Fake 119

Our home for our recent holiday in Dartmoor might have been quite old, but the kitchen was relatively new, complete with the sort of cupboards which would not have been out of place here in Epsom. Reasonably substantial wooden affairs, with the bits that showed finished in satin grey. And the bits that didn't show being natural pine. 

All this being entirely proper. The bits of the brown wood furniture of old (the sort of furniture that one is lucky to be able to give away these days, be it ever so solid, well made and handsome) that showed were, if necessary, stained a mahogany brown and then polished. And the bits that didn't were left natural. It wasn't considered proper to stain or polish interiors. Or even to sand them down if they did not need to slide and were not going to be touched. Nasty French habit.

However, I suspected a rat, and lifting a shelf to inspect the end grain, I found that it was actually made of a rather coarse chipboard. Perfectly up to the job but not what it purported to be at all. 

In its defence, one might say that coarse chipboard is cheap and serviceable - but it needs some kind of a finish to keep the water out and the stains off. So if it is cheap to fake up a white wood finish, perhaps with some cunning computer driven printing process, why not? The finish has got to be something so why not white wood?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/fake-118-or-manufacturing-faces.html.