Welcome to The Repair Shop,
where cherished family heirlooms are brought back to life.
Anything can happen. This is the workshop of dreams.
Home to furniture restorer Jay Blades.
Nowadays things are not built to last.
So we've become part of this throwaway culture.
It's all about preserving and restoring.
We bring the old back to new.
Working alongside Jay, will be some of the country's leading craftspeople.
I like making things with my hands.
I love to see how things work and I want to know how things work.
Whether it's a Rembrandt or somebody's family piece,
every painting deserves the same.
Each bringing their own unique set of skills.
You're about to witness some magic.
They will resurrect...
..revive...
Oh, yes.
..and rejuvenate treasured possessions and irreplaceable pieces of family history...
Oh, my goodness me. It looks like it's new.
..bringing both the objects...
- Oh! - Oh, wow!
..and the memories that they hold back to life.
Thank you.
Today at The Repair Shop,
a 19th-century test for Jay's soft- and hard-furnishing skills.
Most of the time, people wouldn't make a big deal about the frame,
they would just make a new one.
But because this has family history to it it's a big deal.
And furniture restorer Will Kirk has a trio of birds to bring back from
the brink of extinction.
The three swallows have been hand-painted.
So it's a fine balance of cleaning it, and over-cleaning it and losing all
of that detail, which is what I don't want to do.
- Hello. - How are you doing?
Hi, very well.
But first through the doors today,
needlework designer Emily Peacock has a puzzle for ceramicist Kirsten Ramsay to piece together.
So what have we got here, then?
Right, I have a jug by a French artist called Jean Lurcat.
- Oh, wow. - Do you want me to take that out?
- Yeah, I might break it some more. - All right.
So how did it break?
It was sitting on a windowsill and there was some drilling going on
outside and it just slowly danced to the edge of the windowsill and threw
- itself off. - Gosh, there's quite a few pieces in here.
I've kept all the small little pieces.
Well done.
You've done absolutely the right thing.
It's always best to keep as many pieces that you can find
because they are all helpful.
- What's this? - That's the sort of dust.
THEY LAUGH
- OK. - A thousand-piece jigsaw.
I know I was saying keep the pieces, but, OK.
Yeah, no, that's actually great.
So can you tell us anything about the artist who made this, then?
Yes, he was a man called Jean Lurcat and he lived in the south-west of France.
He is primarily known for his tapestries, which is where my interest came in.
So this piece, it really sort of holds a lot of importance.
Yeah, the value is here.
- Oh. It's not there? - No. - Absolutely.
It's beautiful. It's got the most lovely glaze on it.
It's sort of reminiscent of Picasso's ceramics, as well, would you say?
Yes, well, he was a contemporary and they did spend time together in France.
Oh, did they? Right.
Well, leave it with us.
- Thank you. - And we'll get back to you as soon as you've worked your magic on it. - Speak tomorrow, then?
- Bye. - Bye-bye. Right, that's a lot of pieces.
You know, it'll be interesting to see if everything is here.
I think I'd probably need to do it actually at my workbench.
Don't forget the envelope with all the dust.
I am worried because it's terracotta,
I don't know if that's easy to repair or not.
But also the glaze has got a great handmade quality to it.
It doesn't obviously look like a mass-produced piece, so you can see some
of the terracotta colour coming through the glaze.
And I just think, wow, that's quite a job.
And having taken on that job,
it's now down to Kirsten to see if she can solve this terracotta jigsaw.
I'm just sort of doing a dry run, really, before I actually put the adhesive on it.
I do this to make sure I've got all the pieces.
- Yeah. - And just kind of check how they go together.
- Are you missing something? - Well, there's a few sort of little chipped areas,
kind of like out of, say, somewhere like there.
- Oh, right. - Actually, I think I've got that one there.
- You've got that little bit there? - Actually, I'm not sure I've got that one,
but I've got some of them, so I've kind of being checking in this little box
of broken bits, really.
You've been checking those against that?
