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!