Sometimes the worst things you can imagine do happen. Your long dreamed art piece is shipped by people who are not professional enough. Bad dealers who want to make easy money and do not care about the art itself are everywhere. One thing is for sure, every time it happens, it hurts.

We got our Irving Harper art-piece which we acquired for the atelier like this. Completely messed up. We think it is very important to show images like that and tell the stories but even more important is to bring it back to life. Restore it!

If this happens to you, try to find some excellent restorers who are specialized in the exact field. For example, we needed someone who was trained in handling and working with paper. Anja Eichler who is an internationally respected restorer based in Nuremberg, Germany was the right person for us.

She carefully categorized all pieces, cleaned them, tested different glues and pieced them all together step by step. The original auction house photos were very helpful to create the right angles and positions of different sections, too.

Was it worth it?

A lot of Irving Harper paper art pieces were destroyed over time. Shipping and wrong storage or handling in general caused many lost originals. We are happy to have rescued one small item of his enormous legacy.