Oil Painting Antique Restoration Shop on Calle Ocho: D&D Art

Two conservators trained in Old Havana run a small painting studio on Calle Ocho. D&D Art, at 1465 SW 8th St, Suite 104, Miami, is an antique restoration shop for oil paintings on canvas and works on paper, in the Little Havana Arts and Entertainment District. A verbal or email estimate costs nothing, and a formal written estimate is billed at $150 per hour.

The founders and chief conservators are Dayamis Hernandez and Daymis Hernandez. Their staff page says they studied art restoration in Cuba and graduated in 1995 from the Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos school, which was set up through an agreement between the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation and the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana, with the Museo Reina Sofía in Spain, in the specialty of mural painting restoration.

They went on to the conservation workshop of the Office of the Historian for oil painting restoration, and worked on a project led by the French restorer Pierre-Antoine Héritier on a triptych by Jean Baptiste Vermay, which shows the founding ceremony of Havana. They also took chemistry courses at Cuba's national conservation center, CENCREM, left Cuba in 1999, worked freelance for galleries and collectors in Miami, and earned a bachelor's degree in art in 2004.

The homepage says D&D Art has been conserving and restoring artwork on canvas and paper for more than twenty-five years, and that it follows the Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice of the American Institute for Conservation. The studio describes its expertise as antique and contemporary art, with Old Masters paintings as a particular strength. It also has more than fifteen years with Concrete art, Madí and other avant-garde and postmodern work, which matters in Miami, where many collections hold Latin American geometric abstraction. Those paintings show every scuff on their flat color fields, and a careless retouch on a hard-edged panel is very easy to spot.

On canvas, the listed treatments are examination, condition reports, cleaning, consolidation of flaking paint and ground, lining, filling of losses and inpainting, which is also called retouching. The cleaning page shows before-and-after examples of an oil painting and an icon. A typical candidate is a family portrait brought from Cuba decades ago, with darkened varnish, small paint losses at the edges and a canvas that has gone slack on its stretcher.

Works on paper get just as much attention. The services include surface cleaning, removal of mold and insect residues, consolidation, deacidification and bleaching with light rather than chemicals. Washing can remove acids and discoloration and makes paper stronger, but the studio tests every sheet first because water can move sensitive inks and pigments. Tears are aligned and mended on the back with strips of Japanese tissue and a non-staining paste.

The founders say their time at the Museum of the City of Havana taught them treatments suited to a hot, humid climate, and that this has proved useful in Miami, which has very similar weather. That is relevant if a drawing has brown foxing spots or a print was taped to cardboard in the 1970s. The studio removes old acidic tapes and backings when they are damaging the paper.

The pricing rules are spelled out. Verbal estimates and informal estimates by email are free, and most clients never need anything more. A written estimate is charged at $150 per hour, which usually works out at about $250 per art piece, with discounts when several pieces come in together. That price covers estimates done in the studio; visits to your home are charged separately, depending on how much work needs examining.

Condition reports are a separate service and often the smarter first purchase. The studio explains that buyers, institutions and dealers may ask for a signed report for each work, and that a report records the physical health of a painting before a sale, loan or move. Each one lists the date, the conservator, the client, the title, when the work was made, its medium and its dimensions, followed by the observed damage.

A 50% deposit is always required before work starts, even for an insurance estimate. During examination, works are unframed, photographed and inspected with magnifiers and ultraviolet lamps, and solubility tests are done before any water or solvent touches the paint. One rule to know before you book: the studio stopped giving opinions on authenticity in 2025, so bring a painting for treatment, not for an attribution.

The studio is on SW 8th Street, Calle Ocho, the main street of Little Havana, between SW 14th and 15th Avenues. Street parking is metered along the avenues, and the free Miami Trolley runs a Little Havana route along the corridor. Carry framed paintings face-in against your body, and wrap them in a blanket rather than plastic, which traps moisture in Miami heat.

Domino Park, officially Máximo Gómez Park, is a few steps west, where older men play dominoes at shaded tables most days. Along the sidewalk, the Calle Ocho Walk of Fame stars honor Celia Cruz and other Latin stars, and a few blocks east the Cuban Memorial Boulevard on SW 13th Avenue lines up monuments beside a ceiba tree. Stop for a cafecito at a ventanita window on the way back to the car.

Address: D&D Art Inc, at 1465 SW 8th St, Suite 104, Miami, FL 33135, Little Havana. Email: ddartinc@gmail.com. Visits are arranged by phone; the studio publishes no walk-in hours. Estimates: verbal and email estimates free; written estimate $150 per hour, usually about $250 per piece. Deposit: 50% before work. Authenticity opinions: no longer offered.

Best for: Old Master and Cuban family portraits with darkened varnish, flaking or torn canvases, icons, Latin American geometric abstraction, and drawings or prints with mold, foxing or old tape. Bring photos of the front and back and any earlier restoration records. Ask the Karpo APP for a cafecito window or a Cuban lunch on Calle Ocho after your visit.