Michael Franks Restoration - Antique furniture and fine art restoration in Oriental, North Carolina

Michael Franks specializes in the restoration of antique furniture and fine art and has been serving the restoration needs of the New England dealer and private client communities for many years. He is now pleased to announce that due to a long desired move to warmer climates he will now be offering his services in North Carolina with 2 operations running in the Raleigh/Durham and Oriental locals. His fields of expertise spanning all varieties of antiques and fine art, and his specializations in traditional French Polishing techniques, hand tooled leather desktops and cabinet making, have found Mike spanning the globe, partaking in projects varying from the restoration of small writing boxes to overseeing the restoration of full mansions and estates.

The son of a furniture restorer, Mike learned his trade at an early age, and spent many years in his fathers' London workshop perfecting his skills in arts such as hand dying and tooling for leather desk tops and writing tables, and traditional French polish and wax polish finishes. Mike then enrolled in the Hornsey College of art where he learned and mastered the identification and restoration of fine art of all varieties, and also where he gained a great interest in European painting of the 18th and 19th centuries and the American primative artists of the colonial era and early 19th century. Mike's skills in all these areas later brought him

to America to be the chief conservator of the Astor Estate Restoration project in Rhinebeck, New York, where Mike and his team of expert craftsmen returned this building and its' furnishings to the condition they were in when Vincent Astor first inhabited the home.