Museums and Institutions

Museums and institutions usually have in their collections a range of wooden artifacts that are not strictly categorized as antique furniture. An example: the giant teak doors at the entrance to the British cemetery in Jerusalem. They are continuously exposed to extremely harsh climate conditions: the strong sun of the Middle East as well as tremendous fluctuations in dryness, humidity and temperature. Another example is Theodor Herzl's wooden mail sorting cabinet labeled with letters of the alphabet (see the banner at the top of the Contact page). It was brutally nailed to different walls over the years before arriving at its respectful home in the new Herzl Museum.

All projects required restoring and the use of traditional antique furniture restoration techniques and materials. Each item demanded research, just like any other piece of antique furniture in the shop for restoration. This might involve discovering the manufacturer of unique types of glass like the ones found on the Shenkin Street project in Tel Aviv, or the special forces exerted by a painted canvas on an antique wooden stretching frame, as was the case in several restoration projects done for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Such restoration jobs demand continuous learning about the materials and methods used by craftsmen over the decades. These jobs broaden our knowledge of the diverse origin and the richness of different uses for wood. It is always a pleasure to discover the superb ingenuity for problem solving of the meisters – master craftsmen. It is important to understand how they solved a particular construction obstacle while originally bulding the piece.

Among our clients in this section are the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the British Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Israel Museum, the British and Portuguese embassies, the White City Buildings Company, and the Herzl Museum in Jerusalem.