The Value of Age - When Restoration Does More Harm Than Good
15 April 2021
We think of symptoms of decay as a bad thing: scratches, wear and tear - but can they actually increase an object’s value?
Cal Flyn
Cal Flyn is a writer from the Highlands of Scotland. She writes literary nonfiction and long form journalism. Her first book, Thicker Than Water, was a Times book of the year. Her critically acclaimed second book, Islands of Abandonment—about the ecology and psychology of abandoned places—is out now.
18th century walnut side table, circa 1700, 72 x 70 x 49cm.
Time catches up with us all in the end. It wears away our objects too. Scratches, damage, ill-repairs all work to reduce the value—both financial and aesthetic—of art and antiques. But are all symptoms of decay a bad thing?
Not necessarily. Those considering repairing or refinishing valuable items should consider their options carefully before proceeding: the imperfections wrought by time and use can contribute significantly to an object’s beauty, and over-enthusiastic remediation efforts can do more harm than good.
One notorious case featured on an episode of Antiques Roadshow in 2018: when a man brought in an 18th century Irish silver table for valuation, having paid for it to be restored from its previously “distressed” state, furniture expert Lennox Cato had to break the news that the table’s value had significantly decreased. A silver table of this age is expected to have ‘character’ commensurate with its age, Cato explained; centuries-worth of peat-smoke blackening and other signs of wear and tear had been lost when the wood was stripped and refinished. Having once been worth an estimated £8,000-£12,000, the value of the now glossy table was now estimated at £3,000.
Speaking this week from his shop in Edenbridge, Kent, Cato told The Open Art Fair Magazine: “Things with value have a patination. It’s part of the journey. Patination is dirt, that’s the bottom line. Over a period of time, there are greasy, mucky hands. Children pulling themselves up. Meals eaten. That all brings a wonderful glow of colour that you can’t fake—it takes time. If you strip it away, a piece of furniture suddenly looks sterile.”
Treen objects—carved wooden household items—are often well handled and exhibit particularly attractive patinae. “Inevitably dealers will gravitate to items with colour and depth. Absolutely you want to see that.”
The key distinction lies between acts of ‘conservation’ versus those of ‘restoration.’ That is: are you working to maintain an object’s character and merely slow its inevitable deterioration, or are you attempting to return it to a state of newness?
These contrasting approaches have been the subject of debate in art and antiquity for centuries. Consider, for example, the case of the Parthenon Marbles, which the Italian Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova declined to retouch in 1816, telling Lord Elgin that “however greatly it was to be lamented that these statues should have suffered so much from time, and barbarism… it would be sacrilege in him, or any man to presume to touch them with a chisel.”
So-called “Dying warrior” (fallen Trojan warrior, probably Laomedon), figure E-XI of the east pediment of the Temple of Aphaia, ca. 490-480 BC. In the Glyptothek, Munich.
Credit: CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
That same year, however, Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen was hard at work “restoring and improving” sculptures from the Temple of Aphaia (today on display at Munich’s Glyptothek), adding heads here, a piece of drapery there, and generally returning the now fragmented figures to his version of their original splendour. Thorvaldsen, by all accounts, did a reasonably good job, but these so-called improvements were controversial from the start and were finally removed in the 1960s.
(Most notorious of all may be the botched restoration of the fresco in the Santuario de Misericordia de Borja church near Zaragoza in Spain, in which a flaking yet masterly depiction of Christ in the crown of thorns was subjected to amateur repairs by a devout local parishioner. The clumsy retouching, dubbed “Monkey Christ,” soon made international headlines, and became in the words of the local mayor “a pop art icon.”)
18th century tea caddy, circa 1760, attributed to Abraham Roentgen, a German emigre, 24.2 x 15.7 x 13.5 cm.
Such cases should be considered extremes on a spectrum; in practice, it can be difficult to know where conservation ends and restoration begins. The key thing for a collector, Cato warns, is to work with a specialist. The very best, he says “are generally of an older age. What they’ve got over others is experience, which also develops over time.” Dealers will build up close, “symbiotic” relationships with conserver-restorers over time, those who they trust to work conservatively and carefully, retaining as much of a piece’s authenticity—that is, evidence of its long and storied existence—as possible.
Conservation purists may find their view best expressed in the words of the philosopher Mark Sagoff, who argued that “authenticity is a necessary condition of aesthetic value.” Appreciation of an art object must not only reflect its appearance, he argued: “the identity of the object is crucial to its value.” Every attempt at restoration, refinishing or repainting—however light-handed—eats into a piece’s identity.
Still, the best course of action, when faced with a scratched, bleached, or otherwise time-ravaged object, is ultimately a matter of opinion.
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