Yeah. Because I know it seems slightly fiddly but, actually, if you can find
one of those bits that goes in there, that's going to save you the time that
you spend kind of filling it and sanding it and then painting it, so it is
actually worth doing.
Well, I've got a bit of a sneeze here, so I won't stand there.
- I'll move away. - All right, thanks, Jay.
For family heirlooms too precious to throw away,
but too damaged to go on display,
The Repair Shop team is ready, willing and able to restore them back to
pride of place.
What have you got there? That looks nice.
Will is the man you need to see.
Karen has a very special jewellery box that needs Will's skills to
give it a new lease of life.
It belonged to my grandmother.
- OK. - OK. She passed away in 1964.
- Right. - It was passed on to my father.
He passed away in 1999 and I've had it ever since.
- Do you currently use it for your...? - I don't use it. - No? - Because it's damaged.
- Oh. - As you can see.
THEY LAUGH
Yeah, it's a bit on the broken side.
The keyhole is exposed there, but normally there is a little piece that
fixes in there which covers up the lock, so you wouldn't normally see that.
And then that is exposed,
if you slide the base and then that drops down
exposing the keyhole.
But that has actually become detached.
Such a clever box.
Such a clever little box.
So, of course, the whole thing looks like a book.
Like very small books within two bigger books.
Yeah. It's even got the original key, which I've got there.
Wow. When I was younger, I loved fiddly boxes and it's really clever.
Especially with the secret key and the secret panel.
What else can you tell me about the box?
Do you know where it was originally from?
No, I've no idea where it came from originally.
I don't even know what wood it's made from.
I'm just looking at the swallows here,
they look like they've been painted on.
I mean, you can see on the top here
it's pretty...pretty scratched.
It's had a few years of use.
- Yeah. - Because she used to use it constantly as a jewellery box.
I will get to work and see what I can do.
Lovely, thank you.
It would mean a lot to me to see it restored to its original beauty.
It was a treasured possession of my grandmother's,
and I'd like to be able to keep it in the family,
- so I'd like to see it restored so that - I - can use it.
I have a feeling that it would have originally been a darker colour.
Which reminds me,
I've seen a lot of these similar sort of boxes.
I think this is Italian origin olive wood.
Wherever it comes from, this small box has big problems.
A broken lock, cover and hinge,
plus a very tired interior.
Will is going to need some reinforcements, in the shape of clockmaker Steve.
If you can solder something onto that head,
the other side of there...
Hey - see what date that newspaper is.
As Will digs deeper into the box,
a fragment of old newspaper reveals itself.
Well, we thought that it was Italian,
and that is "Roma".
- Oh, right. - Italian. - Yeah.
- Bit of Poirot work there... - Or were you told that(?)
Yeah, I got that in my earpiece(!)
No, I knew that this was Italian.
Reel 'em in, Steve. Reel 'em in.
Who told you, then?
I...I just know how old it is, 1920s...
- How old are you?! - It's made out of olive wood.
- Oh, is it? - Anyway, Steve, if you can get on with that job, I'm going to...
He's had enough, Steve!
While Steve and Will are busy on the box,
Kirsten's terracotta jigsaw puzzle is proving tricky to piece together.
It's not going quite according to plan at the moment.
The sticks aren't going together terribly well.
If you just get, like, a little grain of sand that's on the break edge,
it just puts the whole joint out.
The jug's creator, artist Jean Lurcat,
is better known for his tapestries than his pottery.
He was born in France in 1892,
studied alongside Matisse, Cezanne and Renoir,
and was a contemporary of Pablo Picasso.
- I can breathe now, yeah? - No, not yet!
I'm still sort of moving it around while it's still...
- Playable? - Yeah, exactly.
Because the adhesive hasn't actually gone off yet,
and it's sort of moving slightly.
- There's some joins that I'm not entirely happy with. - Right...
It's just given, that it's so erm...
- Broken(?) - So broken, yeah!
I've got my hands in my pockets, I'm standing well away.
- I'm not going to sneeze... - You're learning, Jay.
So these little bits,
obviously, you're going to touch all of this up,
- where there's cracks and what have you? - Yeah, I'm going to fill it.
