Porcelain Antique Restoration Shop: ARK Restoration & Design

ARK Restoration & Design works from the fourth floor of 250 West 54th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue in Midtown, and it is the studio New York collectors call when a Meissen figure loses a hand or a Picasso plate cracks in two. The founders, Anatoly and Rena Krishtul, opened it in 1982 and still run it by appointment. For an antique restoration shop that handles ceramics, enamel and glass rather than furniture, this is one of the city's most respected benches.

The About page quotes a 1999 New York Magazine profile that explains how the studio began. The Krishtuls emigrated from L'viv, then in Soviet Ukraine, in 1979 and arrived with almost nothing. Rena missed the beautiful things she had left behind but could not afford valuable pieces, so she bought pretty but broken objects at flea markets and set about fixing them. Her background was in designing and making glass and porcelain, and Anatoly held a degree in engineering.

That self-taught start grew into a client list that now includes the Meissen porcelain manufactory, KPM and the Berlin State Museum of Ceramics, the Kuskovo Estate in Moscow, and the New York salerooms of Christie's and Sotheby's. The same 1999 article described projects that were underway: a thousand-year-old wooden Buddha hollowed out by termites, a pair of gilded Russian imperial vases missing a spout, and a carved jade crane box damaged by an earlier bad repair.

The studio's list of recognition goes back decades. It won a 1998 Discovery Award for outstanding glass and ceramic decorating, was named in New York Magazine's Best of New York in 2004 and 2005, and lists professional memberships in the Society of Glass and Ceramic Decorators, the American Ceramic Society and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

The studio's own summary covers antique painting and sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, enamel, glass, metalwork and organic materials, as well as plastics. Its portfolio is split into ceramics, jewelry, sculpture, enamel, glass and metalwork, and the ceramics section names the range directly: porcelain, pottery, faience, majolica and raku. Recent examples include Picasso ceramics, Meissen and Chelsea porcelain figures and a folding fan.

Two specialties stand out. ARK repairs plique-a-jour enamel, the translucent, windowed enamel used in Art Nouveau jewelry, which few restorers will touch. It also offers kintsugi, the Japanese method of joining broken ceramics with lacquer and gold, for owners who would rather celebrate a break than hide it. The studio also makes custom display bases for sculpture and objects.

Before any work starts, decide how visible you want the repair to be. Invisible restoration fills chips, rebuilds lost fingers or petals and repaints over the join so the piece reads as whole from normal viewing distance. Conservation-minded repair joins the fragments and fills losses but stops short of overpainting original glaze, which is often what museums and serious collectors prefer.

ARK's founders hold university degrees in engineering and fine arts, and the About page says they assess each piece with current technology alongside knowledge of how historic makers built and decorated their work. Tell them how you will use the object. A figure that will sit on a mantel needs a different repair from a platter that will go back on the dinner table, and some fills are not food-safe.

ARK does not post opening hours and works by appointment. The Franklin Report, a guide to New York home services, noted that calling an hour ahead to set up a visit is often enough, and that the studio has no minimum price but many projects cost thousands of dollars.

Read the terms before leaving a piece. Objects not collected more than 30 days after the work is finished are subject to storage fees, and after 90 days they are treated as abandoned property. If you are travelling or moving, arrange collection dates when you drop off.

Collect every fragment, however small, and wrap each one separately in tissue inside a padded box. Do not glue anything at home: household adhesives yellow, and removing them adds time and cost to the professional repair. If the piece has been mended before, say so, because old rivets, shellac and epoxy each have to be taken out differently.

The building is a short walk from the 57th Street station on the N, Q, R and W lines, the Seventh Avenue station on the B, D and E, and the 50th Street station on the C and E.

The block is theatre territory. Studio 54, the former disco that is now a Broadway house run by Roundabout Theatre Company, is on the same stretch of West 54th Street, and Carnegie Hall stands three blocks north at Seventh Avenue and 57th Street. A drop-off before an evening show is an easy pairing.

For something closer to the work on ARK's tables, the Museum of Arts and Design at Columbus Circle is about a ten-minute walk northwest and regularly shows ceramics, glass and jewelry. Seeing contemporary studio pieces there is a good reminder of how much skill goes into making, as well as mending, these materials.

Address: 250 West 54th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10019, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. Email: mail@arkrestoration.net. Visits by appointment only. Specialties: porcelain, pottery, faience, majolica, enamel including plique-a-jour, glass, jewelry, sculpture, metalwork and kintsugi. Founded in 1982 by Anatoly and Rena Krishtul; recognized in New York Magazine's Best of New York in 2004 and 2005.

Keep all fragments, skip the superglue and plan pickup within 30 days of completion. Ask the Karpo APP to book dinner near the Theater District or find a pre-show bar on Eighth Avenue around your appointment.