Welcome to The Repair Shop,
where cherished family heirlooms are brought back to life.
This is the workshop of dreams.
Home to furniture restorer, Jay Blades.
Nowadays everybody spends a fortune on stuff that once it's broken, they just bin it.
But everybody has something that means too much to be thrown away.
And that's where we come in.
Working alongside Jay will be some of the country's leading craftspeople.
Every piece has its own story.
It's amazing to think that some of my work becomes part of that story.
I've always played with things, I've always repaired things.
And I just love it.
There is a real pleasure in bringing people's pieces back to life again.
Each with their own unique set of skills...
I can't wait to get started.
..they will resurrect....
..revive... Come on, man! ..and rejuvenate...
..treasured possessions and irreplaceable pieces of family history...
Wow!
..bringing both the objects... She's fantastic!
That's just taken me back 50 years. ..and the memories that they hold...
THEY GASP ..back to life.
Oh, my God!
In The Repair Shop today, silversmith Brenton uses talents
he didn't know he possessed.
This job comes with all sorts of challenges.
I didn't think I'd be a plastic surgeon but here we go.
The first nose I've ever had to make.
While furniture restorers Will and Graham
prepare to perform some reconstructive surgery of their own.
All of a sudden, I heard a big scream and a crack and I rushed in and Mum was on the floor.
We just sat down and it went bang.
Did you go for Mum first or did you go for the chair first?
Mum first! If I went for the chair first, I wouldn't be standing here.
But first to arrive at The Repair Shop is Cheryl Matthews
and her daughter Philippa, from Wolverhampton.
Hello. Nice to meet you. Likewise. In you come, ladies.
Cheryl and Pip have an unusual timepiece
that needs the expert eye of Steve Fletcher.
Hello. Hello. I'm Steve. Hello. Nice to meet you. I'm Cheryl.
Pip. Nice to meet you. Hi, Pip. A lady holding a swinging clock.
Yes. You said it swings. What do you mean by "it swings"?
Well, that little thing that's fallen off, it pivots on this.
And this has got little spikes on...
And those spikes... And the two spikes rest on that, and it swings.
It's lovely to see it going, as well.
I've seen these before, they're sometimes called a barmaid clock.
Right. She's a barmaid, then, yeah? So what's the story behind this one?
It was my grandparents' wedding present.
Right. They got married in the late '20s.
They passed it on to my mum... OK. ..and then Mum passed it on to me.
Unfortunately, it's in this state now,
so Mum gave it to me on the premise that I looked after it.
I don't feel like I've looked after it. OK. It's in a box.
So it would be lovely to get it back in the way it should be.
Nan doesn't know it looks like this, does she? No.
She knows it as fully-working, then.
It was whole when she gave it me. Not in a box in bits. No.
OK. Oh, ho-ho! We'll keep it a secret.
THEY LAUGH Won't tell her. She'll never know.
When was the last time it was working? About the '70s.
Oh, right. OK. Yeah. Not for a long time. No.
It's always been awkward, it's always been hard to keep going.
It used to be on the mantelpiece. Right.
And if ever they leant on the mantelpiece,
the clock would stop swinging.
So when my mum had it she put a glass shelf
in the corner of the room so that nobody would touch it.
OK. And it did used to swing but it just never kept going, kept good time.
And there's obviously been some work done to it.
Yeah. My father-in-law tried but unfortunately he's not a clock or a watch mender.
But, no, I couldn't get anybody else to look at it. OK.
I've been to two or three clock menders and they wouldn't look it.
I mean, they are regarded as a slightly... A problem clock.
Are they? That doesn't surprise me.
THEY LAUGH Yeah.
And I can see that your father-in-law's had fun and games
getting this back off. Yes.
Undoing it is a real difficult thing,
unless you know what you're doing. Right.
So there's lots of bits and pieces in the box here, so I'm hoping that
all the bits are here. Yes, I think they are.
I hope so. Yeah. That becomes a bit of a problem. Yes.
Not for you, Steve, nothing's a problem for you. Come on.
Makes it more difficult. Let's put it that way.
More difficult. Well, we can handle that, can't we, Steve? Yeah, we can.