- Fill it? - Fill it, and then paint it, hand-paint it. - Yeah.
So does it feel cool to be working on
- a piece of work by a mate of Picasso? - Yeah, absolutely.
It's quite cool, isn't it?
Yeah, it's, erm...it's quite an honour actually, I think.
Here I've got two different grades of sandpaper -
it looks like a big jumble, but I kind of know what I've got in there.
I kind of cut them up small like this, and rolled up,
so that they're kind of handy to get into nooks and crannies.
As sad as it might sound, I kind of
get my favourite bits of sandpaper in here, as well,
that I keep going back to.
So how are we doing, me old china plate?
I'm just starting the painting process, so it's...
- So the final furlong is there? - Yeah, it is, actually. - OK. Cool.
All of these cracks
that you've mended and got the jug back together,
in the end of it, will Emily be able to SEE those cracks?
- That's a good question, actually... - You're supposed to say no!
- Well... - Come on, help me out. - Do you know, the thing is,
it depends really, actually, the pieces that you're working on.
You know, some pieces you would just get your airbrush out,
and you could make it completely invisible.
But I think
it's about not smothering this piece in paint
and, actually, I want to keep the restoration to a minimum, really.
In a way, it's sort of more of a conservation job.
Just because it's such a lovely piece.
So she MIGHT see some of the cracks?
I think so, but she seems to me like someone that would kind of
rather have an honest restoration
than a piece that's completely smothered in spray.
It probably looks absolutely awful to you...
No, it looks good. Compared to the way it came in... I remember it,
it was all in bits, you've put it together...
Yes, you've got this kind of cracks...
- Don't touch! - I'm not touching, I'm getting close, though!
I can never touch anything on this. It's not good.
Right, how are you doing? The main man to see is Steve.
The Repair Shop team answer all manner of SOS calls
for broken family pieces left on the shelf.
And it's not long before Neville Reid arrives,
with something that Jay CAN get his hands on.
Hello. How are we doing?
Hello.
- So what have we got here, then? - The lion chair. - Lion chair.
Oh, wow.
- Is that the face of the lion? - Yes, when I was little... Right.
..I used to think that these were lions.
My family had a house up in the north of Scotland,
- and this sat outside the bedroom door. - Right.
And as a small boy,
in a house where I wasn't allowed to touch anything at all...
- Right. - ..when nobody was looking, I used to sit in it.
And many years later I inherited this.
And I daren't sit on it, cos it's a little bit rickety.
It is a bit, yeah. You've got no seat...
It was not in good condition when I was little.
Yeah, I don't think this is the original -
well, this top layer that you've got here...
- Right. - ..isn't the original.
- This looks more to be the original. - Ah... OK.
I've never noticed that.
And then, underneath you've got...
Oh, there we go.
We've got a signature underneath, does that make any sense to you?
Reid. Well, Reid's my surname...
OK. Any idea of where this has come from,
- or the age of it? - No, I've no idea
of the age, or where it came from.
The only thing, I've always believed
- that it's been in the family from new. - From new, you say?
I've always BELIEVED it was.
The reason why I'm asking you that
is because I think this is a 19th-century Italian chair.
- Do you have any connection to an Italian family...? - Yes.
- Do you? - Yes. - How far back is that?
18th, 19th century.
I'm just getting fur coming up on the back of my neck, super-excited
to find out if this really is connected to your family from birth.
Cos that's part of history -
I shouldn't even be leaning on this, actually,
this is quite an important chair.
- Thank you, Jay. - No problem, you're more than welcome.
All right? Thank you.
Jay thinks that there may be an Italian connection,
which is very exciting
because we have an Italian connection in the family.
I'll need to go and do my homework to find out
whether that matches time-wise...
I think this one's going to be a real joy to work on.
Cos it's got a lot of family history added to it.
So once I've got all of the fabric off,
then I'll be able to identify where I can open up, and then re-glue.
Before he can reupholster,
- Jay has to DE-upholster. - Here we go.
And under the old fabric,
he finds some 19th-century inspiration.
