Ceramic Art and the Art of Ceramic Restoration
A ceramic object, such is a pot, plate, vase, figurine,is an object made of made of clay, hardened into a permanent form by baking (firing) at high temperatures in a kiln is considered ceramic. Clay is one of the oldest materials known to humanity and has been used for practical purposes and creative expression since prehistoric times. As civilizations evolved, ceramic materials, techniques, purposes, and design all became more sophisticated and expressive. “Ceramics may be built by hand, cast in a mold, arranged using a slab method, or thrown onto a pottery wheel” (“History of Porcelain”, 2004). Read more...
There are lots of doll collectors these days, thanks to eBay and many other online auction houses. Many collectors buy dolls at garage sales in less than mint condition and try to repair the dolls themselves before going to eBay to sell them.
But it’s not that easy to restore tears in the dress, sculpt the missing pisses for the body, repaint and reglaze the face, style the hair. There are professional doll restoration experts who have the skill and experience in repairing antique dolls. Most of theses restorers specialize in invisible restoration. However, professional repair is not cheap, because the process involves many steps, such as gluing and bonding the existing pieces, sculpting additional pieces and fragments for a perfect fit, matching and replicating the color and pattern, airbrushing and glazing.
If you are on a budget, you can try restoring the doll yourself. There’s a good article about do-it-yourself doll repair on About.com called Doll Restoration and Conservation: What You Need to Know.
The article highlights several very important points:
1. Don’t do anything that cannot be undone at a later point.
2. Use proper conservation techniques by keeping the doll out of harm’s way –
excessive heat, humidity, dust and dirt.
3. Wash your hands often. Oil from your hands can get absorbed in the doll’s body and dress. Wearing gloves is a good advice, but it’s hard to restore anything with gloves on.
4. Do sketches or take photos of the doll before you take it apart, so you can put the parts back together.
5. If you plan to sell the doll after the restoration, you MUST disclose all the changes you made to the doll. Note that styling the hair or cleaning the clothes does not need to be disclosed.
See our Recent Projects page for photos of the doll repair process.
Let us know if you have any questions. Visit our site: www.luelstudio.com and LIKE us on Facebook:www.facebook.com/chinarepair
Happy doll collecting.
April 02, 2011 ( Comments Off )
Greetings,
We get a lot of emails regarding home restoration of china and ceramic. Although we don’t recommend that you attempt to glue the broken pieces yourself — it never looks as good as you would expect it to and it creates more work for a professional restorer (and more money for you). However, the times are hard. So if you want to try glue the broken pieces yourself, below are a few pointers.
1. Organize the pieces. See how they fit together. If it’s a simple, clean break you’re okay. But what if you got five, ten or more pieces. If you glue them out of order, the last piece or two will not fit.
2. Do not apply glue with a cotton swab or a piece of paper towel. Use a small brush or a thin wooden applicator. A toothpick will do the trick too.
3. Quickly connect the pieces of the plate or figurine, and hold it in place for a few seconds. Repeat the steps until the entire item is cleanly assembled.
4. Place the glued item in a box or large bowl filled with uncooked rice. That will hold the item balanced until it dries fully.
5. The glued item should be drying for at least sixty to ninety minutes. When you remove it from the positioning bowl, none of the pieces should move. If they do, place the item back in the bowl.
6. The final step is to wipe away excess glue. Use a very sharp knife or razor blade and move along the connection edge. Then take a piece of lightly moist paper towl and slide it along the connection/groove. That will get rid of excess glue.
Professional invisible restoration precludes practical use because aside from gluing and bonding, there are many other steps involved, such as matching and replicating the color and design, airbrushing and glazing. If you only glue an item — a plate or vase — and want to use it for practical purposes, you can. But keep in mind that the glue is toxic, so we strongly recommend using the glued dish or vase for dry food only.
Luel Restoration Studio specializes in professional, invisible repair of china, ceramic, terra cotta, majolica, plaster and glass.
