# 50's Mengel Permanized Blonde



## dmr3b (Mar 21, 2015)

The family has handed down this china cabinet that is in
need of some work. It's a 1950's piece made by Mengel and says "Mengel permanized furniture," on the inside of the drawer. My wife loves this thing and wants to keep the blonde look. I'm at a loss where to start redoing this thing. Normally I would clean it up, make some repairs, change corroded hardware, etc. Everything I google or ask people about, say to strip the old shellac off and redo the finish. However, it appears this blonde finish is actually strips of some kind of wood over the wood the piece is actually made of.

I attached a picture of one of the damaged areas to provide a visual of how it appears to be strips of some kind. And any time I do a search for Mengel blonde furniture I just get ebay items or a clipping of the original ad for the furniture they made. I am not sure what permanized means, how they achieved this blonde look, or how to proceed. Even just wiping the piece down for original assessment made some of these blonde strips peel off slightly. Any further direction will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.


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## CharlesNeil (Oct 21, 2007)

Its hard to tell exactly, but the wood appears to be oak, or ash, I suspect ash as red oak would have the red tint, and harder to over come, I suspect it is also a lot of veneers, thus the strips peeling.

I also think the finish would have been a toned ( colored) lacquer, this was quite poplar in the 50's,.

Could it be replicated, I think so, but you would need to strip it completely , do the repairs and then respray it with a toned lacquer.


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