Wow. You've got the leaf, the vine...
..all of that detail.
As you can see, just there is the original colour.
So it would have been a very vibrant red.
A lot of people think, in the 19th century,
people were fearful of colour - we're more fearful of colour NOW.
Whereas these guys were very brave. And that can just show you there -
look how bright that is.
That is beautiful.
Definitely going to inspire me,
with regards to the fabric I'm going to choose.
That allows me to
go ahead and be bright and be bold.
With Jay kept busy with the chair,
Kirsten can crack on undisturbed
applying finishing touches to the artist's jug.
I've put the last coat of gloss,
painted glaze over the restorations.
I'm now just sort of doing a little bit of polishing up
where the joins are.
Well, that looks nice!
- It looks better than it did. - Can I touch it? - Yeah, yeah.
- Am I allowed? - Yeah, you're allowed to now.
- Thank you. - Yeah, absolutely.
Cos, actually, one of the lovely things about that piece
is actually the way it feels, so...
Does feel nice. So can she hold it by the handle, then?
- Yeah. - She can? - Yeah. - Can - I - hold it by the handle?
No.
I thought you was going to say that!
Now NEARLY safe enough even for Jay to handle,
the finished jug is ready to be reunited with its owner Emily.
I'm feeling a little bit nervous about collecting the jug today, because...
- SHE SIGHS - ..will the cracks show,
will it be the same jug?
- Hiya. - Look at that. Hello.
You caught us.
Busy, yeah.
- Busy at beating Jay. - How are you doing? - Yeah, fine. - Come with me.
- We've got a visitor... - Ah! Hi, Emily. - All right?
- So do you remember what it looked like when you brought it? - Yes.
- It was in an envelope, as well. - Yeah, it was in lots of different containers, yeah, it was in pieces.
But you worked your magic on it...
- Oh... - ..I believe.
- Well... Come, let's show her! ..we'll find out. - We've got to show her.
- Jay, it's actually over there. - I'm allowed to grab it? - Well...
Shall we pop it on there?
Right there.
OK...?
Oh, my God.
That's incredible!
- Can I touch it? - Of course you can, it's your jug!
Wow!
I had anxiety dreams about...
- Oh! - Do you know what...?
That's unbelievable!
- It's emotional. - I'm glad you like it.
You should be emotional. Well, it's going to be very,
very happy in its safe new place now on my mantelpiece.
- So it's got a new place? - Yeah, away from the window, away from drilling. - OK.
And, yeah, out of leaping distance of the cat, as well.
So I've thought of all eventualities!
I actually like... I mean, it's not invisible, but I like that.
It's history and it adds to the handmade feel of it all, you know?
Yeah, I mean, I think it would have been very easy to kind of just end up
over-painting it, really.
- And it just didn't feel right having met you. - No. - And the history,
it just kind of felt right to sort of do what we call a sympathetic
- restoration, really. - Yeah. It's had a few knocks, like all of us.
- Yeah, just a few. - Absolutely, yeah.
I'm absolutely delighted.
It's not taken anything away at all.
- It's brilliant. - Fantastic.
- Well done, you. - One happy customer. - Thank you.
It's been such a lovely object to work on.
- She says! - Thank you.
I said beforehand that I was worried about the cracks showing.
And, actually, I've changed my mind about that,
because it's got a lovely texture to it.
It's kind of sharing its little knock, and I like that.
I like that it's not perfect.
It was a handmade item,
and you can see another set of hands that's lovingly cared for it
and put it back together again.
As one treasured possession leaves the workshop safely back in one piece,
Jay is in the process of pulling apart the 19th-century lion chair.
There you go. Most of the time,
people wouldn't make a big deal about the frame,
they would just make a new one.
But because this has family history to it, it's a big deal.
To help preserve that history, Jay's got a plan.
- Bit of woodwork? - Yeah, bit of woodwork!
And he's calling in a favour from Steve.
See that name now, that signature just there?
What I want to do is have a frame round there.
How about a bit of brass?
And then, if I were to cut out the inside...
