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At first Trudy was reluctant to try it, but her background in art, plus a working knowledge of sculpturing, ceramics, and pottery making, convinced her that she could undertake the delicate job with some degree of confidence.

Trudy, small and serious, but with a cheerful twinkle in her blue eyes, has a deep love for beautiful art objects and a respect for the fragile antique and museum pieces she handles. Purchasing a Klein repair kit, she used plastic ceramic to shape the tiny hand, knowing that the material could be hardened by oven heat low enough not to harm the delicate colors. Then she found that the paint and glazes for finishing the hand must also be fired with low heat so as not to ruin the original decorations of the figurine with several firings.

WITH THIS first piece of work successfully completed, Trudy realized that she had learned a great deal about the repairing and restoring of ceramic pieces. She discovered, too, that there is definitely a special technique for doing this type of work, and that there is a real need for expert workmanship in this line.

Her friend, delighted with the restored figurine, gave her more work from the antique shop she operated. Soon antique china and bisque figurines, as well as ceramics, broken lamp bases and other pieces began to fill the Wesleys' hill-side house, high atop Wood Acres Road in Los Gatos, California.

In her charming workroom, a glass-enclosed porch overlooking the entire San Francisco peninsula from the orchards of San Jose to the great Bay bridge, Trudy began mending her broken art objects.

From the beginning, she learned that she must find, and sometimes even improvise, molding materials that would be as nearly like the material forming the original piece as possible. When she finds the proper material, she must make sure that it will fire at a lower temperature than the original piece in order not to harm the delicate decorations and original finish. Proper adhesives and adherents for each material must also be found, and these, too, must be tested for their firing properties. Much research must sometimes be done also to identify pieces unrecognizable because of missing parts. Books in the library must be consulted to find a picture or description of the original object.

SOON GEORGE began "getting into the act." Like his wife, he also had an education in art, and together they had carried on hobbies of ceramics and pottery making. Soon, he found that he was working with Trudy on her fascinating "jigsaw puzzles" until the wee, small hours to help reduce the ever-growing number of items brought her for mending. Working as private accountant for two separate corporations and driving long distances to get to his work left him little spare time. Pickup and delivery of the pieces had to be done on his weekends off.

Trudy found that George showed great patience, as well as artistry, in handling the larger pieces, and his dry humor and calm, painstaking ways made him an excellent working partner. Expert at mending, he was handy with the electric tools necessary for spray-painting, drilling, sanding and cutting, while Trudy was best at repairing the delicate lace-work figurines, molding and modeling small parts and decorating the more intricately designed pieces. They soon discovered they made a wonderful working team.

As work piled up, Trudy induced George to drop most of his accounting work, keeping only a part-time job for a year. Then, as business increased, he dropped that, too. After four years in their mending and restoration business, he finds he has no time for anything else, and the income, running between $400 and $500 per month—more if they wish to put in additional hours—convinces them both that their business is paying satisfactorily.

TYPES OF restoration and repair handled by this energetic couple are almost endless. They will tackle just about anything broken or damaged. Statuary, figurines, dolls (both antique and modern), vases, lamps (both the bases and china or glass shades), clock cases, plaques, ornamental tiles, ornamental plates (no dinnerware) , museum pieces, garden statuary, lace figurines; in fact, any piece too delicate, large or expensive a job for home mending.

Materials found in most of these articles include ceramic ware, porcelain, bisque, jade, rose quartz, some types of glass, wood, limestone, plaster and marble.

Discovering that the kind of work they do is in wide demand, George and Trudy investigated possibilities for soliciting work in their vicinity. They called on nearby antique shops, decorator's establishments, lamp shops where breakage might occur, moving van and storage companies for obvious reasons, insurance adjustors, Railway Express offices, post offices in surrounding communities, gift shops, and museums. They were well received, and orders for repair work soon came from many of these excellent sources. Proprietors of antique shops, too, passed along the word about their work to private collectors.

THE WESLEYS have found the best way to make their services known is by direct mail. A postcard describing their work was printed and sent to businesses listed in yellow pages of telephone directories for surrounding communities. As they live in a residential area, not zoned for business, they appointed agents in several business places in nearby towns to take orders and addresses of customers. George visits them later, sees the piece to be repaired, estimates the approximate cost, and takes the piece home in the station wagon if the customer wishes the job to be done. When the work is completed, he delivers the object and collects his money. In this way, the Wesleys can keep their workshop hours comparatively free from interruption and their home free of any tinge of a "business establishment."

GEORGE AND Trudy have become increasingly well-known in the four years since the little hand of the figurine beckoned. Recently they helped restore a collection of Egyptian and other ancient pieces for the Stanford University Museum at Palo Alto, California.

Damaged during the earthquake of 1906, this collection included mummy cases, Buddhas, Egyptian and Chinese vases, and other objets d'art, and had been placed in a closed room after the earthquake and almost forgotten. A year or so ago when the university decided to reopen the museum, restoration of the broken objects was begun and the Wesleys called in.

