Gannsfjord Rosewood table  

Table? All I can see is three neat stacks of art, design and gardening magazines.

The spots were covered by something therefore they stayed dark. Sunlight especially without glass blocking the UV will make it all uniformly light, eventually. 

If I wanted to attempt a refinish or just a refreshing in an attempt to get some of the overall darkness back and even things out would stripping it and oiling with 0000 steel wool do anything? Would it make it go very dark as I know sanding would?

Generally, is lightened rosewood desirable or seen as a defect? I understand it's a natural process, but again I'm a rosewood rookie.

It's not a defect, it's damage. You could try sanding a spot on the solid edge banding to see how deep the UV bleaching goes, but it would be risky to sand the veneer too aggressively. I'd probably give it a light sanding, oil it, and live with the lesson learned. And get some nice-looking art books...

As someone who purchases too much rosewood stuff, I can say neither freshly sanded rosewood nor hugely sun bleached rosewood is desirable. The perfect level of rosewood UV damage would be enough to change the rosewood to a reddy mid tone, that clearly contrasts the figuring and communicates some age. But well before it's turned yellow, or has had an opportunity to be damaged from one direction of sunlight or has had an object obscure part of it from the light.

The good news is that refinishing will do a lot to mitigate the contrast. Also, I have read journal articles on bleaching of rosewood that say much like Leif has, that leaving rosewood in direct sunlight (no glass) does bleach wood fairly quickly.

@Kyle-Barrett as someone who purchases too much rosewood, do you have a refinishing schedule you'd be willing to share?

Thanks for all of the info.

I think nowadays I make a judgement generally based on the piece, and what the finish looks like. If the finish looks fairly thin my preference is to strip with wire wool/scouring pad and meths. I can't tell what the finish is like on this from this picture.

I would probably just advise hand sanding carefully and stop as soon as the sanding dust turns from white to sand coloured (or on the non bleached parts, pink/red). 

If you'd like to try leaving it in the sun, it'd be more effective I suspect if you do it without a finish, so now is your opportunity to test it. The article I mentioned was this one:

"Chemical bleaching of wood: an investigation into the bleaching of mahogany, walnut, rosewood, padauk, and purpleheart" by Louise Herstedt & Marie Herstedt

And the pertinent excerpt for me was:

"The sun light exposure experiment was carried out behind a window facing south until a change in Blue Wool Scale  number 3 was noticed (the duration was 32 days in April - May in Stockholm, Sweden). This corresponds to approximately 3600 lux hours of exposure. Exposure to average indirect indoor lighting (120 to 180 lux) for 12 hours a day equals from 503 to 790 lux hours each year [6]. This corresponds to an estimated 4,5 to 6,8 years indirect indoor lighting exposure before the same change in colour as in this experiment would be noticed. "

So 32 days direct sunlight behind glass is equivalent to 4.5 - 6.8 years indoor exposure. I've yet to try this, and the UK isn't known to be able to provide 32 consecutive days of sunlight... Ever.

I am not sure it's Brazilian rosewood beyond the veneer so I'd advise against stripper, multiple strippers react with Indian rosewood, and it's common to mix Indian rosewood for solid construction with Brazilian rosewood veneer. When it reacts, it just goes dark purple and stains itself and surrounding wood.

Then for finish, it's really your choice. I like a very thin layer of shellac personally on rosewood for reasons I won't go into. But any Danish oil will do in reality.

The table is quite simple, but the wood grain is special