- Like a plate. - Yeah, well, I've probably got some brass I can use.
See, now that's why I came to you.
Yeah. That will polish up nicely.
Like, shiny. Like something you put in your clocks.
- Yeah, exactly. - Thank you.
Jay can now turn his attention to reupholstering the seat.
Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
And inspired by the original 19th-century fabric,
true to his word, he's gone bold.
- Wow. - What do you think?
I was going to make a suit out of it.
Do you know what, you would make a suit!
I would, actually. I love bumblebees.
So with this frame, what I want to have is the bumblebee dead centre.
Has that material got moths?
Yeah, they look like moths, but they're bumblebees.
I'm telling you, they're bumblebees.
Don't laugh.
Oh, look at that! Come on.
That is special.
- Do you reckon we ought to lacquer that? - No. Leave it like that.
Let it age with the piece.
- That'll look quite nice. - Looks proper, though, doesn't it?
- More than proper! - Yeah. - The Queen will be proud of that.
Now the new seat is almost finished,
the final stage is to rebuild the frame.
And Will's been roped in to make sure it will be strong enough for
owner Neville to sit on for the first time in 50 years.
We'll put the top in first.
Seat in second, and then we'll...
- Fit these in. - Fit these in last, yeah. - OK, cool.
I'm in.
- Cool. - Lovely.
How do you think Neville is going to feel when he gets this back?
Cor, blimey. I think he's going to feel like a king.
- He is going to feel like a king. - It is a throne and, erm...
..to me it just looks quite regal now.
- Yeah. - We've kept a lot of the link towards his old family history.
- So... Yeah. - This chair looks really good!
- I think it looks nice. - It looks really good.
Returning to the newly-repaired jewellery box,
Will's final job is to clean and polish the outside before Karen returns to pick it up.
But Will's noticed a potential pitfall in his plan.
My main concern with the top is the three swallows have been hand-painted.
So it's a fine balance of cleaning it and over-cleaning it and losing
all of that detail, which is what I don't want to do.
At the moment, I'm just cleaning around the birds for now.
Start working my way into the middle.
And then just sort of
lightly brushing over the birds.
And then, if I feel that any of the paint is beginning to come off,
then I'll stop and find another way of cleaning it.
- Hey. - Hi, there.
Hello.
So, before you have a look, I just wanted to say,
I started cleaning the box.
- Yeah. - And I cleaned the border around the top.
I wasn't too sure or not to clean the centre,
where the birds were, because I was worried about removing the birds and everything else.
But I gave it a go.
Oh, wow.
I'm flabbergasted.
- Yeah? - Yeah, it's absolutely lovely, yeah, it's fantastic.
I'm really pleased with that, yeah.
- You can actually see them now. - You can see them.
I did wonder whether they might just disappear if you tried polishing it.
It's beautiful.
But it gets better, it gets better.
That goes down, I'll let you unlock.
And it doesn't fall off.
And it doesn't fall off. Well, the top's secure, so that's good.
- Oh, wow. - There we are.
Oh, that's brilliant.
Interestingly enough,
on the inside there's some old newspaper and I was trying to work
out how old this was, where it came from.
- Yeah. - I thought it was Italian... - Right.
..olive wood, 1920s.
I actually found a little piece of paper and I was thinking,
"Is this Italian?" Right in the middle it says "Roma". So, obviously...
- So it is Italian. - Yeah. - OK.
I thought I'd keep that there, just for a keepsake.
That is gorgeous, it's beautiful.
I'm really pleased. Thank you so much.
I can see a lot of work's got into that.
Thank you, that is lovely.
It's far exceeded anything I could imagine.
I'm going to put it on my dressing table, put jewellery in it
and hopefully I'm going to be able to give it to one of my children.
Back in the workshop,
Jay is giving another Repair Shop team effort its final polish.
- That looks absolutely amazing. - It does look nice, doesn't it?
Steve, do you want to have a look at your handiwork, mate?
- Yeah, is it all finished? - I've just got to tidy it up, dust it off a bit.
So there's your moth.