Great stuff. Well, thank you for bringing it in. Thank you very much.
All right. Thank you very much. You take care.
I feel bad when I look at the clock.
It's one of the few things that have come down from my grandparents.
Mum remembers it when she was a girl, I remember when I was a girl
and then because we're going down the female line, it would be lovely
to pass it down to Pip as well.
Once Steve's finished with it, I think I'll be kidnapping it off you.
I like it. You don't need it.
You haven't got anywhere to put it yet! Need a house first.
Then I've got a clock already, so...
So this is a problem clock. You know about these kind of ones.
Some of them are problem clocks, yeah,
and this one really has been through the mill.
So why are these clocks a big problem, then?
Because they have a small weight inside
that just swings one way then the other,
just enough to swing the pendulum one way and another as well.
So that will explain when they was leaning on the mantelpiece, it would stop working.
Well, exactly. All of that. Yes. So all these things you know.
Fully in control. Yep. Everything's going to be hunky-dory.
I'm hoping all the bits are there.
I'm really hoping all the bits are there. Hoping all the bits are there.
Well, I'm going to wish you luck. All right. All right, see ya.
Cheryl's father-in-law has had real fun and games,
especially trying to get the back off of it.
And also on this shaft here, he's filed it almost half away.
This is not uncommon to see this sort of thing happen to clocks
when people are trying to fix it themselves
and don't know the right way of doing things.
They can often cause more damage...
..than cure the problem.
I'm really hoping that I've got all the rest of the bits and pieces.
I think I have, actually, and the rest of the stuff in this box
that she brought along, has got nothing whatsoever to do with the clock.
So everything I've got is here.
These swinger or mystery clocks were first patented in the 1860s.
This one dates from the early 20th century
and was a popular model made by the German clockmakers, Junghans.
The other thing I need to do is take this dial off
and take this over to Kirsten.
I know she'll make a lovely job at filling these chips.
So it's over to The Repair Shop's ceramics conservator Kirsten.
Hi, Steve. Well, that's very diddy, isn't it? It is diddy.
What do you reckon?
Obviously it's been bashed around, hasn't it?
It's lost quite a lot of the enamel. It has, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I can certainly do,
like, a coloured fill on that for you. OK. I'll do my best.
Brilliant. Get my special specs out. Excellent. OK.
Not a desperate hurry. 25 minutes?
LAUGHS Leave it with me. OK.
Liz Bradbury has brought a tarnished memento
given to her by a very special lady.
Silversmith Brenton West is standing by.
Hi, you must be Liz. Hi.
I'm Brenton. Oh, nice to meet you, Brenton. What have you brought?
I have brought my Great Auntie May's silver hand mirror. OK.
At least I think it's silver.
Let's have a look.
Oh. Isn't that lovely?
Oh, dear. Yes. We're missing some glass. Yes.
Can you remember the moment that Great Aunt May gave you this?
Yes, very clearly.
She invited me into her bedroom which, as children,
we didn't normally go in to her bedroom. OK.
Did you think you were in trouble, or...
Well I did sort of though, because I thought, "Oh,"
you know, "What does she want?" sort of thing.
and I knew it was something special to her
because she took it off her dressing table
and I was overwhelmed, really, because... I bet you were.
I was quite a little child at the time and it seemed such
an important, precious item.
So shiny and silvery and grown up.
Tell me, what did Great Auntie May mean to you?
Does this bring back memories of her?
Oh, it certainly does.
Once a year, we always went to stay with her,
my dad, my mum, and myself and my brother. OK.
She made it a lovely little family holiday for us
in her little terraced house in Swansea.
We always used to have a lovely time there,
and she always used to take the best care of us.
My father was one of her nephews and she used to look after him
when he was little as well. Really?
She is one of these ladies that was in the background.
But always there as well. Always sort of holding everything together.
It's a lovely item. I love it. It looks like it's silver.
Do you know if there's any marks on it?
Any hallmarks or anything?
Is there something...on the handle?
No. I can't see.
Oh, is that something at the end there?
Or is that just a dent? That's just a dent, I think.
Well, also, the lady's nose is missing.