"It was really a challenge," says Trudy. "And fascinating work, too. One corner of a mummy case was missing and we racked our brains figuring out how to replace it. We finally reproduced it from broken pieces of mummy wood, patched with self-hardening material, then painted. The missing finger of a Buddha we carved out of wood, glued on and gilded with gold leaf. Some picture frames, damaged in moving, had to be mended and reinforced. We reproduced a tile missing from an Italian marble inlaid table.

"When the museum reopened and the collection was placed on view, we felt as though we had contributed a small part to it. Of course Stanford had been carrying on restoration work for some time prior to our work, mostly by a staff trained in ancient arts and archaeology. However, our experience in using all types of material for replacing the missing parts proved invaluable for this work."

So well appreciated was their artistry that the Stanford alumni called them in a few weeks later for another job, this time entailing statuary work and sculpting at Stanford. The Angel of Grief at the Henry Lathrop Monument had lost the fingers of its left hand, while the sphinxes at the Stanford Mausoleum had lost their noses.

For this work, Trudy molded the fingers and noses from a marble dust compound matching the color of the statues. George ground down the rough edges, and cemented the missing members, attaching them with bronze rods by means of holes drilled through the center. Then he polished and put the finishing touches on the joints.

THE WESLEYS find that museums do not always want the mended portions of art objects disguised. Their reason for mending the piece is to restore it so that viewers may visualize the original undamaged piece. Therefore, the work may show and need not be a perfect repair.

On the other hand, private collectors sometimes wish their pieces to be mended so perfectly that no trace of the mend may be found. This calls for much greater care in handling and in selection of materials used for the work.

Antique dealers pose another problem. They do not wish over-restoration, for then the object would obviously lose its antique appearance and look gaudy and phony. One of Trudy's customers was broken-hearted when she took a valuable antique doll head to a doll hospital for renovation. The completed paint and repair job made the head appear so new and modern that its value as an antique was destroyed. Trudy, however, with the help of a picture similar to the original head, was able to repaint the face, restoring its ancient look.

Another interesting and challenging job came to the Wesleys from Sacramento. A woman there had an alabaster lamp base, depicting the Three Graces, shipped to her from San Francisco by express. Unluckily, the valuable object arrived in unrecognizable fragments. Since it was covered by insurance, the company advised its owner to have it mended. She called a decorator's service in San Jose who gave her the Wesleys' address. When they received the shattered marble fragments, they were at first dubious. But, with the help of Mrs. Goodwin of the Los Gatos Public Library, they soon found a picture of the Three Graces, enabling them to make the restoration perfectly.

A successful mending job, thought at first impossible, was done with the cooperation of the librarian after Trudy had almost given up in despair. It was a figurine showing a woman working at what seemed to be the remains of a spinning wheel, but a rare, table-type model, completely unknown to Trudy or to anyone she questioned on the subject. Spinning wheels, yes. They were familiar to everyone, but not a table model. No one had ever heard of such a thing. How was Trudy to reproduce something she'd never seen?

Almost without hope, she called Mrs. Goodwin at the library again. Sure enough, after going through several books on Meissenware and English figurines, a picture identical to the one Trudy wanted was found. Triumphantly Trudy modeled and decorated the figure, reproducing it to perfection. "The librarian's help has been invaluable to me," she says, "saving me hours of research."

REPAIR AND restoration work may begin as a hobby and branch into a full-time profession. Trudy and George Wesley recommend to beginners the repair kits sold by A. Ludwig Klein & Sons of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These kits come with complete instructions for a great variety of mending and repair work. Also, on request, the Kleins will send information about a great variety of mends, and have instruction books available.

For professional work, a large variety of material is required, and much experimenting must be done in order to find exactly the proper working mediums. Sometimes a material must be manufactured by using mixtures of several different compounds. Each kind of material requires a different technique of handling, also, so that no hard and fast rules should be followed. Each person will develop his own new materials and techniques for mending.

The Wesleys are constantly on the lookout for new molding and casting materials to test, particularly in the plastics. These, however, are sometimes disappointing since they are not always made for the uses the Wesleys put them to. They do recommend Plasticast as perhaps the best they have found to date, but feel that each worker must experiment and find the material best suited to his needs.

Material which is self-hardening or which may be fired with low heat is the most desirable type to work with. High firing will ruin colors and decorations of the original pieces, and also is apt to cause discoloration and cracking of undecorated ones. This would utterly ruin museum and antique art objects, as their ancient patinas must be preserved. Many jobs also require several firing processes, which means material using the lowest firing techniques possible must be utilized.

A list of materials needed for restoration work will include a variety of adhesives, dry pigments, oil paints, glazes, varnishes, lacquers, thinners, brushes of all types, gold leaf, gold powders, bronzing liquids, modeling materials, fillers, modeling and carving tools, and sandpaper. For some work electric air brushes, drills and sanding tools are necessary.

Trudy laughs when she shows the modeling tool she uses most often; it is a small nail file. While George has found an ordinary spatula to be just the thing for his special problems.

TO SHOW how a specific job was done, take a white Meissen or Dresden vase brought to the Wesleys for repair. The Wesleys find that Meissen and Dresden ware are practically identical as far as restoration work is concerned, since both are of hard-paste construction. A large nick at the top was easily filled in as soon as they decided upon the material to be used. The missing face of the third angel on the base of the vase was cast from a moulage mold taken by impression from one of the other angels, since obviously, the face would be identical to the existing two.

