Restoration
~Rocking horse restoration~
We can restore your rocking horse back to his full glory.
This 1920’s Baby Carriages horse was unusual in that he's a plain carved model with a carved tongue, a detail usually only found on extra carved horses. He was also unusual in another way, removing the black gloss paint revealed a spotted polychrome horse and an early one as he had the brown points. The black gloss along with several other layers of paint were carefully removed and his beautiful spots restored. | |
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A rocking horse takes a lot of stress on the legs especially when mounted on bows. You’ll often see fine joint cracks in old horses in the gesso and paint, in most cases this is just slight movement of the wood and perfectly safe. Although a poor past restoration as these photo's show can be hiding all sorts of horrors and could have safety issues. This horse pictured had over 80 nails, metal brackets, fibreglass and filler holding his legs on - not very well either as they were cracked and wobbly. The legs were removed and cleaned up and then re-fitted properly with the addition of new muscle blocks and no nails! |
A rare find, a Turnbull rocking horse with original paintwork that needed minimal work. There were areas of wear and flaking paint, so the missing areas were filled in and then sealed to prevent further loss, with new tack and hair he looks ready to rock.
This lovely plain carved Ayres needed a new jaw and ears carved as he had some ugly replacements. He was then repainted, dappled and had new tack and a mane and tail.
Some horses need very little or no restoration often just conserving the original paint, always take advice before starting anything. Others need complete restoration like the Hill and Harrison below, we did manage to replicate the original saddle and re-use the beautiful metal rosettes.
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