The below picture shows the sorry state this piece was in from a customer Stratford-upon-avon. One of its escutcheons was missing, it had numerous poor repairs, the hinges did not match and were barely held in with nails instead of screws, the frame had shrunk so the doors could barely close, the finish was in an extremely poor state, large sections of veneer were missing and large sections of the lower pediment were missing.
Below left shows the finished and carved replacement section prior to being cut to the correct depth, below right is the three replacement sections carved and cut to the correct depth prior to being fixed in place with traditional animal glue.
Below left and right images below show the 'before' and 'after' shots following the matching in work after carefully selecting veneers to match the original piece, often cut from thick blocks of similar grained wood. This stage is extremely time consuming as it requires many different techniques to successfully artificially age and match new wood in with wood that has gently aged over several hundred years and accumulated wax and sun bleaching.
