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Elegant portrait

Posted in Art Restoration, Featured

Elegant portrait

This lovely painting came to us from a local woman who has had this portrait in her family for generations. The painting itself is beautiful, but it needed some serious attention, and it was a very delicate, if not fragile, painting to work with. Among other issues, paint was chipping, and there was a strong layer of grim that was hard to get through and remove from the painting surface. It always takes testing and patience to safely find the right way to work on a painting like this one, and Lisa did an amazing job with this elegant portrait. The final result was stunning. Before...

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19th Century Family Heirloom Portrait Restored

Posted in Art Restoration, Featured

19th Century Family Heirloom Portrait Restored

This lovely portrait was brought to our attention by a local Southport customer in the St. James community. This painting has been in their family for nearly 200 years, and the subject is a family member. It’s a large painting at 3×5 feet, and of significant historical value. As you can see from our “before” photos, it was in terrible shape. The painting had a few rips, and it was severely covered with a dark substance that had probably built up for generations. Often times it’s smoke buildup, but we had to do some testing to see what it was and what would clean...

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Photo restoration print quality

Posted in Featured, Photo Restoration

Photo restoration print quality

One of the thing we like to show is the print quality of our photo restorations. John is a master photographer of over 40 years, and making beautiful prints is an important part of that. His prints are in museums and we use the same quality paper, and techniques with our restoration prints. Archival rag (100% cotton) papers are used ensuring very long life of the print. We do not “over restore” a photograph and in turn making it look sterile; instead we maintain what we call an “age appropriate” look to the final image and leave all the filmic qualities in the...

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Damaged Landscape Oil Painting Repaired

Posted in Art Restoration, Featured

Damaged Landscape Oil Painting Repaired

This painting came to us in pretty bad shape. It was chipping and peeling, and was very dirty from nicotine smoke damage. It was also very brittle. This one required a new backing of canvas to support the painting. This is called a re-lining. Here are some photos of the process. Brittle painting Relining canvas with new linen Painting partially cleaned Painting restored  ...

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Wedding Photograph Restored

Posted in Featured, Photo Restoration

Wedding Photograph Restored

This beautiful 16 x 20 photograph came to us recently and it really needed some help, as you can see. It had turned yellow, and had some pretty bad water damage. It was also mounted on a board that was very brittle, and it could not be flattened at all or it would crack into more pieces. As it was we had to tape some loose pieces together just to do the high resolution photograph for the restoration. This one took some serious attention, but the results were worth the effort. In this case leaving some of the old characteristics and irregularities of the original photograph was desirable, to...

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Paintings damaged during a move

Posted in Art Restoration, Featured

Paintings damaged during a move

Sometimes things happen that we don’t expect while moving the contents of a home into another home. This unfortunate painting was mistakenly dropped onto a chandelier that was on the floor. A million to one you might say, but we see things like this quite often. It happens to the best of us (even professional movers). So we’re here to fix things just like this. The damage was extensive, and the painting fairly old and brittle to begin with. Here are some before and after shots of the restoration, which in the end needed to be re-lined with a new canvas backing. If you have a...

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Beautiful Portrait Restored

Posted in Art Restoration, Featured

Beautiful Portrait Restored

This beautiful portrait came to us in need of cleaning and restoration. It was a subtle painting, and it had been restored before. The painting had a few problems, being somewhat flat looking, the elbow on the girl had a few problems, and there was a dust of some kind in the surface of the painting. We discovered many interesting things about the painting’s history as we worked on it, especially that the background color was completely changed from a darker brown to this lighter grey-blue. The cleaning and in-painting, plus new varnish, made for a lovely change in this painting; and...

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