Visit us at www.luelstudio.com
March 23, 2011 ( Comments Off )
Clay Art Pottery is a terrific site, full of useful resources, and boasts excellent photos of Raku pottery created by Vicki Hardin, who also runs the website. Vicki has been a great supporter of restoration and repair of china and porcelain, and a big Luel Restoration Studio fan, constantly referring clients to us and recommending our services. So we want to offer our thanks to Vicki and encourage you to visit her site.
About Vicki:
Vicki Hardin, an established clay artist, has worked in clay for 30 years producing raku and pit fired pottery, garnering national and regional attention and praise for her work. She has shown throughout the southwest region, extensively in Texas, where she maintains her studio, Clay Art Pottery, home and family. Her pottery is currently on view at Show of Hands Gallery in Philadelphia and at her studio. In 1984 she established Clay Art Pottery at the Chicken Farm Art Center in San Angelo, where she continues to maintain a studio and gallery space. Vicki’s work can be seen there by appointment made directly with the artist.
December 13, 2010 ( Comments Off )
Doll Repair
This a good article by Carl Hose on how to identify Fine Porcelain Dolls.
Collecting porcelain dolls is a popular hobby among youngsters and adults alike. While many children collect porcelain dolls simply for the beauty of the dolls and the joy that collecting them brings, many adults often collect porcelain dolls with an eye toward finding the finest, most valuable antique porcelain dolls they can locate. Learn how to identify fine porcelain dolls that will add value to your collection .
Instructions:
1. Look for deterioration from age. Crazing, or little criss-cross cracks in the porcelain, forms with age. A doll with heavy crazing is a very old doll. Fragile clothes are another indication of age. Do not attempt to repair or glue the damaged doll yourself. Consult a professional restoration expert for a free estimate.
2. Look for mold numbers or other markings. This is the best place to start when trying to identify a fine porcelain doll. Doll makers took pride in their work in the early days and identified each doll made by etching an identifying name or number on the back of a doll’s head, nape of the neck or shoulder plate. Locate these markings and use a guide (see Resources) to help you identify the maker and era of the porcelain doll.
3. Learn to recognize fine porcelain dolls by material and design. Porcelain dolls made in the 1800s will not have rooted hair. Porcelain dolls of the late 1800s and early 1900s, especially by German doll makers, are likely to be all-bisque composition. Bisque is unglazed porcelain, found chiefly in doll heads and limbs. What are the clothes made from. French and German doll makers were fond of using kid (soft leather) to outfit their porcelain dolls, especially in the 1800 and early 1900s. Composition dolls bodies (wood, sawdust, glue) are also a sign of early dolls.
4. Identify dolls by physical characteristics. Eyes set into the doll head that don’t move were common in the 1800s. Big round eyes with a sideways glance were popular the early 1900s. Some dolls from the 1800s were considered character dolls, made to look like living children and not stylized like other porcelain dolls. Often doll makers used their own children as models. These dolls look unique and very different from other porcelain dolls.
5. Have your doll professionally appraised if you are in doubt. Locate a local doll appraiser in your phone book or find one online (see Resources). Someone skilled in appraising fine porcelain dolls will be able to help you out.
Visit Luel Restoration Studio for all your repair and restoration needs.
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/chinarepair
www.luelstudio.com
email: luba at luelstudio.com
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November 28, 2010 ( Comments Off )
“The birth of Chinese porcelain took place during Shang Dynasty. Later on, during the Eastern Han period, porcelain technique had greatly improved and the wares were given a distinct name in order to differentiate them from a porous, softer earthenware. The new name was “tz’u”, which, later, during the T’ang dynasty, came to mean “true porcelain”. The most important characteristics of true porcelain are its hardness, ringing sound when struck, as well as its translucence. These qualities are achieved by firing clay (ceramic) ingredients in a kiln. But it took centuries for kiln technology to develop. Robert Finlay (1998) writes that fine-grained soil and the early predominance of ceramics in metallurgy impelled Chinese craftsmen toward a highly effective kiln making. Ceramic variety also stemmed from kiln technology…”
The above passage is from the paper titled Ceramic Art: The influence of Chinese Porcelain on the history and culture of the world by Lance Muchnik, who apprenticed at Luel Restoration Studio in the summer of 2010, and who is currently a student at FIT, in NYC. Read the attached PDF file.