OK. Yeah, I can see that. I might have to make a new nose for her.
A little dainty nose. A little dainty nose for the lady.
Yeah. OK. And then we need to do a bit of repair on that
and then, obviously, a new mirror.
I regard it as a sort of a tribute to Auntie May, really.
It was important to her and it's come to represent her love and her kindness.
Right. It's priceless to me.
When I hold the mirror, I'm always sort of transported back
to when I was a child and my holidays,
and that's what the mirror means to me, it means...
..it means love, really.
So this is, this is a lovely, lovely mirror and I know it means an awful
lot to Liz to have it repaired.
We've got a bunch of dents in here
that need to be... Need to be removed.
And of course it needs a really, really good polish.
The silver is very thin.
What happens is the thinnest parts, where they're raised up here,
get worn away if it's put down on a dressing table or if it's polished too hard.
This poor little thin, hollow nose is the highest point on the mirror.
It's the first thing that's going to hit the table when you put it down.
And her nose has completely disappeared.
So we're going to make her a solid nose so that it lasts a bit longer
than her old hollow nose she used to have.
Inside, I'm going to be heating up some pitch,
which is what it had originally - that's what this black is here.
I'll be putting the pitch in to give the silver strength again
and to give the mirror some weight.
Now with the strategy in place for this Art Nouveau looking glass,
Brenton can tackle all the tarnished silver
with a trick he's used for years.
I'm going to put some aluminium foil,
baking soda and some hot water in the bowl.
It's ordinary baking soda, so it's not poisonous.
No exact amount, just a good old dollop of it.
You may put your own piece of silver in here,
as long as it's silver on its own,
no pieces of wood or ivory or...if it's got...
If it's still got its mirror in it, I would not recommend this.
If it's a silver spoon or something like that,
or a coin, it will be fine.
The silver has to be in contact with the aluminium paper,
the aluminium foil, for the reaction to occur.
And, indeed, if you look at it you can see
it's starting to clean up already.
So I'm just going to put this in.
Leave it in the aluminium foil, I'll probably put that over the top of it
and we'll leave that for ten minutes or so and we'll come back
and check it when it's done its bit.
Back inside the workshop,
Steve has discovered that a key component of the barmaid clock is beyond repair.
This has been really badly damaged.
The barrel arbor, and key.
The barrel arbor is the axel which tightens the mainspring,
to power the clock movement.
Without it, the timepiece can't be wound up.
I'm going to cut this end off.
I'm going to drill it.
And then put a new piece in it.
That will have a square on it.
And once I've done that you'll be able to slide a key onto it,
in the normal way that you would put a key into a clock.
That's quite a complex job, but I'm going to get on with it now.
There we go.
This watchmaker's lathe is a lovely piece of kit...
..for keeping things really accurate.
The next job is I've got to make up the square.
The little pivot that goes into that hole.
I'm going to make a square out of this blue steel.
This blue steel is really, really strong.
When you put a key on it and turn it, it's not going to bend.
It's not going to break. It should be absolutely fine
once I put it in there, it's very tough material.
Good. So that's perfect.
So next stage is I'm going to turn it down
so that it's the right diameter to fit into this hole.
That's a really good tight fit.
And job's a good 'un.
At her workbench, ceramics conservator Kirsten
has cleaned decades of dirt from the antique clock face.
But it's exposed several deep chips in the enamel.
My plan now is to actually just try and do a colour fill on these areas of loss.
So for that I'm going to just use, like, an adhesive,
which is specially made for ceramics and glass,
and hopefully that's going to fill these areas
and mimic the enamel quite nicely.
I'm going to add quite a lot of titanium white
in the hope that it will make this fill quite opaque
and block out the copper that's on the base.
I'm going to try a little bit here and see how it's looking.
I think that's looking quite good.
While Kirsten works on the clock face...
..Steve is cleaning the rest of the parts, which have accumulated
years of grime from sitting above Cheryl's grandmother's fireplace.
You usually see a clock on the mantelpiece above a fire,
which is not a good place for a clock.
Because you get all the heat and dust coming up from the fire.
I'm talking about open fires, mainly.
