[Arran]

I figured that the veneer around the knobs was real as I could see from the prior photos that much of the lacquer had flaked off and there was still grain there. When a faux finish flakes off you are usually left with a blond and relatively grainless wood underneath. The tricky part will be to repair or replace any chipped veneer.
The best method I have found is to cut the patch beforehand in a shape that roughly mimics the grain of the veneer needing repair, preferably of a veneer of the same species and of a similar colour to the original. Then you take that patch and tape it over the chipped area and cut around the outside of the patch with a razor blade basically tracing out the shape of the patch. Then you remove the patch and tape and then remove whatever veneer is inside the area that you just traced out. The objective is to create a patch with as few straight edges as possible with no sharp angles, the eye is drawn to square shapes.
Regards
Arran