If the other faces were not available, Trudy would have had to model the head by hand, a longer, more expensive process. The moulage used is a rubbery plastic compound, not as tedious for making a mold as the rubber molds which they make only for permanent use. Moulage can be applied to the object from which the impression is to be taken with only one application, and will reproduce features in fine detail. Later it can be melted down in a double boiler and reused.

After the moulage impression of the angel's head was made, self-hardening filler was poured into it, set aside to harden, after which it was glued to the figure, tinted and glazed. (For even quicker impressions not requiring fine detail, plasticene is sometimes used by the Wesleys for a press mold.) This piece of work brought $6, based on the Wesleys' method of charging for time, explained later in this article.

A large majolica platter, used for hanging only, was a straight adhesive job. George used heavy Klein soft-paste cement for the mend, after it dried filling in the crack with ceramic filler. This, when sanded off and tinted, carefully matching colors of the design, made a totally invisible mend.

If the platter were to be used for table service, George would have made a more costly and practically unbreakable mend by cutting short grooves across the mended crack on the underside of the plate. In these grooves he would imbed small wire staples, covering them with ceramic filler and sanding off the rough edges. To make the mend invisible, it would be painted, as on the design side, to match the color of the back, then sprayed with glaze.

TO ILLUSTRATE how completely broken an object may be and still be mended, a lamp base and a Satsuma incense burner are two items which were brought to them in scraps. The lamp base was modern green pottery. George put the bits together with heavy Klein soft-paste adhesive, then used a hard filler for the deep cracks, covering that with a soft filler (this is where his spatula comes in). When the filler hardens, the residue is ground off and sanded for a smooth finish. The crazy-quilt pattern of white seams was painted over with china paint mixed to match exactly the green of the original finish, then glazed. George comments that the base is now "just as good as new. If it is broken again, it will not break on the mends."

A valuable antique, the Satsuma incense burner came to them in small shards. Trudy was not sure at first what the piece looked like when it was complete, but the owner gave her a good description of it, and she set to work assembling the lacy globe held by three Japanese lions. When finally assembled and decoration completed, the piece appeared perfect in every respect.

George particularly remembers the large cloisonne vase (one of a pair) which had several missing fragments to be replaced. This was a new problem for the Wesleys, and their usual procedure had to be abandoned for this job. They finally used a plastic self-hardening material with which to model the missing pieces, since obviously they could not fire the vase, as it stood about three feet high.

After the plastic material hardened, it was sanded smooth and the design carefully painted on. Trudy's artistry successfully reproduced lovely colors and consummate skill of the old Chinese master's design, and the mend is incorporated so beautifully it is undiscoverable. After the colors of the design were set, the entire vase was spray glazed, resulting in a perfectly restored art object, a successfully met challenge.

One of Trudy's specialties is the mending of ceramic lace figures which she does so delicately that the mend cannot be found. She advises anyone trying this work to be always on the lookout for fine cotton lace remnants, since lace is expensive. Do not buy nylon lace, she emphasizes, as it is not absorbent enough to soak up the liquid hardener. Tiny net patterns are best she says, as net will match most of the fragile laces in the figurines.

Attaching the lace with a tiny drop of cement, she carefully applies a clear plastic lace-hardener which dries almost instantly to the consistency of glass. The intricate pleats and ruffles must be worked into place as the liquid is applied. Trudy uses a magnifying glass for this work, and tiny French quills when reproducing the delicate colors of the lace ballerina skirts.

THE WESLEYS are understandably proud of their skill in repairing and restoring treasured art pieces, and find deep satisfaction in their work. The challenge of each new piece keeps their interest high, and the appreciation and admiration with which each customer claims his prized possession, restored to its original beauty, is a satisfying reward.

They have learned their art the hard way, through trial and error, often experimenting with a less valuable object before daring to begin on a more costly piece. They base the prices they charge on a set rate of $5 an hour working time, which includes all materials used for the repair. They have a minimum charge of $2.50, and will not handle anything for less.

Klein's instruction sheets are most helpful to them, outlining special processes for a wide variety of materials to be mended. The Kleins specialize in adherents and adhesives, and give expert advice for the asking.

Some of the instruction sheets the Wesleys use, and which those desiring to do this type of work can obtain from Klein and Sons, are as follows:

1. Invisible China Repairing. This gives instructions for cementing, eliminating of cracks, uses of liquid glass and thinner, how to decorate clear or white glass lamp shades, and uses of Frisket No. 1, a plastic protector for decorations.

2. Instructions for Decorating with No. 54 Waterproof Liquid and Oil Oxide Colors and Dry Pigment Powder Colors. This sheet also contains instructions on how to mold with Dresden elastic molding compound No. 5, used for molding knob, feet, covers, heads and even wings or any bulky part, and also for making wax molds.

3. Invisible China Repairing and Making Missing Parts. This last sheet also includes directions for glazing and use of silverplating liquid.