Walked through a high-end showroom in Scottsdale and the 'distressed' finish on a $12,000 table looked like it was done with a belt sander and a bad attitude.

2 comments

2 Comments

You know, that reminds me of something. My brother-in-law does custom woodwork, and he showed me a "rustic" bench he made for a client. It looked like it had been left outside for twenty years, but it was brand new. I asked him why he beat it up so much, and he just smiled and said the client paid extra for that look. Faith12 has a point about the raw craft idea, but sometimes I wonder if we're just paying for someone to mess up nice wood on purpose. There's a line between art and just making something look old and worn out.

faith1217h ago

Maybe that's the whole point though. A lot of that high end rustic look is about raw, imperfect craft. If it was too clean and perfect, wouldn't it just look like a factory made it?