Antique Restoration. Original, Not New.

Restoration is judgement before it is technique. An old piece carries its history on the surface: shrinkage cracks running with the grain, sun fade down one side, the worn shadow where a hand rested on the same arm for sixty years. Most of that is the piece, not damage to it.

The work is deciding what stays, what goes, and what has to be rebuilt so the thing still reads as itself. In practice: lifted veneer relaid, losses in carving cut new by hand with the grain running the way the original ran, softened or split wood stabilised so it will hold a joint again, and colour built to the surrounding surface rather than to a chart.