Working with Christie’s

I am lucky enough to have been on the long list of restorers that Christie’s New York uses for their restoration work.

I worked on a black stone cup for them, on behalf of one of their consignors, and it wasn’t the job itself that I found interesting, but the fact that they were willing to go above and beyond for their client in order to get the best possible outcome in the upcoming sale. Which included doing a restoration that the owner didn’t even ask for!

In the end, the piece sold to a new private collector, and who knows, if it breaks again, I will be happy to fix it.

Working with Hicham Aboutaam

I started working with Hicham Aboutaam and Phoenix Ancient Art back in the early 1990s. I was introduced to them by Jane Gilles who did restoration work for them in the past, and continues to do so. My typical client asks for my advice on the restoration work that needs to be done, but with Hicham, he always knows exactly what he wants. And unlike my contemporary clients, he doesn’t like to remove EVERYTHING and make it squeaky clean. He likes old encrustation on ancient marbles. I guess it is an acquired taste.

He asked me to fix a Cycladic marble idol that the gallery recently acquired from Christie’s. It had awful old restorations and terrible yellow color patina, probably from decades of cigarette smoke (it was from a collection who acquired it in the 1950s).

It was a tricky job because my instinct was to remove everything to get it back to its original surface. But Hicham wanted to keep some of the encrustation on the back as an added taste of the provenance of the piece as well as a way to authenticate it.

In the end, I was able to reach the beautiful original white marble surface while still leaving the heavy ancient encrustations on the back for my friend Mr. Hicham Aboutaam. And he was right, the old surface on the back added to the character of the piece and reminds us that this work of art lasted 5000 years, we don’t want to erase the proof!