This is very old-fashioned clock-cleaning fluid,
it's an ammonia-based water solution.
It's really quite satisfying cleaning up clock parts.
You know when you get it back together again, the whole clock's going to look beautiful.
And also the next clockmaker can see that it was done very well
the last time, and there's a certain pride knowing that
you're handing it on to the next clockmaker to take it apart
in the order that they know it's been looked after well in the past.
Next to arrive is Joanne Silverstein and her daughter Lisa,
with a distinctive piece of furniture that's had a catastrophic accident.
I'm Will. I'm Joanne. Joanne, very nice to meet you. I'm Lisa.
Lisa. Very nice to meet you. Lisa. Hi, Joanne. Graham.
I'm Lisa, the daughter. Hello. We've been expecting you with this interesting chair!
That I presume shouldn't be in two pieces. No, absolutely not.
Is this an Eames chair?
It's an Eames lounge chair. It's called a model 670.
The Repair Shop are calling on the expertise of mid-century
furniture restorer Graham Mancha.
It's definitely an Eames chair and it's a real one, because there's a lot of copies.
This is quite an iconic chair and I'm sure I've seen this before
with...is it like a footrest or an ottoman, or...
Yes, there is a foot stool. Yes, I do have that.
Do you? Right, so you have the set.
Well, I bought it in about 1962, it's had plenty of use.
It was the first piece of furniture I bought for my flat.
It was an iconic chair. You know, it was THE furniture to have.
What were you doing in the '60s? I came over from America, right.
I caught the accent. And I was following a young photographer.
He had been sent over by American Vogue to work for English Vogue.
Joanne and her late husband Donald moved to London
from America in the swinging '60s.
Joanne was a model and successful fashion designer.
Donald was the go-to photographer for the biggest stars of the fashion
and music industries, including Jimi Hendrix.
He did a series of very famous photos of Hendrix
stripped to the waist, and the big hair and so on.
Wearing, like, a medallion. Yeah.
Meeting those musicians was quite exciting. I can imagine.
I wanted to keep the chair for Lisa because it was her father's favourite chair.
Spent a lot of time in it, lots of memories,
just sitting there and us being children, running around
while he was sitting in the chair, watching all of us.
After two daughters, four grandchildren spinning around,
it's pretty well done-in.
But it lasted all these years until recently,
when we just sat down and it went bang.
It literally just...snapped.
Literally... Snapped, snapped, snapped. Yes.
I was with Mum and I went in to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
All of a sudden, I heard a big scream and a crack and I rushed in.
Mum was on the floor.
Did you go for Mum first or did you go for the chair first?
Mum first! If I went for the chair first, I wouldn't be standing here!
So how did you feel when this broke?
I was absolutely devastated because I had always promised Lisa this chair. Her father's chair.
And I thought, "Oh, no. That's it." That's it. Never happened.
Is this a straightforward-ish sort of break and mend?
Well, it's not uncommon.
I've seen a few of them like this.
Because the chair depends on key points,
which are these rubber mounts under the arms,
and what's probably happened...
In fact, I'm sure what's happened here, because it's broken here,
this mount has come away and, unfortunately, the chair...
Were you sitting in it when it broke? Yes.
What's probably happened is, you sat in the chair,
this went... Yes. ..and as it broke, you were leaning back, and it swung
round and unfortunately instead of the mount coming away,
the plywood snapped. Right. So it's quite serious.
I think it can probably be fixed but it's going to actually require a new lower-back panel.
Now, the problem there is this is Brazilian rosewood.
You can't actually get it any more because it's an endangered species.
So the new panel won't probably look quite like this, if that's OK.
Well, that has to be, I imagine.
It's the fact that we want it fixed, no matter how.
Do you feel that it's going to be strong? It'll be strong,
but within the constraints of the design.
So if I have any great-grandchildren,
they could still spin around?
I think you could safely say they'd be OK to do that, one at a time.
One at a time. One at a time, definitely.
This chair's been loved, it's been at home,
it's something you cherish and has a lot of memories
and, to my mind, I would say probably the main thing
is to actually get the thing up and running again
and make it reliable, and have it so it lasts.
