This past week saw the completion of a sculpture repair for a client. Here's a picture of the completed work in my shop:
The piece itself is a replica, of course. It's rather famous too, sold now by quite a few places on the Internet. It goes under the name Mademoiselle Modele, but in truth I am unable to find the original anywhere, nor the name of the artist who did the work. I am told that Design Toscano - one of the vendors that sells the piece - researched that same question and was also unable to figure it out.
Anyway, this particular replica is cast in some sort of resin, essentially a plastic. The client tells me it was purchased back in the 1960's in San Francisco.
In the intervening years it had seen some wear and damage. At least at one point it was clearly knocked over. The nose was chipped, the left cheek damaged, and all the fingers of the right hand were cracked clean through. In addition it was dirty, possibly as a result of accumulated dust & grime, but also possibly because the resin was emitting some sort of oil.
My first job was to clean it as much as possible. I used soapy water and a toothbrush everywhere I could, but that wasn't always successful. Some additional grunge came off with solvents, but that's risky with plastic, and I didn't like doing it. In the end I discovered I could sand it and remove most of the problem areas. 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper did a nice job and left a smooth, matte finish.
Repairing the cheek and nose turned out to be a surprisingly simple matter of sanding as well. I'd expected to have to do a lot more work - or be unable to do anything at all - but gently rounding the nose hid the damage well, and the cheek damage vanished almost entirely, leaving behind only a slightly brighter white spot.
The right hand was glued back together with cyanoacrylate glue. It required gently spreading the gap between the figure and the wave, dripping a bit of glue between each break, and letting things come back together. One finger was broken in two places but I had the piece so gluing it back into place was simple.
The original base was a tiny, cheap metal thing on 4 feet, which only encouraged it to fall over. The client wanted a new base, and on seeing the old one I knew why. I purchased an 8" by 10" by 1.25" oval in black granite and drilled it for the piece. I also had to add pins to the bottom of the piece too. The result is much more stable and quite striking.
I'm no master restorer, but I am quite happy with the way this turned out. The client is too.
