Literally, no. Restore means to restore. But it does not mean restoring something to its new condition. A piece of furniture has been made once and has survived certain eras. Time and wear and tear have left their mark. The furniture has now acquired its own individual historical story, which should not be made invisible. Time is not to be set back, nor can a new condition be achieved.
The private client is expected to restore the entirety of functionality and appearance without neglecting the history of the furniture. The restorer must establish a symbiosis with the furniture, he must get to know it. Know when it was created and also by whom. In the case of modern designer furniture, it is particularly important to preserve the designer's intention.
However, there are also private clients who expect a restoration to make the furniture look as if it had just been made. For a restorer, this would mean breaking all the rules of his professional art. In the area of visible aesthetics, this can still be done to some extent. But when it comes to the material wood itself, this desire has professional ethical limits. One can conserve, reconstruct or create imperfections in pieces of wood, but never make new out of old.
Antiques in the field of wood and furniture were often made with materials that in our time are difficult to obtain, no longer available at all or only at great financial expense. Not in every case does the effort justify the intention.
The object of restoration is always the original substance. In the case of historical furniture, however, the term refers to the work as it presents itself to the restorer at the moment restoration begins. Not the point in time, the respective cultural epoch of manufacture.
The restorer uses appropriate technologies and subordinates his own craftsmanship and creativity to this overriding goal.
Object research, the reconstruction of the history of the work, becomes a central step in the process. From this, it can be decided in individual cases which parts are absolutely worth preserving, which can and should be sacrificed in order to allow access to earlier versions. What soiling is to be removed and what is worth preserving as a testimony to the time, which parts should not be taken over as disfiguring foreign bodies or irregular changes.
