Would You Throw This Artwork Away?!

From Trash to Treasure with Conservation

Amazingly, this fascinating piece was found flaking and dirty in the garbage! An inept attempt was made to “restore” it that involved an abundant application of wax to hold the painting together and a wipe with solvent to remove part of the dirt.

The Dumpster Diver who found the painting gave it to a collector who recognized that under the mess of flaking paint, wax, and dirt, there was a quality vintage image. Some research and closer examination revealed the title and date: “The Discussion” from 1929. This discovery encouraged the collector to contact us for a closer examination and professional conservation treatment.

Once the painting was cleaned, FACL discovered the artist Pruett Carter’s signature in the lower right corner. This is a well-known illustrator and finding this information added value to a piece that had been thought to be worthless. Once the conservation work is completed, the artwork will look perfect and will be, once again, a quality work of art.

FACL recommends you get an expert to look over anything before you get rid of works of art, because many pieces can be restored to have significant value.

You can get more interesting stories and tips on our Facebook page, "Fine Art Conservation" and "Save Your Stuff"
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Fine Art Conservation Lab 805 564 3438
Personal Property Appraisal 805 895 5121

Flaking, dirty and thrown in the trash, this discovery was a real treasure.

Cleaning Paintings - Often A Surprise Even For Us

We just got into the lab a wonderful painting that was shown in the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. My goodness, this painting has been through tough times! We'll talk more about all the problems later but today, in our process of doing the estimate, we did cleaning tests to help us decide how willingly the varnish layers would dissolve and if that process would be dangerous to the original paint.


Even though we've been doing this since 1975, its often a surprising moment when we see the clean spot. The contrast is sometimes unexpected, perhaps like the beginning tests on the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel. We are careful to use solvents that won't attack the original paint. We also use, often, magnifiers to help us see more detail. Sometimes we need to test separately all the different colors to make sure one color will not dissolve unexpectedly while we are using a solvent. Get a look at these tests:

The "white" spots on this photo are where we have removed the dark brown varnish to reveal the original color of the dress. But here's something that you might not have noticed: See how the knee and the dress below the knee is kind of fuzzy or out of focus? Well, that's because its been repainted in previous restorations. The repainting was poorly done and WAY too abundantly. In fact, in the two cleaning tests where we tested to see if the repainting would come off, there was no damage below the retouching... we revealed original color in perfect condition.


You can imagine what a difference this cleaning will make: brighter colors, better depth of field and better contrast in the composition... a return to the original look and intent of the artist in 1903.




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Ever Heard of the Mission Inn in Riverside CA?

Ever heard of the Mission Inn in Riverside CA? I love this place! I think of it kind of like a Hearst Castle but you can stay there. Its got the same kind of feel to it though the appearance of the property isn't similar. If you already know about the Mission Inn, you may find this info interesting:

Our lab has worked on (preserving, restoring) the hundreds of paintings around the Mission Inn and designed and planned exhibits and placements in the public areas. We still do work for them and consult. The photo is of the Spanish Art Gallery, a favorite place for receptions, is full of Spanish Colonial Paintings. There are some great works of art to be seen including a major work by William Keith and the original series of 38 paintings of the Missions of California by Henry Chapman Ford from 1870's.

Go to missioninn.com and try Googling "Spanish Art Gallery" and "St. Cecilia's Chapel". Poke around. You'll see what I mean about it being a fun place, romantic and the food is very good too.

Careless handling and an 18 inch scratch. What did we do about it?

There's nothing that makes you feel dumber than carelessly handling something valuable, like a painting, and then damaging it. In this case, the result was a big ol' 18 inch scratch. The insult to injury is the cost to repair the damage... and maybe even some loss of value!

So, why does it cost $400 instead of $50? Well, we take some conservation quality adhesive/consolidant and we apply it with a tiny brush. We inspect the damage with a magnifier to see that its going where we are intending it to go. Then we make sure any flakes are well adhered so we don't loose any original paint. Then we "inpaint" or touch up the lost or damaged paint with a tiny brush to make sure we don't overstep the damaged area. We put paint only where the damage is. We DO NOT repaint a bush to camouflage a scratch. Then we apply, in the case of this painting, some varnish (non yellowing) along the repair to bring the shine to match the original paint.

Have a question about the appraisal? Go www.faclappraisal.com and speak with Richard Holgate (805) 895 5121

Look at this rip! Want to see some magic?!

This rip, on the left, was kind-a ugly: Ripped when the nail gave way and it fell off the wall. See entry at our other blog (www.savemystuff.blogspot.com). It ripped the fibers and got uglier when the fibers frayed.

So we turned it over and, under magnification, the fibers were realigned and rewoven. Then the ends of the fibers were "re-welded" back together. The photo on the right is the back of the rip after the "re-welding" and readhering of the ends back together. Nice, huh?

Even though the rip looks great and is now flat, the stress from the impact will result, in the future, in a disfiguring spiderweb or bull's eye type cracking pattern. So this painting will be lined to keep that from happening.

Surprise, surprise... they did what I asked!

As the previous blog entry said, I went to see the masterpiece painting that had dropped off the wall. So guess what happened? BOTH bolts that were holding the hanging hooks into the wall got RIPPED out of the wall (they were obviously NOT enough for the weight of this large painting) and the whole thing, painting and original frame, came crashing to the ground! Fortunately when it hit the ground, it didn't fall over onto the items on the desk nearby (whew!). So, when I got there it was still on the floor,upright, leaning against the wall where it had fallen with all its debris. The lower right corner hit first giving the whole thing a good shake and busting open a bit wider the join in the frame. And, as you can see in the photo, a chunk of paint fell off about the size of 4 quarters all lined up. I was surprised that they actually did what I asked! They put the loose pieces of original paint in a film (slide) box. I can put those pieces back. I'm pretty good at doing puzzles.

Fabulous new painting by Teichert found in a garage!

The director of the Historical Dept. of the LDS church recently told me a story that someone "had found" a painting by Minerva Teichert in their garage... whaaaaat?! "Found?" And this wasn't a little sketch in a box... this was a major painting of Christ blessing the children at the bountiful Temple in 3 Nephi, 48" x 54" in size. Imagine having something like this in your garage with a leaky roof and bicycles and junk pushed up against it?!

Our labor of love was to clean it, stabilize any deterioration (stop flaking and reduce cracks), varnish etc. The final result should be a painting that you will see in the future in many publications, posters etc. Maybe you'll even get a copy of it for your meeting house? You heard about it first, here... at the moment of its discovery and saving conservation efforts.

Value? Given the prosperity in the church (hungry buyers in an auction?) and the rarity of such great paintings I would guess at least $1 million... but that's just a guess. I haven't shown you the whole painting in the photo because of copyright issues.

This painting was "bombed" with 3 different colors of fire retardant in the last Santa Barbara fire! The soot and smoke were so bad that the owner of this family heirloom thought it was a "throw away." But a friend told him to have us give it a look: cleaning away the surface "stuff" and by removing the old varnish, we found the original painting to be in excellent condition!