A Manual of Mending and Repairing; With Diagrams

by Charles Godfrey Leland

It is true that everybody is not naturally ingenious, or clever, or gifted, but all may become skilful menders if they will duly consider the subject (which requires no hard study) and experiment on it a little. And here I would seriously address a few words to all who are interested in education. There is a certain faculty which may be called constructiveness, which is nearly allied to invention, and which is a marvellous developer in all children of quickness of perception, thought, or intellect. It is the art of using the fingers to make or manipulate, in any way; it exists in every human being, and it may be brought out to an extraordinary degree in the young, as has been fully tested and proved. Now, if we take two children of the same age, sex, and capacity, both going to the same school and pursuing the same studies, and if one of the two devotes from two to four hours a week to an industrial art class (i.e., studying simple original design, easy wood-carving, repoussé, embroidery, &c.), it will be found—as it has been by very extensive experiment—that the latter child will at the end of the year excel the former in all branches of learning; that is to say, in arithmetic or geography, so greatly does ingenuity proceed from the fingers to the brain. Now, mending is so nearly allied to all the minor or mechanical arts, it enters into them so closely, that it in a manner belongs to and is an introduction to them all. Like them, it stimulates invention or ingenuity, and is perhaps of far greater practical utility or direct use. Boys and girls learn very willingly how to mend, and, from a long experience in teaching them, I should say that a class with experiments and practical instruction in what is given in this book should take precedence of all carpentry, metal-work, joining, leather-work, or any other branches whatever. For it is easier than any of them, and it is of far more general utility, as the following pages clearly show. Such teaching would cost next to nothing for outfit, and would be the best introduction to technical education of all kinds.

There is an immense amount of breakage in this world, yet, as a French writer on the subject observes, there are more great artists than good menders; the latter being so extremely rare that proofs of it are seen in bungling restorations in every museum in Europe, and in the almost impossibility of finding (out of Italy) men who can perfectly mend first-class ceramic ware. We see this ignorance in reproductions of delicate ivory ware coarsely cast in gypsum, and in a vast rejection and destruction of antiquities in wood, stone, or ceramic ware, simply because they are most ignorantly supposed to be beyond repair when they might, with proper knowledge, be very easily and cheaply restored, to great profit. And if the reader will visit the “dead rooms” of any museum in Europe and then study this book, he will find ample confirmation of what I say.

And here I would mention that every collector or owner of any kind of works of art, of bric-à-brac, or curiosities, who will master the art of mending, can find an illimitable field for picking up bargains in almost every shop of antiquities in Europe, especially in the smaller or humbler kind. For it is very far from being true that these dealers know “how to mend everything;” on the contrary, I have often found them very ignorant indeed of mending, and have frequently instructed them in it. Thus I now have before me a “Holy Family” of the early sixteenth century, bas-relief in stamped leather, twelve inches by eight, for which I paid two francs, but which I might have had for one, it being utterly dilapidated, and apparently of no value. In two or three hours I restored it perfectly, and it would now sell for perhaps a hundred francs. By it hangs a “Madonna and Child,” painted on a panel, gold ground, fourteenth century, which, including a very broad and remarkable old frame, I purchased both for twelve francs. The panel was warped like a sabre,

, the colour and gesso ground badly scaled away in many places. It was split in two pieces; in short, it appeared to be nearly worthless. Now it is in very good condition, and would be an ornament to any gallery. As regards repairing ceramic ware or china, glass, and porcelain, art has of late years made remarkable advances, this kind of mending being the most in requisition. As for old carved wood, no matter how badly broken it may be, eaten away by worms, or rotten, or even wanting large pieces, so long as its original form is evident, it can be very easily repaired or restored to all its original beauty and integrity, as I shall fully explain. In this alone there is a vast field for investment or money-making, because there are annually destroyed almost everywhere quantities of old wood-carvings; for, being badly worm-eaten, they are ignorantly supposed to be irreparable. The same may be said of ancient carved ivories, which are ready to drop at a touch into dust, as were those from Nineveh in the British Museum, yet which are now firm and clear. It is also true of the bindings of old books, many of marvellous beauty, whether of stamped leather, parchment, or carved. Even more interesting and curious is the repairing or restoring worm-eaten manuscripts or papers of any kind, or parchment, the easy process of filling the holes not being known to many bibliophiles. This art is becoming known in Germany, where it is not unusual to buy an old book for a mark, rebind it in hard old parchment, repair it generally for two or three, and then sell it, according to the subject, for several hundred or thousand per cent. profit.