I think it'll be fantastic. It's such an emotional attachment to this chair
and I so had promised to Lisa for so long that if I couldn't fulfil that promise,
I...would feel very bad about that.
Nice to meet you both. Nice to meet you. Good luck with the repair!
I kind of feel a strong energetic connection with that chair
and my dad, so that's why it's really, really important.
Nice chair. It is. Or it was. Shame it's in two pieces. It is.
I think it can be put back together and... You think?
I'm pretty sure it can, in actual fact. Yes, it can.
Not to be overly optimistic about it.
Basically, we're going to replace the lower-back panel,
that's this bit of plywood here,
because this is a write-off. Yeah. The leather will be cleaned.
I'm going to tidy the base up.
And then it will be a case of putting the thing back together.
Well, I will give you a hand back up to the bench.
I'll take the lighter part. Yes.
There have been many imitations of the Eames lounge chair.
The original was designed by American husband and wife team
Charles and Ray Eames in 1956.
It remains a highly sought-after piece of fashionable furniture.
Graham has become one of the world's authorities in restoring these chairs
and knows them like the back of his hand.
This is the part of the back that has broken.
Now, as I take this off, I can see that it's actually been repaired before.
You can see that in the light just there,
there's actually a slight sort of imperfection in the wood.
It broke in, say, a similar fashion to what it's broken this time,
except this time the wood snapped completely and you can't
do anything with that.
So, that's the broken panel that's going to be disposed of.
That's scrap.
Silversmith Brenton has come to the rescue
of a treasured Art Nouveau hand mirror.
Its glass is long gone and it's lost its lustre
after years of languishing on a shelf.
But thanks to a trick of the trade, this mirror may have a new lease of life.
Hey, that's pretty good.
It's got most of the black out of the details.
It's going to want a final polish up,
but that little trick's worked well.
I'm going to give this just a gentle polish over,
just to make it really, really shiny.
It's still slightly dull.
Now that decades of dark tarnish are erased,
Brenton can concentrate on crafting a crucial missing feature.
So this job comes with all sorts of challenges.
I didn't think I'd be a plastic surgeon, but here we go.
In all these years of silversmithing,
this is the first nose I've ever had to make,
and it's actually much more difficult than you think
cos a nose is a funny shape, and this is a tiny, tiny little nose.
I'd love to have soldered a piece in there and banged another nose out
but this metal is just so, so thin that if I did anything like that
it would just split completely.
So I've got to... I've got to look after the integrity of this mirror.
So I'm going to put that through there.
We can have a nice little button nose, like Liz wanted,
or we can have a...big Pinocchio nose.
I think that be a bit silly, so I think what we'll do,
we'll go for the little button nose.
I'm just going to glue that into the hole from behind.
Next on the list, before he can fit a new piece of glass,
Brenton must reinforce the structure of this fragile keepsake
using a material called pitch.
So this is pine resin.
It's just a hard resin that when it's hot becomes liquid
and when it's cool...
..it's hard, and it's ideal for pouring in to hollow silver objects
that are very thin metal.
So, this will take a few minutes.
So, the pitch is slowly melting.
Once it's all liquid, I can pour it into the back of the mirror.
So this smells like a pine forest in summer, which is...
..quite rewarding, actually.
Pitch has been used to fill and give weight to pieces crafted from gold
or silver sheets for hundreds of years.
It was first discovered in early Islamic jewellery.
We know it's ready when all of this pitch has melted.
There's still a lump in there that's slowly melting,
so any second now this will be ready.
I don't want to pour it in and have a big lump sticking up
in the middle, cos the mirror won't fit in. It's got to be smooth.
So I'm just warming the mirror up slightly,
so it's not shocked by the heat of the pitch going in.
The mirror's cold and the pitch is hot.
Just better just to have it slightly warmed up.
Silver is a really good conductor of heat,
so it doesn't need much heat to do that. Right.
So I'm just pouring the pitch now.
Obviously, I can't put too much in or the mirror won't fit.
I've got to put just enough in,
just to give that silver some strength.
So this, because it's liquid, it's naturally self-levelling.
