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There has been a renewed interest in Boulle marquetry Napoleon III furniture in the last years.

Most of the time, unfortunately, the cost of restoration is to high for a lot of customers or even compared to the value of the piece. It is sad as those pieces need to be well maintained.

Here is a little story on restoring a 1860-1880 decanter with almost all the original Baccarat crystals.

It arrived with the usual loose and missing brass, but also it had been meanly sanded, without loosing the engraving though, and sprayed with lacquer.





First thing to do is to lift the loose brass and assess the damage.



Epoxy is not the way to reglue Boulle. It is usally used without cleaning under and therefore the brass is bulging and is extremely difficult to remove when you want to do a proper restoration



Neither is contact cement. In fact you can not imagine how many pieces we have to restore that have been "repaired" with contact cement. It is not long term efficient on any kind of veneering



After cleaning the substrate and the inside of the brass of any glue and oxydation



The pieces is remoisturized and the pieces that are not to damaged are rehydradrated new glue is inserted and pieces are reglued in a vacuum bag





Other way to reglue what can't or is not easy to reglue in the vacuum bag is sand bags



or hard foam like in this case isolation material



The top was really in a very bad shape, especially as those pieces are made with wood that are deeped in acids and other chemicals to achieve the ebonizing



New brass pieces are engraved



Then the reopened kerfs and the engraving line are filled using the traditional pore filling methode but with soot black and charcoal to get a real nice black





You can see I was doing the black at the same time than a clock for which you can see the progress there
I am actually engraving the horn and it will be finished this week and I will post about it.



After a bit of polish the hinges and all the harware is put back on et voilà!!





Gallery

Comments

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Patrice,

The restoration is really incredible! It seems to me that it could take more time for this restoration than the actual build 150 years ago. No wonder few people can (choose to) afford to have such beautiful pieces restored. Certainly there are very few people like you and Patrick who are capable of such extensive, high-quality repair work.

Thanks for sharing.

L/W
 

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It looks so nice! I would love to learn how to do this properly one day. Fantastic job Patrice and thank you for posting it.
 

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Very nice Patrice. Was the tortoiseshell intact?
It looks perfect now.
You do nice work. :)
 

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It is a certainly a pleasure to see another posting. I would like to thank you for posting items like this one as I love sitting here admiring your work and the furniture you show us you work on or create.
 

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Nicely done, indeed. Your work never fails to impress. And you've saved a lovely piece.
Roger
 

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It is amazing that you were able to make that box look like new.
 

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Patrice, your work is extraordinary and I can't even imagine the patience, craftsmanship, and knowledge that goes into this sort of restoration work. It must be a wonderful feeling of accomplishment to know that you are saving these beautiful pieces from deterioration for future generations to enjoy.

helluvawreck aka Charles
http://woodworkingexpo.wordpress.com
 

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That is some ridiculously nice restoration work. What glue did you end up using, if you don't like epoxy or contact cement?
 

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Thank you guys.
Restoring Boulle is very time consuming and frustrating at times, so it is nice when it is done.
Paul, There were very little missing shell. Most ot the time it is the brass that pops out. We have a small box with small pieces of shell salvaged here and there that we can use.
Bobasaurus, The traditional glue for Metal on wood is fish glue, it has more elasticity and absorbs better the conflicting expension and retractaion of the wood and the metal. Also as a protein glue, it is reversible aloowing future restoration.
 

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You do absolutely beautiful work. I have done some repair work on furniture, not marquetry, and I would see repairs that someone else did and I wonder what were they thinking.
 

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Patrice - I remember you showing me that decanter when I visited last year. It was in very poor condition and I was wondering when you would get a chance to work on it. I am glad you posted pictures. I have to say that I am amazed! Great work and well done!
 

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Incredible restoration work, and as usual so masterfully done. I can only admire the patience and the mastered techniques of your work.

It's also amazing how such a beautiful piece of work has been abused over the years. Alas, we still have master craftsmen such as you around to revive them!

Are you teaching anyone to keep this art alive?
 

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Great to see the piece restore to its former glory. What a privilege to be able to work on such a piece. THanks for sharing it!!

So where do you get the fish glue from? Or do you make your own along with OBG? Do you use garlic as is suggested in the texts, to clean the new metal prior to gluing down? Or what else do you use to clean any new metal before gluing?
 

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Thanks again guys.
mmh, We do not have currently any trainy. The main reason is that they never stay long and leave as soon as they think they know it all or enough. But Europe still has school were they train restorer, I am not sure about the US, haven't looked it up.
madburg, We buy our fish glue by the gallon, fresh. The garlic will not clean the old metal, on the new one and after cleaning the old one I like to use garlic as it was traditional. There is different research that has been done reagarding the use of, some say it does nothing other say it helps in the bunding. As I haven't found any that says it is damaging, I rather use garlic.
 

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Impressive work Patrice, impressive!
 

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In fact I was not clear regarding the shell. On this project there was very little shell missing mostly small chips and I repaired those areas with shellac sticks. It is not worth using shell for very small pieces as it always waste more than the actual cutting area. When you cut a small piece the waste is more than double what you cut with all the surrounding material that is unused, the bigger the piece smaller is the waste. We have a large collection of colored shellac stick and by apllying different reds and black the heat mixes them up to create a nice shell effect. But that works only on small area though.

Thank you guys.
Restoring Boulle is very time consuming and frustrating at times, so it is nice when it is done.
Paul, There were very little missing shell. Most ot the time it is the brass that pops out. We have a small box with small pieces of shell salvaged here and there that we can use.
Bobasaurus, The traditional glue for Metal on wood is fish glue, it has more elasticity and absorbs better the conflicting expension and retractaion of the wood and the metal. Also as a protein glue, it is reversible aloowing future restoration.

- Patricelejeune
 
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