My Famous Finished Finnish Folk-style Finish

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Another big prop out of the way here. I labored hard over the finish on the little oil lamp. I wanted it to look like tarnished brass or copper alloy, something warm, Rana would have. I decided that all her metal items will have a warm reddish burnished hue, no gold, no silver.


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It took me a long while to construct the lamp's base. I finally made it by slicing off a piece of a larger turned wood base and adding it to the other two pieces made earlier. I carefully filled the gaps between the shapes with stainable wood glue. Upper left, the finished lamp waiting for its paint job. Upper middle, Nova Color's brass pearl base coat and the little wood shape one step ahead with a layer of red copper.

I would paint other random wooden shapes with test ideas for the tarnish finish recipe to see the results before applying them to the lamp. These extra items were then made into filler prop jars and canisters, hooks, etc. Bottom left, My tarnish patina; I ground down black chalk, silvery graphite powder, and an iridescent gray charcoal Sennelier pastel, to mix/tint into plain gloss medium. Lower middle, the lamp mid-finish, still wet with gloss. lower right shows the finished Finnish Folk-style finish.

The most challenging part was getting the sheen right. Too much gloss looked fake, too matte looked lifeless. I tried beeswax (my answer to everything these days), water-diluted gloss, frosting medium, etc. Kept swinging shiny to dull and back. Got a bit obsessive about it. Declared it done. Very happy with it. I fancy myself as having a knack with aged patina finishes and wanted to challenge myself with something other than my usual rusted iron chemical tricks. Now I can add taking plain wood to tarnished metal to my skill list.

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So happy with the lamp was I, that I thought to go ahead and make the setting for it, a round side table that will sit next to Rana's upholstered chair. The table's leg and bottom base were originally from a white-washed birdhouse that I was decor at our wedding.


I took more heavy strength aluminium foil and laminated it, this time with gloss medium. Painted the outside with white gesso, let dry. Used Stick Flat low moisture glue to adhere it to an Irish linen napkin with a fine edge that I'd cut down and sewn to fit.

Once the fabric was backed with the foil, it was an easy matter to carefully sculpt it over the table to drape as a cloth would. I liked the stains of the white cloth but felt it needed something more to look finished. I surprised myself by cutting a nicely woven-textured wine-colored fabric (that I thought was for something else) into a circle as a table topper. Not wanting to make yet another foil, I simply coated the reverse of the topper with a thick layer of Stick Flat and pressed and sculpted it over the sculpted white cloth.

I then cut into both cloths and the cardboard round that is the table's round top to make a trap door for the oil lamp's LED light battery housing under its base. Flip the switch, stick the works into the hole and the lamp sits properly on the surface. No one's the wiser. (More on my newest fascination with re-figuring ready-made orange flickering LED tealight votives later. Let's just say that the semester of electronics I took in Junior High has finally come in handy!)


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Rana's stand-in puppet enjoys a mock-up meal by the lantern in Vermeer-like light. Goodnight all...