Dull Brown to Bright Blue: Chinoiserie Finery and the Kent Coffey Lotus Dresser

So, this potentially great piece was at my local Habitat Restore. It's from the Lotus collection, by Kent Coffey. Very vintage. I looked at it for several weeks, which was a long time for a dresser to sit at that place.

It needed a LOT of work.

In addition to missing drawer runners, someone had begun to deeply carve one of those "I love..." hearts in the top (and left us in suspense), with some extra scratches for good measure. But the wood was good, veneer intact, and it had sensational solid brass pulls and plates. Here's how it looked:

The whole piece, you can't see, was brushed with someone's idea of a refinish--drippy, sloppy varnish. It all had to be scraped and sanded, and well, de-browned. So, I did. Here:

The plates and pulls were delacquered, polished, buffed, and relacquered to make them gleam against the bright blue. I used the bright blue because it made the brass hardware look really really good.