REAL Exclusive Magazine

David Vallone Restorations

By Sheila Brannan Longo

Photography by Chad Spencer

Back in 1986, David Vallone worked as a trim carpenter for a high-end builder constructing a home in The Oaks. On the last few days of the job, Vallone noticed some men bringing in a very fine collection of antique furniture that was just restored. Talking with them, he realized restoring antiques would provide more enjoyment than doing construction work, and was hired by them soon afterwards.

After a year of apprenticeship, Vallone bought a long established antique restoration business in Buffalo, NY: Fine Antique Restorations Inc. The business was very successful, specializing in the restoration and preservation of 18th and 19th century furniture, paintings and objects of art for dealers, museums and collectors in the upstate New York and New England areas. Vallone’s company was also called on to perform a very large restoration job for the Genesee Country Village and Museum due to a fire in one of the period antique homes. The upstate New York winters drove him back to Sarasota in 2001, returning to Buffalo in the summer to work for longtime clients, many of whom also own homes in Florida.

Recently Vallone was contacted by a client who also is a parishioner and volunteer at Church of The Redeemer in downtown Sarasota to perform a gold leaf restoration on the redos in the main chapel. The redos are a heavily carved backdrop in the chapel that was donated by a parishioner back in the 1950s. Over time the inside carvings and the outside pieces of the redos were refinished with a gold paint that had faded through the years.

Many hours of preparation were necessary to make the heavily grained carved oak wood surface smooth enough to lay the 23k gold leaf without tearing the leaf or seeing the grain of the wood through it. All the carved wood that wasn’t gold leafed was also restored to its original luster. The restoration was a painstaking month-long project that required working around the Church’s schedule.

Vallone brought in Stephanie Longo of New Mexico, who had previously assisted him on a large gold leaf job on the ceilings of an estate home outside of Buffalo, NY, in the early 1990s. “I was very fortunate to bring Stephanie in to help out on this project,” Vallone says. “She has the gift of a natural artistic talent and a lot of patience for this kind of work. I am happy to say that she will be relocating here to work with me in the near future.”

There is a big difference between antique preservation and refinishing, offers Vallone. “All the value and investment in a fine piece of furniture of the period is in the surface or patina. Most refinishers are not knowledgeable enough in the finishes that were used on early furniture of the period and therefore don’t know how to properly restore or preserve them. Consequently, the piece is stripped of its original surface and refinished with a modern type of finish, losing hundreds of years of patina in a matter of minutes.”

Another misconception that Vallone has encountered among many people, including dealers, is the use of oil on an antique piece of furniture as regular maintenance. “Almost all of the early finishes used on original period furniture are either shellac, varnish or a combination of both,” he explains. “Varnish is an oil-based finish. Applying oil to an antique piece of furniture that has its original surface will cause the finish to break down over time. Sure, there were pieces that were finished in an oil finish such as tung oil or boiled linseed oil, but they were mainly utilitarian pieces. These types of oil finishes can be maintained by applying the same type of oil to them as a preservation, but as a restoration artist you need to distinguish which pieces have what finish on them in order to properly preserve or restore them.”

Vallone travels extensively for onsite repairs and preservation jobs for private collectors who don’t want their prized pieces moved. Otherwise the work is performed in his local shop – all with painstaking care.

David Vallone Restorations
By Appointment Only
(941) 744.2744
DavidVallone@gmail.com
www.DavidValloneRestorations.com

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