Heywood Wakefield Wishbone Table

A Heywood Wakefield drop-leaf dining table arrived without its leaves — and without its apron. Lost somewhere across sixty years of moves and storage. The work was to fabricate new leaves and a new apron from scratch, then make all three pieces disappear next to the original sixty-year patina of the table top.

The challenge is color theory: raw birch with cool undertones plus pure yellow pulls green. So the new wood got a bespoke tinted lacquer — three drops TransTint Honey Amber to one drop TransTint Medium Brown per pint of thinned clear lacquer. The brown’s reddish undertone cancels the green and pushes the final color into Heywood Wakefield’s signature warm wheat.

Sprayed in sheer passes, flashed between coats, evaluated in natural light. When the leaves dropped into the table for the first time, you couldn’t tell where the new wood started.