An Antique Vanity in Wedgwood Blue

I love how unrelentingly unpredictable my job as a furniture refinisher can be. With a never ending and steady stream of furniture coming through my workshop, I am constantly surprised, challenged, and inspired. This stunning antique mahogany vanity, for example, was such a pleasant surprise. Now I try pretty darn hard to only work on interesting, unique, and high quality pieces, but this one takes the cake for top marks in all three categories. It was brought to me by a new client who lives in the next town over, and I could hardly believe how spectacular it was as she and I unloaded it from her minivan. The carving! The figured mahogany veneer top! The scale! The balance! The mirror! Those fluted legs!
       Once I had scraped my jaw off the driveway we discussed her hopes for the piece's refinish. She displays some of her Wedgwood collection on the vanity at home and thought a blue might be nice to play off the color of the plates. I could not agree more. I mixed up a custom batch of Wedgwood blue and it's the perfect perfect color for the piece. We opted to keep the original elaborate bowknot hardware, because it's stunnnnning, but I spiced them up a hair with some gold rub-n-buff. I don't have any wedgewood of my own, but I staged it with a piece of antique flow blue that I scored at a tagsale for a dollar a few summers back.
      The vanity reminds me a great deal of an antique tall chest I did last year, ironically in a nearly identical blue, and I suspect they might have come from the same manufacturer probably right around 1920. You can view that piece here http://heirandspace.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-masons-chest.html
And I've included a picture of it at the bottom of the post.

All in all, this vanity is one of my favorite projects I've ever done, and I know I keep saying that about different pieces, but my god, there's so much beautiful furniture in the world, it's hard not to fall head over heels in love with all these beauties!