It very well could be. Shellac comes in a really wide range of color, so someone using whatever the hardware store had on hand probably got something in the reddish brown range. Pretty good for making pine shelves look like cherry form a distance.
Some of the older polyurethanes were pretty bad. I don't know much about the ones from the 50's when they were new, but the stuff I used in the 70's was horrid.
Steve B
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