varnishy

He hated beyond most things the "varnishy" look of some modern work; and his own oil pictures had so much of the manner of frescoes in their lustreless depth, that they were sometimes mistaken for water-colours, while, on the other hand, his water-colours had often so much depth and brilliancy as sometimes to be mistaken for oil.

Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Hall Caine 1892

He stands up for Poivre by Caron, despite a "prickly, clovy, tacky-varnishy, old-upholsteryish, neglected card-catalogue dryness," since "love has its blind spots" and he wears it.

James Warren: This Week in Magazines: Tone Deaf Republicans, Rock Stars, and Subprime Wolves 2008

In the gauzy and fluffy and varnishy little drawing-room Reardon found a youngish gentleman already in conversation with the widow and her daughter.

New Grub Street 2003

Any roofed-over shed or shack, with doors or not, is what one generally has to put up with to-day, for housing his resplendent brassy and varnishy automobile.

The Automobilist Abroad

As he stole past the joiner's on that sunny morning, when wood was resinous and pungent of odour, he was suddenly conscious of a varnishy smell, and felt a misgiving without knowing why.

The House with the Green Shutters George Douglas Brown 1885

The varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs. Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself -- to all these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them.

The House with the Green Shutters George Douglas Brown 1885

He stands up for Poivre by Caron, despite a "prickly, clovy, tacky-varnishy, old-upholsteryish, neglected card-catalogue dryness," since "love has its blind spots" and he wears it.

The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com 2008

"A painter, air you? you don't look it," sez I. "P'raps it's holiday time with ye," sez I, "and that makes you look so varnishy.

Aylwin Theodore Watts-Dunton 1873