13 - Friday, September 23, 1988 — North Shore News

FAUX FINISHING specialist Don Graham creates finishes that look
so much like marble, jade or other stone Chat peopte think they are the
real item.

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Faux fools, looks great

WITH AN assortment of mediums
that includes glazes, paints and
lacquers, North Vancouver's Dor
Grahain can make wood appeur to
be jade, and plastic pipe appear to
be marble.

From his North Vancouver fur-
niture refinishing shop, Graham
specializes in faux finishing, the art
of refinishing surfaces so that they
appear to be made of pearl,
granite, lapis lazuli, or other stone.

“The technique of using paint te
imitate nature goes back to Egyp-
tian times,” Graham explained of
faux finishing. ‘It’s a very old art.

“At its height in the late 1700s,
it died out until it was revived in
the 1920s...and again in the late
*50s."°

Through experimentation and
original techniques, Graiam has
refined faux finishing to go beyond
the ‘looking like’’ or ‘similar to”
finish; instead, he wants to give
people the impression the surface
is the actual item,

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homes use faux finished items to
duplicate marble pillars, lapis
tabletops or lavish stone bannisters
as the craft carves for itself a
growing spot in the business of in-
terior decoration and design.

“A Jot of people don’t know it
can be done,’ Graham said of the
faux finishes. ‘When they see it
they just love it.”’

Popular in design — pillars, bars
and so on — the techniques can
also be applied to furniture, giving
a new look to pianos, tables, chairs
and more.

While he would dissuade some-
one from faux finishing an anti-
que, he has created some one-of-
a-kind finishes for a number of
older pieces not up to antique
stature. :

“fd take good pieces of furniture
and turn them into pieces that are
fully contemporary and tasteful,”
he explained of the process that
can also create original finishes not
seen elsewhere. ‘What they end up
with is something fully unique.”