If you look at the middle of that pitch you can see the old pitch
that was in there before.
It's melting and floating to the top of my new pitch, which is quite nice.
Right. Put that down there.
Just got to level that a bit.
So I'm just making sure there's enough room for the mirror.
Just removing any pitch out of the way that's going to cause me problems,
but I think that's about right now, so I'm going to leave that to set
and then I'll try the mirror in there when it's cooled down.
It'll probably take about half an hour.
Restorer Graham Mancha is rescuing a 20th-century design classic,
a genuine Eames chair.
Now he's got it in bits, Graham examines the evidence.
Within minutes, he's deduced the likely cause of the accident.
A suspect shock mount.
Essentially, to the untrained eye, I mean, it pretty much looks OK
but in actual fact it's not.
This mount is actually sagging, it's starting to twist
and it's much lower.
It means the back of the chair would be much lower than it should be.
This one has been glued on before, which is the reason it broke this
time, because it was an old mount
and you can't really glue old mounts back.
This is a new mount.
The geometry of this and the alignment is perfectly square and straight.
But badly fitted mounts aren't the only problem.
The seating panel has a weak spot.
I noticed earlier that on this side there's a split
and it's not in just one laminate,
it's actually, there's a couple of layers of laminate...have come away.
So I'm going to use a gauge to actually just see how deep that is.
So, that goes down quite a long way.
Eames chairs are such precision pieces of engineering
that any slight defect in a single component
can have a knock-on effect.
So, you've got a seven-layer ply.
This is splitting over two layers,
which severely compromises the structure. It's not very strong.
And you're gluing the mount to that, and the whole back of the chair
and the weight of the person sitting in it are taken by this area here.
I don't really want Joanna to have another accident
like she did when the thing broke recently.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to glue all that
and make sure it's structurally sound
before I prepare and attach the new shock mounts.
A few hours later, the base panel is now solid and safe.
It does look, to me...
..all good. So the shock mount should be fine.
I also noticed another thing I've got to do is the plate.
You can probably see, if you look at that you can just see
how bent it is along the straight edge.
That's happened when the back fell off.
So that needs to be straightened out.
It's actually a very, very strong piece of metal.
Every component of the cherished chair
is examined, refurbished or upgraded.
But the Brazilian rosewood panel that can no longer be sourced must
be replaced with an alternative.
How're you doing, Graham? Hi.
Postman's been. Got a little parcel for you. Oh.
Is that all right? Yeah. Is that the right one, though?
Let's have a look. Is that the right colour?
This is Santos. This is Rio rosewood.
This is the closest we could get.
Clearly there's a variance in the colour, this will wear in over time.
OK, so then my question is, how are we...
Is that...you're just saying, "OK, leave it like that and the sun will age it."?
Or are we going to bleach this?
I mean, it's possible to do that... Right
..but it's quite an involved process, and we considered this,
Will and I discussed it.
Joanne's been informed of that and the conclusion we came to
was that it's best to leave it like this
and it's an honest repair.
OK. You've got to remember this is a repair.
It's not conservation, and that is the most practical solution.
It's an obvious repair and we can see that it's obvious,
so we're going to leave it in that colour? Yes.
After hours of long labour, it's finally time to reconstruct this
pioneering piece of furniture.
How's it going? It's good. If you can...
..offer that up. Yeah. That goes there like that. OK.
And find the screws.
One either side. Just do it finger-tight. Yeah.
We're not too far away from completion.
No, it's getting there. This is like flat-pack furniture, isn't it?
Yeah, it's funny. It's funny you should say that.
Charles Eames did try and design some furniture.
There was a shelving system he designed,
but it was a bit ahead of its time.
In the end, it was actually mass...
It was actually assembled in the factory because people couldn't handle building the stuff at home.
It will take me an age to put this together.
So the deal is, now that I've helped you with this,
as soon as you get the upholstery on, I'm the first one then gets to sit in the chair.
OK. Yeah. Deal? That's a deal. You can test it.
Perfect. Deal.
At his bench, Steve is also busy reassembling.
He's getting ready to see if the barmaid clock
will ever call time again.
Been quite a nice clock to work on actually because...
