centuries for its patina to be built back up.  Patina is evidence of the antique’s history & proof of its authenticity.  When it is lost, the value of the piece can be a tenth of what it would have been with its original patina.

This Chippendale mahogany card table was made in New York circa 1760 to 1780.  It has a choice mellow brown patina & shows us the natural color differences between the exterior & the interior.