It is greatly to be regretted that it is so little known, especially in England, that to repair a few holes or restore a little broken, crumbling carving it is not absolutely necessary to tear down an entire Gothic church and build a new one, as is so very generally the case. There is no stone-work, however dilapidated it may be, which cannot be mended very perfectly, and that in almost all cases with a material which sets even harder than the original, as was perfectly shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. Dilapidated stone carved work, of all ages and kinds, which could be perfectly restored to a degree which even very few artists suspect, abounds in Italy, where it can be purchased for a song. The song, it is true, is generally sung to a small silver accompaniment, but the purchaser may make it golden for himself. For very few know how to restore a knocked-off nose so that the line of juncture be not visible; yet even this is possible, as I shall show. And I may here remark that in all the first galleries and museums of Europe, without one exception, there is abundant evidence to prove that, of all the arts, the one of repairing and restoring is the one least understood and most strangely neglected.

There is hardly a village so small that one man or woman could not make in it or eke out a living by repairing different objects. In towns and cities the demand for such work is much greater, for there ladies break expensive fans and jewellery, and children their dolls and toys, for mending of which the “rehabilitators” require “much moneys,” especially in the United States, where prices for anything out of the way are appalling.

I would therefore beg all people who are gifted with some small allowance of “ingenuity,” tact, art, or common-sense to consider that Mending or Restoring is a calling very easily learned by a little practice, and one by which a living can be made, even in its humblest branches, as is shown by the umbrella-menders and chair-caners in the streets. But common-sense teaches that any one who shall have mastered all that is explicitly set forth in this book ought certainly to be able to gain money, even largely; for, as I said, the opportunities of purchasing dilapidated works of art, mending and selling them, are innumerable, and Restoration is as yet everywhere in its mere rudiments and very little practised. That which might be a very great general industry of vast utility, employing many thousands now idle, only exists in a hap-hazard, casual way, as dependent on other kinds of work. But to me it appears as a great art by itself, dependent on certain principles of general application. And when we consider what is generally wasted for want of proper knowledge of this great art, it seems to me to be but rational that if we had in London a school for teaching mending and restoring in all its branches as a trade, with a museum to show the public, probably to its great astonishment, what marvels can be wrought by renewing what is old, it would be of great service to the country at large. A very little reflection will convince the least visionary or most practical reader that what is wasted or annually destroyed of valuable old works, which cannot be replaced, because they are no longer manufactured, if restored, would form the basis of a great national industry. It has not as yet, however, entered into the head of any one to conceive this, simply because no one has ever been educated as a general restorer, but only in a secondary, supplementary, small way as a specialist, generally as a botcher. And I maintain, from no inconsiderable knowledge of the subject, that the best menders and restorers by far are those who understand the most branches of their calling. The reason for this is plain; it is because a repairer, when he comes to some unforeseen difficulty—for example, in mending china—and finds the cements used are not exactly applicable, he will, if sensible, think of some other adhesive used in other kinds of work, or other combinations or appliances.

I go so far as to say that an exhibition of specimens showing all that can be done in mending and restoration in ceramic art, leather, carved stone, books, carved and wrought wood, castings, metal, furniture, fans, and toys, would probably serve as sufficient beginning to establish classes and a school. The objects should, when possible, be accompanied by a duplicate or photograph showing the condition they were in before restoration, on the principle of the picture-cleaners, who amaze the public with such startling contrasts of dirt and splendour.

How this can all be done will be found in this book, which I venture to suggest will often be found useful in every family, or wherever “things” are broken and worn. For the collector of curiosities who would willingly pick up bargains, I seriously and earnestly commend it as a vade mecum by means of which he may literally make money in any shop. For, as I have already said, strange as it may seem, the small dealers in bric-à-brac are generally very ignorant of all the curious secrets of restoration, or else they have no time or means to attend to such work. Again, if the collector has learned what I here teach, he will often detect restoration allied to forgery in expensive antiques, guaranteed to be perfect. It has been well observed by M. Ris-Paquot, in his valuable work, L’Art de restaurer soi-même les Faïences et Porcelaines, that it often happens, most unfortunately, that precious relics whose value is immense, such as the Italian faïences and those of Palissy or Henri II., come to collections in such a condition, so pitifully injured, that de visu we cannot buy them because we know of nobody who can actually restore them, and because this delicate work requires so much special knowledge. Add to this, that their great value and rarity disincline us to trust to the first-comer, or general workman, treasures which he might utterly ruin by clumsiness or ignorance.