Make It Until You Fake It

While Angus Council has banned banquets of any form at Balintore Castle, one must I feel, be ready for the call when neither budgetary contraints nor bureacracy inhibit lavish largesse at scale.

To that end, over the years, I have amassed a few hundred place settings from auctions up and down the land. I look for large matching sets at bargain prices. What prompted the hunt was an emergency need for place settings, so reluctantly I popped into Birmingham IKEA en route to the castle and bought 100 plates, 100 bowls and 100 side-plates. So while the shopping trip was successful, I felt that I had failed in not biding my time and neither buying antique nor vintage, and ever since then, I have kept my eyes peeled. 

I now need somewhere to store this tableware. Large kitchen cupboards tend to go for a fortune at auction, whereas bookcases go for a pittance. The solution therefore is to buy a bookcase to use as a kitchen cupboard. A couple of weeks ago, this deceptively large bookcase came up for auction at Curr & Dewer in Dundee.

bookcase in auction catalogue

The catalogue picture was too fuzzy to know if it was genuinely Victorian or reproduction, but I could always just put a low bid on, and indeed I was delighted to bag it for just a tenner.

bookcase in Balintore drawing room

Back at the castle, a brief examination showed it is 19th Century and solid oak - hurrah!

The unit is 4'6" height and I wanted it raised off the ground so one is not scrabbling about at floor level to access the bottom shelf. The problem is that the basement room where the unit is being put is only 6'6" high so it could only be raised by 2'. Normal kitchen base units are 3' high, so something bespoke would have to be built underneath.

I suggested some beautiful Victorian billiard table legs on eBay which could be cut-down. Gregor suggested cupboards underneath instead which made more sense. We then went on the hunt for reclaimed cupboard doors in the castle. I have quite a collection. Sadly, the doors all are around 3' high.

Then it hit me. In 2020, I had bought the old pulpit from Lochee Parish Church in Dundee along with other bits-and-bobs. We had used a lot of the bits-and-bobs, but nothing from the pulpit. Perhaps some of the wonderful carved panels from the pulput could be used as doors?

carved panels from Lochee Parish Church pulpit

Sadly the panels in the photo above are too large being 3' x 3'. However, rummaging around we found two matching panels 2' (W) x 3' (H). If we turned these sideways and used some other carved details we could make the front of a base unit for the bookcase.

pulpit panels reformed into new cabinet

Above is the result at the end of day 1 (i.e. today) of building this base unit. To my eye the pulpit makes an incredibly convincing cabinet, almost like it never had a past as anything else. Gregor used cock-beaded tongue-and-groove panelling from the pulpit to make the sides of the cabinet.

rear of Gregor-faked antique cabinet

You can see from the rear of the cabinet that the framework is entirely modern, but Gregor is making it until he fakes it as an antique piece.

I now reckon the 3'x3' carved panels could make excellent (kitchen) cupboard doors on the same theme. However, Gregor loves the antique carvings so much he wants them on the wall as pictures! :-)

The moral of the story is that sometimes you have to wait a long time before using reclaimed materials. However, when that rare and right opportunity arises, the joy of recycling quality workmanship and creating something of beauty that will serve a useful purpose into the future, is deeply rewarding.