The “Forbidden” Painted Antique Furniture Trick That Works in 10 Minutes

Skinner estimated a painted Shaker chest at $1,500 to $2,500. It sold for $35,670, and the catalogue called its surface original red paint. Museum conservators won't put paste wax on paint like that, and this video shows why, with a four-look flashlight check that takes about ten minutes on your own painted chest, chair, box or cupboard. The countdown runs 12 to 1 by sold price: a Manheim blanket chest that came with its own sheet of glass, a New Hampshire chest the catalogue called dry, a Brooklyn Museum chest that sold for half its low estimate, a seven-color Schoharie County chest, a Nantucket Windsor with black over red, a Berks County Bucher box, a Soap Hollow cupboard and the 1960s antiquing kits, the Enfield Shaker chest, a Lehigh County dower chest, a small Mahantongo Valley chest, a Johannes Spitler chest that stayed in one family for six generations, and the Adam Minnich unicorn chest that made $440,000 with a later coat of varnish on it. Along the way: what a black light shows on old paint, what Leigh Keno put on a stripped Windsor chair, and why the National Park Service stops at dusting.