Photo: nicodeux / Flickr

If you’re lucky enough to find a good, old piece of furniture with all its hardware intact, you won’t have to read on. Unfortunately, it is seldom the case that an antique makes it through the years with all its original fittings. Buying new hardware to match the style of your piece shouldn’t be too difficult, but if you go this route, you’ll create a more authentic look by ageing the hardware. Alternatively, you could duplicate missing pieces.

How to make new hardware look old

Once you’ve looked through some old style books or spoken to the experts, you can go about purchasing the correct hardware for your particular piece of furniture. Ageing the hardware would be the appropriate next step as you don’t want to have a beautiful old piece with flashy new hardware getting in the way of its character.

A simple way of ageing new brass hardware is to hold it over a burning candle until the brass starts to blacken from the smoke. Then, using a rag, wipe some of the smoky blackness off of the hardware until you have a tarnished old look. Then seal the hardware with some waterproof lacquer.

Otherwise, try and locate a supplier of commercial fluid that mottles brass.

How to duplicate hardware

If your old piece is only missing one or two handles, it would be a shame to replace all of them. Rather consider having a brass foundry make a mould of your original so as to make a good copy. This may be a more expensive route to go but you’ll end up with something that looks remarkably similar, right down to the natural oxidation of the metal.

That said, an antique with all its original hardware is definitely more valuable than one with reproduction replacements.

Tags: furniture