This section is from the book "Old Oak Furniture", by Fred Roe. Also available from Amazon: Old Oak Furniture.
There has been, and is, a considerable difference of opinion as to whether the surface of the wood during the olden time was left in its natural state, or whether it was waxed or polished by any artificial means. There is little doubt that, during Gothic times, carved woodwork was painted in bright colours to heighten its effect, though very, very few specimens have come down to us in this state at the present day. In Tudor or Stuart times, however, the case was entirely different, and while some believe in the application of such substances as beeswax and turpentine, or linseed oil, others maintain that the wood was left in a dry, untouched state. My own opinion, based on careful inspection of well-preserved specimens, which have never lost their original surface through painting and pickling, is that woodwork, certainly after the Reformation, was generally brightened with a very thin coat of clear varnish, wax or linseed oil being afterwards employed as a polish. This will sound like rank heresy in the opinion of many, but I believe it, nevertheless, to be the fact. The wonderful luminosity of , the surface of the best - preserved pieces requires something more than even centuries of wax rubbing to account for it.
Traces of very old varnish which would naturally form an excellent foundation for any subsequent polish are distinctly visible beneath the superficial gloss.
Touching once more on the subject of popular fallacies. Those attached to furniture of the seventeenth century are very numerous, and often as circumstantial in their details as they are absurd. In Shakespeare's house in Stratford - on-Avon this is exemplified in the many anachronisms which it contains. Some chairs and a sideboard, or dresser, of late seventeenth-century date, which were perhaps made for the house, and have actually existed in it since their manufacture, have been gravely regarded as having been used by the great poet himself. In view of the elaborate and minute investigations which have taken place in recent years into the writings of Shakespeare, and into the history of his life, it seems to me extraordinary that the authenticity of the so-called Shake-pearian relics should only recently have been openly called in question. In the autumn of the year 1903 public interest in the Shakespearian associations of Stratford-on-Avon rose to an abnormal degree, owing to the proposed demolition by the Town Council of certain cottages in the neighbourhood of the poet's birthplace, in order to provide a site for a Free Library. The public discussion of the value or otherwise of these cottages as Shakespeare relics not unnaturally led to communications in the press on the whole subject of local Shakespearian traditions, one of the most important letters contributed to the discussion being one from Mr. J. Cuming Walters, who 4 - 2 questioned the authenticity of the great majority of the relics, principally on the ground of the absence of evidence.
There were, of course, a few orthodox Shakespeare lovers bold enough to challenge the unbelief of the student, but as a result of the controversy Mr. Walters received the following, amongst other admissions, from those who met his attack:
1. Not one piece of furniture in the Henley Street house is known to have been there in Shakespeare's time.
2. Shakespeare's desk from the Grammar School is only classed as his by old tradition, and is almost certainly of later date.
3. Anne Hathaway's cottage has nothing but tradition to support it, and we do not know that Shakespeare was ever in the place. The furniture was not in the cottage in Shakespeare's time.
4. The shovel-board in New Place has no proved connection with Shakespeare.
With Mr. Walter's attitude on this matter I entirely agree, as far as he goes; but in my view, the student should not be content with a statement founded on an absence of evidence, but should rather place himself in the position of being able, with some assurance, to say, from the evidence which any given relic bears on the face of it, whether that relic is pre-Shakespearian, contemporary with Shakespeare, or post-Shakespearian. I could give no better example of the necessity of a proper study of the various periods and their interpretation than the ignorant traditions that surround some of the furniture in the Shakespeare house.
The daily press frequently contains wildly casual remarks on antiquities, real or spurious, but what the connoisseur has to do is to distinguish between science and tradition. Popular ideas as to rough, strangely-shaped, and crazy furniture are loose in the extreme, for these qualities do not necessarily imply great age. In the course of the recent controversy of which I have been speaking, the case for and against local traditions was thus admirably put by Mr. Sidney Lee:
'It is to be admitted that local traditions often tend to become, without historic justification, articles of faith. On the other hand, the search for truth may be baulked if local traditions are scorned before their credentials are submitted to careful inquiry.'
My own experience supports the latter contention, for I have sometimes found that a local legend in which no credence could be placed has been the means of pointing the way to actual history.
 
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