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"American Pickers" Viewers, Here is a New Pick For You --"The Repair Shop."

A Show That's Part History and Part Craftsmanship

By Susan Joy ClarkPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Photo from https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/

If you love history and antiques and watching shows like American Pickers, Pawn Stars or Antiques Roadshow, you'll like The Repair Shop, a BBC series available on Netflix.

Unlike the shows listed above, The Repair Shop does not deal with the acquiring or appraisal of antiques but their restoration. It's an interesting look not only at household items of the past but at various craftsmanship skills that the average person may not know much about. Because it features artisans at work, The Repair Shop may also appeal to watchers of series like Forged in Fire or Blown Away, blacksmithing and glassblowing competitions respectively, or even Science Channel's How It's Made.

Set at the Weald and Downland Living Museum, an open air museum in West Sussex, England, a team of experts help to restore family heirlooms, using skills ranging from upholstering to goldsmithing. A team of regular experts feature, among others, Will Kirk, carpenter and cabinet maker, Kirsten Ramsay, ceramics conservator, Lucia Scalisi, painting conservator, and brother and sister Steve and Susie Fletcher who between them specialize in clocks and leather. A whole slew of guest experts are on call for a variety of specialized niches such as music boxes, stained glass, jukeboxes, pinball machines and typewriters. Jay Blades, furniture maker, oversees the team.

In each episode, the team restores three heirloom items, and the owners of these treasures tell the stories behind their precious things. The three featured items are all disparate, requiring the expertise of those in very different crafts. In one episode, you will see an upholstered chair from the Arts and Crafts period, a ceremonial military riding crop and an ornate Hungarian vase. In another, you'll see an old sea chest, a painted glass panel and an Art Deco lamp.

The stories of how these items were damaged can often be interesting anecdotes. For instance, in one case, a boy's stray dart damaged his father's beloved Stuart painting. The dart, by some crazy quirk, made its bull's eye right in the center of the painting subject's mouth. Years later, this son was the one to bring the painting to the repair shop. In another episode, a customer brought in two Art Deco statuettes of nudes. The statues had survived the Blitz, the only objects in the home to survive a bombing.

The statuettes were not the only objects to appear on the show with a war survival story. The woman in the video clip below brought in a cross pendant, which she says saved the life of her father, a Romanian who fled his country and joined the Russian army in World War II. The cross, she claimed, saved her father's life, when a bullet struck him, and the cross in his tunic pocket took the damage but deflected the bullet from penetrating him.

While on American Pickers, Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz love their Indian motorcycles, “rusty gold” and everything transportation related, the items restored on The Repair Shop are mostly indoor household items. That's not to say that transportation related items are never featured on the show in any form. Toys such as a clockwork Alfa Romeo racecar from 1925 and a miniature steam roller have been featured. One episode highlighted a miniature tractor that traveled the world to demonstrate how the full size model worked. Bicycle restorer, Tim Gunn, works with the show and, in one episode, restored a circa 1875 penny farthing bicycle. The penny farthing got its name, by the way, because its large front wheel and small rear wheel resembled the penny and farthing coins used at the time. The octogenarian owner of this machine wanted to be able to ride it again in a village festival. (His wife was less thrilled about that venture.)

Perhaps, you won't always be a fan of each customer's personal tastes, but the stories and the restoration process might still pique your curiosity. I was watching with my mother one day. When a customer brought in two porcelain Chinese lion-dogs – also known as dogs of foo – my mother said, “Why bother fixing them?” If Mom had inherited these figures, I don't think nostalgia would be sufficient motivation for her to have them fixed. Still, it was interesting to see Kirsten Ramsay replicate, in porcelain, a missing tongue and teeth for one of the pair. When she was done, it looked like the figure had never been damaged.

ArthurPiccio, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons, (not the actual dogs of foo from the show.)

Each episode is a miniature history lesson on objects and craftsmen of the past. You might learn about Emil Fischer, a 19th century Hungarian porcelain artist or George Lambourn, a 1930's artist whose work is displayed in the Tate Gallery and who also happened to be an Olympic kayaker. You also get a glimpse into interesting skills that go into restoring these objects. You can watch Lucia Scalisi use a heated spatula and adhesive to try and get old, cracked paint to reattach to a painting or watch a glassworker relead the square components of a stained glass panel.

If you try out the show, you will be educated and entertained simultaneously.

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About the Creator

Susan Joy Clark

I am a former journalist with North Jersey Media Group and an indie author of several books including Action Men with Silly Putty, a mystery comedy, And the Violin Cried, a juvenile novel, and The Journey of Digory Mole, a picture book.

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