..repairing the barrel arbor and doing some other repair work
is proper clockmaking, which I particularly quite like so, nice.
Nice job. Just hope it's going to work.
This is quite a tricky piece to pop in.
So this is a tiny, tiny little pendulum...
..that ticks one way and then the other way.
And that's all the power it needs to swing...
..this big pendulum.
I just think it's fantastic that a tiny, tiny little weight
is just moving one way and then the other way.
So it's the whole clock that acts as a pendulum
that will regulate itself.
But there is one part that Steve's still waiting to get his hands on.
The enamel clock face.
Fantastic. Thank you very much.
Is that all right? That's brilliant. OK. Absolutely brilliant.
I look forward to seeing her holding it.
So it'll be swinging like that next time you see it. Very cheeky.
THEY LAUGH
With the clock reassembled, it's time to see if all Steve's hard work has paid off.
This is the best part, really, of doing this job.
Just to see whether it does tick or not.
This is the...
..moment of truth.
So far, so good.
HE SIGHS Good.
Fingers crossed it's going to carry on going.
This unusual time piece arrived in bits after an attempted repair
at home went wrong.
But with some expert reconstruction and a little TLC,
it's happy hour for the barmaid once again.
And just in time for Cheryl and Pip's return.
Hello. Hello. How are you?
Fine, and you? Good, thank you.
Nice to see you again. You too. You've been looking forward to this?
We have, yes.
What are you hoping for?
I'm hoping for a perfect clock.
A perfect clock. Oh, my word.
I won't keep you in suspense any longer.
Oh, she's lovely. She looks lovely.
Smashing. Just as I remember it. That's lovely.
Did you have to do a lot of work to it?
A heck of a lot of work. Did you? Yes. Yeah.
I'm not surprised.
Having it working again, does that bring back any memories?
Yes. Yeah, because I remember seeing it like that on the glass shelf.
Now it's lovely to see it.
In my mind's eye I can see it on the glass shelf in the living room.
It's gorgeous. Lovely. Thank you.
That's smashing. You're very welcome.
Quite mesmerizing to watch, isn't it? It's lovely. It is.
Yeah, yeah. And she looks really happy as well, doesn't she?
Oh, Mum will be really, really pleased with it now.
Excellent. All right. OK. All right. Bye.
Oh, it's absolutely wonderful getting the barmaid clock back.
So happy. Didn't think she'd be in such good condition.
I've seen it with her holding the clock but I've never seen it ticking. It's just fabulous.
It's just wonderful to see it working again. And it's family.
It's not just an object.
It made me think of my mum.
She'd be so happy to see it working. Yeah. Cos it comes from Nan and Grandad.
Silversmith Brenton is adding the final flourishes
to an Art Nouveau hand mirror.
Its transformation is a reflection of hours of Brenton's hard work.
It arrived dull, dented
and with several important features completely missing.
Now, owner Liz is back to see her much-loved great aunt's mirror again.
I'm really excited.
I can't wait to see what Brenton has done
and I'm hoping that he's mended the nose
and that it's all shiny and new and it has a glass in it.
Hi, Liz. Nice to see you again. Hi. Nice to see you again.
All right. Evening, Liz. You all right? I'm fine, thanks.
That's good.
You've come to pick up... My Great Auntie May's silver hand mirror.
And it had sort of Art Nouveau... I figure that's the one.
Art Nouveau lady on the front. Right.
And she had something missing, didn't she? Her nose was missing.
There you go. Oh!
SHE GASPS
That is so beautiful!
Thank you so much!
May I? Of course! It's yours.
Thank you, Brenton. It's all right.
That is so beautiful.
And she has got a nose. She has got a nose.
She has got a nose!
And she's... And you've cleaned it all for me. Thank you.
It's beautifully shiny. I'm going to turn it round now and see.
Oh! And it's got glass in it!
I can see myself!
That is so fantastic! So when was the last time you used that?
Oh, about 15 years ago. Might be longer.
I did try and get it repaired but nobody could do it.
So... Come to the best here. Oh, my goodness.
I'm not allowed to leap across here and give you a hug, am I?
