Anthony Restorations Book Dust jackets Toy boxes Art & Paper Restoration

01/08/2025

A gentle mechanical cleaning brightened this Thuvia artwork quite a bit while the spine, back cover and back flap required more work. The spine and left fold had been painted, and nothing is harder than undoing a poor restoration.

12/29/2024

The inverted yellow side skirt along the top that says MOON ROCKET TRAIN is missing part of a graphic on the far right side--the tail of a rocket ship. Below it is the box top in red, with the same wording. The upper right corner is also missing a graphic, part of an identical rocket ship, but this time the front of the ship is missing. Each partial piece of artwork showed me exactly what the other was lacking, aiding in recreating the respective missing sections. Miller time.

12/25/2024

11/26/2024

Cleaned, pressed, repaired, and prepped for painting.

08/28/2024

Cragstan made the best toy robots, with wonderful box art, it's always gratifying to work on one.

08/19/2024

This Lionel Train Set Box cleaned up nicely, but the label was badly abraided beneath the tape, so the artwork and lettering in the upper left corner needed to be recreated.

08/12/2024

This wonderful toy came with a dart gun, to unmask the bandit you had to shoot the U.S. mail bag. A direct hit would result in the bandits mask/nose/hat to fly up, revealing a bald bandito! The toy was in good shape but the outer box was crushed, had a lot of tape and was missing art and lettering along the bottom. After flattening, repairs and infilling the missing cardboard the artwork and some lettering had to be recreated, particularly along the bottom. It's always enjoyable to work on fun and unique graphics such as this.

07/15/2024

Silver Ray Secret Weapon Space Scout cleaned, pressed, repaired, touched-up and rebuilt.

07/10/2024

In addition to the horizontal tear, this box was missing artwork in the lower right corner, also the right side interior and exterior flaps. The existing artwork on the opposite panel was identical, giving us a guide in re-creating the missing parts.

04/10/2024

Another before and after of a mechanical cleaning.

04/10/2024

The bottom of this spine has had a mechanical cleaning, which can make a dramatic difference.

04/09/2024

Lionel Set Box with cardboard and paper fixes, no paint.

04/09/2024

This 1948 Realart re-release poster for "The Mummy's Ghost" had a few problems, the worst of which was severe mold damage along the back. The bottom left-hand corner was especially hard hit. The moldy smell was appropriate for a mummy but rather unpleasant to work with. The blue image of Kharis in the upper right was a photo paste-on, I removed this, then washed and linen-backed the poster, aligning the two vertical pieces and infilling the missing areas with masa paper. While we try to keep restorations as conservative as possible, this entire poster had to be repainted, They were solid colors, so it wasn't too hard. Then we pasted the photo back in, Deathless is right!

04/07/2024

One of the most difficult aspects of restoration is knowing when to stop, a restored item should never look restored. This early cyclonette box is a good example.

04/07/2024

A Disney "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" lampshade from the late 1930's. It was made of a translucent celluloid material, which was different than repairing paper. Any repairs, even from the back, would show if a light was placed inside. Repairs were done precisely along the tears, and only one support could be made invisibly, along the vertical seam where the two ends of the artwork attached.

03/03/2024

A personal project. This is a plaster casting of Laurel & Hardy in a model T, unfortunately it arrived in pieces. I used heavy resin epoxy to register the figures in the car, then built out the missing sections of plaster with a clay called sculpy, building up and drying the successive layers with a hair dryer. In painting it I followed the original color schemes, orange and yellow derbies and Hardy's gold moustache. I don't know why, but somehow it works.

02/18/2024

A rare British 1930s Mickey & Minnie Mouse Handcar box before and after restoration.