"Our willingness to see what we expect causes much to be overlooked." Citation: Ernst van de Weterings
"This quote by Ernst van de Weterings also applies to the practice of furniture restoration. 'Reconstructions' and the implementation of ideas influenced by contemporary taste led over long phases to irreversible interventions on furniture. When, finally, in the 1980s, people began to look more intensively at historical manufacturing techniques and the associated materials, to research them professionally, the lack of authentically surviving evidence was already very great. In a similar context, Walter Wulf speaks of monument distortions, which stands for the material interchangeability of the monument and the manipulability of its meaning and historical message, and warns of the finiteness of a monument. The individual intention of furnishings, the significance of later remodelling and the resulting effect on the overall appearance of the room, all this is in many cases hardly comprehensible in view of the circumstances described. Often the search for traces has become completely hopeless. Furniture restoration will continue to face this difficult legacy, which is by no means limited to the practice of monument conservation, despite all further scientific and technical progress." Citation: Miller, Katharina: Die Möbelrestaurierung in der Denkmalpflege, 2015)