He can come around and give you a hug.
He's a gentleman, he should be coming around to give you a hug.
Can I? Oh, thank you so much. My pleasure.
Thank you so much. My pleasure. My pleasure. Really lovely.
I'm just thrilled because it brings back lovely memories for me.
When I hold it, it takes me right back to the moment when she gave it to me...
CLEARS THROAT ..and how amazed I was.
It's a nice thing and it wanted repairing and bringing back to life.
It's so lovely to feel and touch.
Do I have to be really careful around this?
Really careful around all of it. The nose is probably the strongest bit.
Oh, right. The nose is about the only bit you don't need to be careful about, cos it's solid.
But the rest of it, you have to be quite careful. OK.
Oh, I'm thrilled to bits. Are you? Yeah.
I really am. Good. That's the aim.
Perhaps I can pass it on to someone.
Who are you going to pass this on to? Well, I'm...
You know, I might... One day, I might have a granddaughter.
Because I've got two lovely sons.
And one day they might have children. OK.
Mind you, I don't know what I'll do if I have two granddaughters.
Then you have got a problem, haven't you!
I shall hang on to it as long as I possibly can.
Right. So you're going to use it until you get a granddaughter.
Definitely. Right. OK.
I'm feeling really elated that my mirror has been mended.
It looks just the way that it did when Auntie May gave it to me.
Beautiful and shiny and lovely.
Back in the workshop, the Eames lounge chair is undergoing a full
service from an expert in mid-century designer furniture, Graham.
So, the headrest cushion is identical to this one
but it goes up the other way,
and it's part of the design that these cushions can be rotated
to even out the wear.
Not a lot of people know that but it's actually part of the design
that was intended to be done, as with the ottoman cushion
and the seat.
So that's the cushions done and now I'm going to put the arms on.
Hey, Will. It's done.
HE CHUCKLES
Look at that. It looks really good.
Thank you. Really good.
And hopefully it functions as it should do. Let's see.
Great. Be my guest. Lovely.
Oh, that's good. Spin.
That is really good.
I probably need about five more minutes of testing.
OK. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes.
This is lovely.
The well-loved, well-used chair
arrived scuffed, tired and broken in two.
But now with the rosewood panel and broken mounts replaced,
and the leather upholstery reconditioned,
it's looking as good as it did in its heyday.
It's now ready to be delivered back to Joanne and Lisa.
Look, Mum. That's sitting on the Eames chair. The Eames chair.
It was the very first piece of furniture I ever bought in England.
I literally had one chair
and a kitchen table.
So it was a very important chair.
Besides being a sort of icon chair.
I'd rather have the one chair than lots of other furniture.
Because it was such an exciting period in my life,
it means a lot to me.
OK, let's go. Oh! SHE GASPS
Woohoo! Present! I love presents.
And this is a big one. I know.
Wow.
Look how shiny it is! SHE GASPS
Wow, look.
Hold on, let's just see the back. Fantastic!
Wow. Wow. God, that's amazing.
It's incredible. This is the bit that was broken.
Are you sure this is the same chair? It looks fabulous.
Every bit of it looks fantastic.
OK, Mum, I'm going for a spin. Don't break it again, please.
You're much bigger now, remember. Exactly.
Spin me round. Spin me round.
SHE LAUGHS Fantastic!
That's it. Once. Twice. Twice.
OK. A-a-and... OK, now your go, Mum.
That's enough. I'm going to have a sit.
Oh, wow. You know, it feels better than it ever felt.
Brings back all the memories, doesn't it? Of course.
You can't replace this, can you? You can't. No, no.
It's definitely, you know, part of a time.
It was just a very special time, when I used to be able to sit
with my dad quietly on the chair, so it's wonderful to have it back
repaired and secure, and not to break again.
Spin! More spin!
I'm so thrilled. I'm so happy to have the chair back,
and it's been done so beautifully.
It's to stay forever with lots of swinging and fun and memories.
Does that feel good? Ah, yes!
Join us next time, as more precious pieces are rescued...
We've had to make things worse before we got better.
..and their cherished memories restored... Oh, my Lord!
..in The Repair Shop.