In furniture conservation, we teach the conservation techniques I learned at my internship at The Smithsonian Museum. With these techniques we can restore and preserve valuable wooden objects. Among such techniques is French Polishing.
In the Victorian era, French polishing was commonly used on mahogany and other expensive woods, and was considered to be the best possible finish for exclusive furniture. The process was very labor intensive, and many major manufacturers abandoned the technique around the 1920's & 1930's, instead preferring the cheaper and quicker techniques of spray finishing nitrocellulose lacquer and abrasive buffing. Sadly, today, French Polishing is somewhat of a lost art.
