This monumental table resides in a state building in Auckland and has hosted royalty, Prime ministers and Presidents - including then Vice-President Joe Biden in 2016.  The joints were loose and needed pulling apart and regluing and the table needed refinishing.  I stained it to match the original dark stain as was popular in NZ in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods in NZ, but worked with the natural sparkle of the kauri to achieve a balance of colour that - while dark – works with the original colour to achieve natural pleasing colour without looking overly artificial.

 

I polished the base with clear shellac but for the top a more hard-wearing finish was needed so I had this spray lacquered. Table tops can be treated differently from the rest of the piece as they obviously take a lot more wear than the rest of the piece, and have often been refinished many times over the course of their existence. So, the table has the benefit of a nice hand finished base and practical smooth hard-wearing top which might have to be refinished at some point in the coming decades whereas the base should will not require refinishing for a century or more partly due to wear and tear but also to the superior lasting qualities of shellac.