Over the last few years we have seen a revival
of a polishing system that dates back to the 1800s. Known as Liming White or
Cerusing, it is the application of a white paste during the polishing process
that results in a white fleck in the pores of the timber.
We were first asked to apply this finish to a
project in a home in Toorak in 2013. The client had spent just over twelve
months looking for someone to apply a finish she had seen during her trip to
Europe. When a picture from a magazine was shown to Craig at our office he was
able to recall having polished using this process only once. That was 35 years
ago when he was still an apprentice.
A
little research and by digging out some old polishing books he had stored away
Craig was able to manufacture the white paste and train up one of our polishers
on how to apply this rather unique finish.
Over
the last few years we have seen more and more of this finish. As a number of
flooring companies start to use this finish on their flooring imported from
Europe we see designers starting to copy these flooring samples onto their
joinery.
The
Cerusing can be applied in a multitude of colours and can also be applied over
stained timber or clear polished timber. As a result there are endless colour
options available.
We
have applied white cerusing over grey stain, as seen above. We have applied white
cerusing over fumed oak as well as black cerusing over clear polished oak, as
shown below.
This polishing system works best on open grained timber such as American and European Oak. As it is a hand applied finish it can be quite expensive to complete but as you can see from the photos, It is quite an impressive finish
