3 Missing Escutcheons Cast on a Georgian Chest with Milliput and Renaissance Wax

Reading the Georgian Chest Before Touching a Tool

The chest presented as a five-drawer George III piece, mahogany over a pine carcass, with cockbeaded drawer fronts and swan-neck brass handles. Three escutcheons had gone, leaving pale ghosts where the plate had shielded the timber from decades of light. Two originals survived on the top drawers: a cast brass keyhole surround about 55mm high, 32mm across the waist, with a shallow beaded edge and a single central fixing pin rather than screws.

Matching that profile off the shelf proved impossible. Modern reproduction escutcheons from suppliers such as Martin Pledger or Optimum Brasses run to standard patterns, and none carried the exact beading or the slightly asymmetric wear the originals had earned. Casting a copy from the surviving plate keeps the three replacements consistent with the two that remain, which matters more on a drawer bank where the eye reads all five fittings in one sweep. The decision to cast in epoxy putty rather than metal came down to reversibility and the absence of a foundry: Milliput takes a mould crisply, files like soft brass once cured, and pigments up to a convincing bronze.

Pulling a Silicone Mould from the Surviving Plate

One intact escutcheon was removed by easing the fixing pin with a fine parallel pin punch, working from behind through the drawer front. The plate was degreased in warm water with a drop of washing-up liquid, dried, and laid face-up on a glass tile. A dam of Plasticine built a wall around it about 8mm clear of the edges.

The mould was poured in a tin-cure silicone, the kind sold for small model work with a pot life near ten minutes. Mixed 1:1 by weight and stirred slowly to avoid whipping in air, it was dribbled from one corner so the silicone flowed across the beaded detail and pushed bubbles ahead of it. A gentle tap on the bench brought trapped air to the surface. Left overnight at room temperature, the silicone cured to a firm rubber that released from the brass without tearing. The negative held the keyhole aperture, the bead, and even a small casting flaw on the original, faithfully enough that the copies would carry the same character. That flaw was deliberately kept; a set of three flawless replacements beside two worn originals would announce itself immediately.

Mixing and Packing the Milliput

Milliput Standard grade, the yellow-grey tin, was chosen over the finer Superfine White because the coarser body files and drills with less clogging once hard. Equal lengths were cut from each stick, the resin and hardener, and kneaded on a glass tile until the marbling vanished and the colour ran uniform, roughly three minutes of folding. A smear of Vaseline wiped thinly into the silicone mould acted as a release agent.

The putty was pressed firmly into the deepest detail first, the bead and the keyhole edges, using a dental spatula to work it into corners before the backing mass went on. Overfilling slightly left material to face off flat later. Milliput stays workable for one to two hours and reaches full hardness in around 24, so the three castings were pulled from a single batch across the working session. A short spike of the same putty was set into the back of each while soft, standing in for the original fixing pin. Once cured, each casting rang hard against the bench and took a needle file cleanly, the swarf coming off as fine grey dust.

Filing, Drilling, and Fitting

Green cured Milliput cuts like a dense hardwood. The flash around each casting was pared back with a scalpel, then the faces trued with a flat needle file and finished through 240 and 400 grit wet-and-dry wrapped on a cork block. The keyhole aperture was opened to match the key barrel with a round file and a 6mm bit in a pin vice, checked repeatedly against the actual drawer lock so the escutcheon sat square over the keyway.

Each fixing spike was trimmed to length and its corresponding hole in the drawer front cleaned out with a bradawl. The castings were bedded on a spot of reversible fish glue behind the plate, not the pin alone, so the fitting could be lifted later with moisture if a future repair demanded it. Clamping was unnecessary; light hand pressure for a few minutes held them while the glue grabbed. Set against the two surviving brass originals, the raw grey epoxy read as obviously wrong at this stage, which is exactly what the colouring pass exists to correct.

Colouring the Castings to Read as Aged Brass

Grey Milliput will never be brass, but it takes pigment well and can be built up to a bronze that passes at arm’s length and closer. The base was laid with artists acrylics: a mix of raw sienna, yellow ochre, and a touch of raw umber, thinned to a wash and stippled rather than brushed so the surface picked up a slightly mottled metallic suggestion. A dry rub with Rub n Buff in Antique Gold over the raised bead caught the light the way worn brass catches it, the pigment sitting on the high points and skipping the recesses.

The recesses and the keyhole edge were then knocked back with a darker glaze, burnt umber thinned almost to water, floated into the low detail and wiped off the surrounding surface with a barely damp cloth. This is the step that reads as age: real escutcheons carry grime and tarnish in exactly those trapped corners, and clean highs against dirty lows fool the eye more than any single colour. The two originals sat alongside as constant reference, and the castings were adjusted glaze by glaze until the three replacements dropped into the same tonal range across the drawer bank.

Sealing with Renaissance Wax

Renaissance Wax, the microcrystalline polish developed at the British Museum laboratories, was applied thinly over the cured pigment once the acrylics had a full day to harden. A small amount worked into a lint-free cloth, drawn across each casting and left ten minutes to haze, then buffed with a clean cloth. The wax locks the pigment down, deepens the colour slightly, and gives the epoxy a low sheen that matches the mellow reflectivity of the aged brass beside it.

One coat proved enough on the escutcheons; the surrounding mahogany finish took its own separate wax pass during the general revival of the piece. The microcrystalline film resists fingerprint marking and does not yellow with age the way a natural beeswax paste can, which matters on a fitting handled every time a drawer opens.

What the Cast Fittings Do Not Solve

The replacements match at conversational distance and hold up under a hand lens for colour and profile. What they cannot reproduce is the cold weight and the ring of solid brass under a fingertip, and a knowledgeable buyer running a magnet or a thumbnail across the drawer bank will find the three epoxy plates instantly. That leaves an open question for anyone doing this on a piece heading to sale rather than to a family sideboard: whether the honest, reversible epoxy repair or a properly cast bronze replacement better serves a chest whose value rests partly on the integrity of its metalwork.