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Amphora Fine Art Restoration
Category: Arts & Entertainment Art Galleries Shopping Art Galleries Art Galleries [Edit]
468 S Roxbury DrBeverly Hills, CA 90212
Neighborhoods: West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills
(310) 277-5015
One review for Amphora Fine Art Restoration
1 review in English
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Review from Ryan H.
6/11/2011
i inherited a beautiful 1950's painting. simple, yet avant garde and modernist composition. i don't know what type of paper this was painted on... other than very thin, and very brittle! it could have been because of the age of the piece, maybe prior poor storage -- i don't know. but if you so much as touched the paper it would literally crack and crumble.
now... i didn't touch the paper! i know my dog didn't bang into it either because it was up on the wall! but one weekend after a few guests i noticed oh my god there is a hole in the painting! there is a hole in the painting! it was not a big hole, about the size of a quarter, but it was still very noticeable and as i gawked at it going oh my god, and as i tried to press the tear a little bit back together, the paper would just crumble more. so i thought to myself again, oh my god there is a hole in my painting!
my ex used to collect art. he's crazy but he had good taste. i remembered he only brought his pieces to a restorer in beverly hills - paintings, sculptures. sometimes metal pieces. i dug out our old credit card records scouring my mind, "what was the name of the place... what was the name of the place." and i found it. amphora. whew!
i made an appointment with dinka (sp?). very very carefully loaded the painting in my car. i had a picture of what it looked like before the hole (insurance!... ). she studied it carefully. i'm wondering what is she thinking, hmm, what can she do. and she simply said quite definitively and with a nice smile, yes she can fix it.
i knew from items my ex had fixed that she had done an excellent job. but those were hard-ish things - scultpures, some porcelain, some metal objects etc. i was worried about this painting because seriously the paper was so flaky and thin. almost like filo dough / pastry! but dinka said yes, she could fix it. there was artwork all around the studio, stuff being repaired, including some picasso bowl. she showed me the before and after of an oil painting she had restored. the glaze had cracked, there was smoke damage all over, but she cleaned and fixed it. i could see from what she was working on, she knew very well what she was doing and how to do it. and i had enough knowledge of art history (thanks, art history 101, columbia u!)to know, she knew what she was talking about.
so... flash foward to three weeks later. i get a call my painting is ready. i head down, take a look... and wow. simply cannot believe it. i'm actually looking at the painting again for where the hole was. i knew it used to be on the lower left of the painting but now as i look for it, i simply cannot see the hole - or any trace of it. there was red paint in the original area where the hole had been made, the relief / texture of the original paint itself creating part of the imagery (like van gogh used to do). anyway as i am checking the repair i see that first off, the colors have been matched PRECISELY. whatever 60 year old paint looks like, hsa been recreated here PRECISELY. and then i am looking at the canvas / paper. which again has been matched and patched to a T. i don't know how this was done. did she have 60 year old paper that matched?!!! what i do know is, the restoration was quite flawless. i have quite a good eye for detail. i can tell usually tell when something's had a touchup or a fix. whether on a painting... or on a face haha... but nope - absolutely no trace of any work here. it's as if the painting was in it's original and beautiful state and that nothing had ever gone wrong with it. the work was impeccable.
so, my painting is back to it's good old self. there is no trace of a tear or repair. price was extremely reasonable. dinka was extremely nice to work with as well. all of which means i'm very happy here. will not be happy if someone else makes a hole in my painting (!). but at least i will know where to bring it if they do....