- The moth chair. - The moth chair!
- Fantastic. - We've got another moth.
Wow.
- Underneath there. - That's really good.
Well done, Steve.
That works in really well, doesn't it?
- Yeah. - That's a transformation.
That is a real transformation, yeah.
- Definitely. - He can sit on it now, anyway,
- that's the main thing, isn't it? - He'll be really pleased with that.
Am I allowed to sit on the chair?
No, no, no, not on this one.
- Why? - He's got to be the first one to sit on it.
- What? - Yeah. - Yeah, it's a nice touch.
That's the way it goes, it's his chair, isn't it?
You're such a liar!
Don't say that you haven't done this work and you haven't made sure
that it's not going to fall to pieces?
- That would be funny! - It would not be funny, Steve, it wouldn't be funny.
What you've got to remember is me and you stuck this together, so it's going to be strong, yeah?
- That's right. - So I have every faith... - It was a trick question.
I have every faith in the glue, the craftsmanship,
so when he sits on there, he's going to feel really cool.
- Well done. - Yeah? - You've done a great job.
- All three of us done a good job. - All three of us. - Mine was very small.
Shall we have a joint pat on the back? I'll pat you and you pat me.
Who's patting me?
- You joker! - Well done, Jay.
Cheers, lads.
The lion chair is ready to be restored to pride of place
in the home of its owner Neville.
How are we doing, Neville?
- Very well, thank you. - You all right?
- Good morning, Jay. - Good morning.
Well, I won't keep you in suspense any more.
So, here we go.
Oh, my goodness, wow!
It's amazing.
What gave you the idea of the moth?
- The moth... Steve, Steve... - It was very moth-eaten,
before it was very moth-eaten.
Steve... Steve must have had a word with you because Steve thinks it's a moth
- but it's a bumblebee, actually. - OK.
The reason why I used the bumblebee is cos the two fabrics that
came off had a heavy reference to flowers.
- Right. - It was a case of using something that pollinates both flowers.
And it's still red.
And it's still red. It has to be red.
- It has to be red. - And if you remember rightly, we had underneath
it, your...
..family name.
- Oh, yes. - So made a bit of a feature of it.
Steve's made us a lovely frame, just to show it off.
- Wonderful. - Because you didn't know it was there originally, did you?
- I didn't know it was there. - So now you can't miss it, really, right?
- There you are, sir. - Can I sit on it? - Yeah.
My goodness, that brings back memories.
The last time I sat on this, I was breaking the rules of the house.
- Breaking the rules? - As a small boy, I wasn't supposed to touch anything,
so, fantastic. Very happy.
I'm happy that you're happy now.
Let's stick it back up there, then,
so we can have a little bit of a chinwag.
Have you found anything out?
My great-great-great uncle, Francis Reid...
- Right. - ..went to Italy as a young man and spent the rest of his life there.
When he died, his wife came home, brought, presumably,
everything that they owned with her,
and we can assume, perhaps, we can't prove it,
that this came home with him from Italy.
- Wow. - And that would have been late-19th century.
And his surname was Reid?
Reid, yes. And his middle name was Neville,
so he was Francis Neville Reid.
No! That's amazing.
Absolutely priceless.
I will hand it on to my children,
and I hope it will go on to their children.
It's a beautiful chair, and the history behind it is amazing,
it's been a pleasure to work on it.
- Thank you for bringing it to The Repair Shop. - Thank you. - Thank you, sir.
I'm absolutely delighted with the chair.
It's been part of my life...
all my life and it looks fantastic,
it feels fantastic and I think they've done a fantastic job.
I couldn't stop laughing.
- Why? - Because of...
- Come on. - Neville, when he came
in and he said, "It's a moth."
You planted the seed, I bet you, I bet you did!
That made your day, I know it did.
But he loved it, didn't he?
He did love it.
It's a bumblebee, I can see that now.
It's a bit quirky. But, actually, I like it.
It suits the chair. It'll make it a real conversation piece.
Join us next time,
as more family treasures are rescued and their cherished memories restored
in The Repair Shop.