State of repair

Visiting a conservation and restoration workshop

Above: Conservator in action

What to do when that wonderful piece of art you spent a fortune on begins to decompose? Is decay an inevitable part of the ephemeral nature of art and life, or a serious threat to your investment? The skilled team at London’s most highly regarded conservation business may not be able to guarantee an answer but they’ll probably be able to rescue your piece. “If somebody’s made it there must be a way of doing something to it,” says Kevin Smith of Plowden Smith, one of the world’s leading conservators and restorers of fine art and antiques. Their wide range of specialisations includes metalwork, ceramics, painting, furniture and stonework, with all work carried out to museum standard by people who know exactly what everything is and how to treat it with due respect.

Established in 1966, when museum conservators Peter Smith (Kevin’s father) and Anna Plowden left long-term jobs to set up on their own, Plowden Smith was offering a service that wasn’t available anywhere else. People would have to take antiques either to specialised museum conservators or to completely unqualified outfits who would make basic repairs without much sensitivity. Beautiful old pieces need loving treatment from people that know and love them, and while museum pieces have always been used to the right kind of treatment, domestic collectors haven’t always known where to turn. Smith and Plowden’s extensive museum experience left them with the skills and knowledge between them with which to conserve and restore pretty much anything. Sotheby’s and Christie’s were early clients and all the big London – and international – dealerships have

always sent things their way.

The sprawling London workshop, housed in a former postal sorting office, is full of activity. Many projects come with fascinating stories attached. On my visit there’s a wonderful 19th century bench in the process of being completely rebuilt, having been found broken and in pieces on the beach in Kuwait by a family returning to a demolished home after the Gulf war. The team is using photographs for reference to see what it once looked like, and rebuilding the missing bits from scratch. There’s an enormous 17th century carriage being painstakingly re-gilded, a job that’s likely to take a year. A disembodied doll’s arm lies on a table, a small shagreen (stingray skin) case needs mending and everywhere there are fascinating bits and pieces, all neatly labelled and ready to be worked on. Broken ceramics range from archaeological items to contemporary decorative pieces. Unfortunately some things just aren’t worth repairing. “People often come in with broken sentimental teapots and it’s the bane of our lives,” laughs Smith. “It’s just too expensive to carry out the work on something that’s worthless.”

But it’s not all about precious pieces of classic craftsmanship with historical value. “Contemporary art is where the weird stuff is,” says Smith. They’ve had sculptures made from chocolate that have become infested and need fumigating. And a bowler hat filled with butter that left an unappealing trail of oil on a mantelpiece (they had to scoop out the 20-year old butter and put a protective layer inside the felt). There was a polystyrene sculpture sprinkled with powder paint that was dented but couldn’t be touched without further denting and smudging it. And don’t even think about rubber. Luckily, Kevin Smith has a background in physics. “Rubber degrades by interaction with oxygen,” he explains. “We had Adam West’s original Batman cloak from the 1960s and the rubber had gone brittle. The only thing we could do was make an oxygen-free showcase for it.” They had the same problem with some Spitting Image puppets. “The problem with artists is that they never think about longevity. But when a collector buys a piece they don’t want it to deteriorate,” says Kevin, which leads to lots of questioning about the ethics of imposing preservation on a piece of art, questions that are fundamental to all restoration work. Does it interfere with what the artist wanted? Was deterioration perhaps part of the point of the piece? And Plowden Smith’s museum ethics mean that they won’t undertake anything that isn’t in the best interests of the object itself. Still, nobody wants a piece of art that leaks butter all over their living room, however brilliant. And the weirdest thing to come through their doors? Probably a collection of human tattoos cut from the skin of dead Napoleonic sailors, says Smith. “The leather was brittle and there was a mould growing on it. Nobody really wanted to touch it and we sent it off to be tested for the bubonic plague. Luckily it turned out just to be regular mould.”

Behind the stucco exteriors of W11’s desirable terraces and W8’s elegant streets are some of the capital’s most stylish interiors, containing some of the world’s most frighteningly valuable antiques and art. So what happens when your priceless statue falls off its plinth or a rare dining chair snaps? You know who to call.