Fake 140

A view of an officer's cabin on H.M.S. Belfast, in which his bunk sat on top of the chest of drawers. Confusing foreshortening, but the darker brown above is the plywood side to the bunk. While the lighter brown below is sheet steel, somehow finished with streaky enamel. So not brown wood at all and entirely fake.

I think the captain and the admiral got real brown wood.

I remember working with an old-fashioned painter in the early 1970's, who, as it happens, was in the Merchant Service rather than the Navy during the second war, who knew all about painting white wood with cunningly streaked paint and varnish to make it look like brown wood, mahogany even. Bing knows all about this sort of thing, talking of 'faux wood grain', but that is not the term that my painter used. Perhaps it will come back to me.

Also, as it happens, I have a naval brown wood chest of drawers beside me as I type this, once the property of the naval uncle.  About two feet, by two feet by four feet, two drawers above and one below, made of one inch pine boards, stained brown and varnished. A very substantially made thing, with the drawers still running well, but no streaking nonsense, just dark brown all over. All over the outside that is, it being considered bad form to stain or varnish the insides. Perhaps it came from a stone frigate in Portsmouth, rather than a floating cruiser.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/fake-139.html.