The majority of the pieces I've restored recently have been frames, something I've enjoyed far more than I thought I would - the three dimensional aspect providing a good challenge. This French looking glass was in pieces and really dirty to begin with...
After a lot of scrubbing I attached the missing pieces with a product not dissimilar from putty-filler, this is also handy for making up any lost pieces.
Once dry it needed sanding down and then a base layer of red and then mustard yellow plaka before applying the gold pigment.
My boss and I worked on this elegant French looking glass together, again in terrible condition to begin with having fallen off the wall and been damaged by smoke fumes. After lots of cleaning we re-painted most of the minty green base as it had turned a nasty yellow. Many of the gold details needed re-attaching and re-goldifying while the parts that had warped needed flattening as you can see by the use of heavy irons.
Much better if I do say so myself.
I really wasn't a fan of this one; an early 20th century Barbola frame, apparently the height of fashion in France at the time, in my opinion sickly floral pastels = the height of naff. It did however provide me with a good lesson in colour matching. As the colours were so faded it was hard to know how bright to restore them back to. After a bit of a google I found an image of a very similar frame in the same style which acted as a useful guide.
Here are the snazzy binoculars I get to wear...
This 18th century frame was missing parts of its moulding which I re-made, again using the 'putty-filler' and PVA glue - highly technical stuff!
I then applied a layer of black, red and gold pigment to blend it with the rest of the frame.
This Dutch Old Master was missing a chunk on it's left hand side. It firstly needed cleaning before re-attaching the missing piece and adding a little extra gold to give it a bit more oompf.
This huge Italian frame had become rather dull over the years and needed a bit of life put back into it. It is in fact the frame (if you read my painting restoration post) the Lanseer painting is now in though I'm afraid I failed to take a photo of it fitted up before the client took it away.
To bring it back to life I applied a layer of uni-bond (watered down glue), red plaka, and then gilding size before gilding.
The gilding often looks a bit garish on its own so I added a layer of wax which was then polished to make it look a bit more rustic. And there you go, hey-presto!