Contact Luel Restoration Studio for all your repair and restoration needs. Bring your ceramic and porcelain back to life!
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/chinarepair
www.luelstudio.com
email: luba at luelstudio.com
Contact Luel Restoration Studio for all your china and ceramic repair & restoration needs.
Because Luel Restoration Studio appears in the top three spots on Google for most of our key phrases — ceramic restoration, porcelain repair, china repair, porcelain doll repair, etc. – we get daily link exchange requests from various online establishments. Tire rim warehouses, dog food testers, rectal thermometer designers, bad painters, restorers wannabes, and link-farm managers somewhere in India and Siberia.
So when a talented ceramic artist asks us to put a link on our Useful Websites page to promote his business, we jump at the opportunity. Check out Matthew S. Kennedy’s vases, bowls and tribal cremation urns for sale. http://www.intlnat.com/2010/10/learn-more-about-tattoo-and-pottery.html
Enjoy.
Luel Restoration Studio
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October 08, 2009 ( Comments Off )
Contact the Doll Repair Studio for all your restoration needs. Here’s an incomplete list of porcelain and ceramic items we repair.
Dolls are not just for children! Porcelain doll collecting is one of the most popular hobbies in the world. It’s true that dolls transport us to our youth, to the age of innocence, to that place that time or age cannot touch. Most doll collectors, however, appreciate the craftsmanship and the artistry of a doll.
Doll collecting can be very exciting, but addictive. There are many choices and the prices can run into thousands of dollars. There are dolls made by individual artists, limited edition dolls, china and ceramic dolls, and many, many other type of dolls. There are also many doll clinics and doll repair shops that specialize in invisible and museum quality doll repair. Do not discard or throw away a doll that may look like a child’s toy or a doll that has been passed on to you by your parent or grandparent. It may be worth quite a bit of money. If the doll is damaged, do not attempt to restore it yourself. Unless you know what you’re doing you will damage it even more , creating more work for a professional restorer. Many porcelain repair specialists refuse to take on a doll repair job because they are unable to match the skill with which the doll had been originally created.
Luba Sokolina is doll collector and doll repair expert who has been specializing in doll restoration for over twenty five years. If your want your doll restored with artistry and care, flawlessly and invisibly, contact Luel Restoration Studio.
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June 12, 2009 ( Comments Off )
China Restoration in History
The art and craft of Chinese porcelain has played a crucial role in bringing the artistry of porcelain to different parts of the world, as well as to different and often seemingly unrelated disciplines (architecture, sculpture, silverwork, etc.) It set forth a novel and creative multi-cultural synthesis that has helped the way the world looks at a work of art.
According to Luba Sokolina, a porcelain repair expert at Luel Restoration Studio and a student of Asian culture and art, “Around the same time Europe was going through a “porcelain craze”, Islamic cultures of Egypt and Turkey were too greatly influenced by the art of Chinese porcelain makers. “ Doing research on the impact of Chinese porcelain on Islamic art and craft, Luba noticed that It is precisely in the treatment of surface that China exerted her most powerful impact on Islamic concepts of ceramic decoration. Prior to the fifteenth century, the Chinese working in blue and white had been content to accept the two dimensionality of Islamic design, with its decorations capable of infinite extension into space and so filling it.
But once the mathematical division of space which was a concommitant of this approach had been mastered, the Chinese adapted the fundamental need for division of surface to their own ends, and reverted to their own deeply-ingrained habit of using space in such a manner as to imply a third dimension. They achieved this by using decorative elements which could stand independently of each other and yet were spatially related on the surface. The impact was not confined to Iran, but is seen in Egypt, in the work of Gaibi and his contemporaries, in Syria, and in the Iznik wares of Turkey. Ultimately the same impact, in a slightly different context was made on Europe.
The actual elements constituting the Chinese porcelain style have now become so deeply imbedded in the traditions of both the Near East and Europe that it is not easy to recognize them, but once seen and their origins understood, they become as obvious as those of the Near East in Chinese traditions.
Luba Sokolina is the head restorer of Luel Restoration Studio, specializing in ceramic and porcelain repair. Visit Luel Restoration Studio at http://www.luelstudio.com
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