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Restoring Hagen-Renaker miniatures, and other animals and figurines as well, happened for me by accident and necessity. I won an auction on eBay with some nice vintage miniature HR's in it. The seller wasn't exactly what you would call a good "packer" and half of them arrived broken. So I found myself asking people about repairing them so that they would look nice on my shelf. I didn't find anyone, though now I know there are a few people who do similar work. I just started doing it for my own but it wasn't long until other people's little animals found their way to my HR hospital. Like the poor mermaid, who is pictured on this page in all the stages of her restoration, not all HRs can be made perfectly nor exactly as they were to begin with. They can be made much nicer than they were, however and if I cannot make a perfect match I try for better display looks. This mermaid had been previously broken and apparently the piece lost as someone added some kind of plaster lump onto her and shaped it a bit then painted it. As you can see it was just a nasty looking lump of green, which first had to be completely removed and the surface area for the restore cleaned. This was accomplished with this piece bit by bit and in various ways from scraping to sanding and then soaking for a final clean surface. Any piece I work on must have old repairs removed and cleaned and put back fresh so that the restoration is nice and clean. For many pieces, matching the paint perfectly once a new part has been sculpted is nearly impossible. Age and different factors play a major role in the looks of the final work. Another hindrance comes in the form of different light sources. Color that is painted on is different under sunlight, indirect light, flourescent lights etc. from glazes applied many years ago. So that no matter how well I match the color, sometimes the difference will show in different lighting conditions. I use a variety of lighting sources to check my work, but even still there can be variances that allow me to only strike a balance between close and exact. The mermaid was a difficult case in that someone else had already botched one repair and to remove that meant doing things to the figurine that might cause other damage accidentally. I do my best to avoid any further damage when working on pieces of course, but in some cases where the pottery is old and soft inside there are no guarantees that the piece won't inadvertently lose another part during the work process. Some pieces cannot be worked on at all. I found while working on some HR Disney Dewey ducks that some pieces are simply too small and some "insides" simply too weak to hold necessary armature and such to restore the piece. You can see on the left, the mermaid with cleaned surface and armature wire added to sculpt a new tail around. If the inside of the piece is too soft from age or dramatic temperature changes over the years, getting armature to stay put is sometimes impossible. Thus getting an additional piece such as a tail or leg to stay on is also just about impossible. For small repairs like ear tip chips and minor losses like half an ear or even just a part of foot, armature isn't necessary and so these pieces can be restored even if the piece is not in the best of condition inside. For the mermaid, once the armature was placed and allowed to dry for several days, I began the process of sculpting a new tail fin for her. Matching the original HR mermaid tail was not to be with the way the piece had been broken, so I opted for one that would look nice as she was displayed and as close as I could get to the original. The Milliput SuperFine was applied, shaped and allowed to cure for several days before I began sanding and shaping closer on the tail and small portion of the blue base involved. The cat at the top of the page also had armature used to hold the leg I had to replace. He was one of my first restores and still rests comfortably on my desk today. The entire process for restoring the piece is lengthy, and can be difficult in some cases. I have had some HR's I was unable to restore. Either because they were too small or because their age and density of the pottery had so badly decomposed that they were simply too soft inside to do anything with. At any given time I'm usually working on some 10 to 20 pieces at once. I keep them in rotation, some being painted and some in other stages so that I can continue working on them all easier. |
Miniatures ~ Larger Pieces ~ Model Horses ~ A Step-by-Step Look ~ Pricing for Restoration
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