Furniture Restoration Shop in Chelsea: Jane Henry Studios

Most furniture restoration shops in Manhattan specialize in one material and send everything else out. Jane Henry Studios, founded in 1989 and run from Suite 503 at 450 West 31st Street on the Hudson Yards edge of West Chelsea, keeps lacquer, gilding, wood finishing, painted finishes and even painting conservation under one roof. Jane Henry studied painting at Cooper Union and the High School of Music and Art, and that painter's eye for color is what clients hire when a sun-bleached tabletop or a chipped Qing drum table has to match its original surface again.

The studio's deepest specialty is lacquer. Its services page lists Chinese lacquer, Japanese Edo-period pieces, coromandel screens, painted paper screens, carved lacquer objects and European chinoiserie, which covers the English and Dutch technique called japanning, along with bantam ware and mother-of-pearl inlay. Henry also restores raised gold and intaglio decoration on those surfaces. One project she documented on the studio blog was a pair of Chinese Qing lacquered drum tables that arrived broken into several pieces, one missing about half the lacquer on its top. She filled, cut and painted the losses on both rather than cannibalizing one table to finish the other.

Gilding is the second pillar. The shop handles traditional water gilding and oil-size gilding with genuine gold leaf, recuts gesso, and does gold tooling and embossing. On a giltwood and ebonized console, the gesso ground was lifting away from the wood; the studio stabilized it and patched every loss in 22k leaf to match the original. The supplier list reads like a restorer's shopping trip through Europe: Manetti gold leaf, Liberon waxes, Kolcaustico, Dux and Charbonnel.

Plenty of the work is plainer and more familiar to anyone with a damaged dining table. The wood finishing and repair page covers veneer repairs, French polishing, staining, lacquering, hand-rubbed oil and wax finishes, and touch-ups for scratches, dents, chips, heat rings, water marks, burns, smoke damage and pet damage. The studio blog even has a post titled "Cat Scratch Fever." Pieces range from sixteenth-century antiques through twentieth-century modern and contemporary furniture, so a Danish teak sideboard is as welcome as a Regency card table.

A good example of how Henry thinks is her write-up of a Catherine Memmi wenge dining table. The client's table had sat for about ten years in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, and the sun had blushed the finish so badly that Henry first assumed it was meant to be pickled. She arrived expecting spot color corrections, realized the top needed a full strip and refinish, and chose to soak the old finish rather than sand heavily, because wenge dust is harsh to breathe.

Beyond furniture, the studio reproduces painted finishes to order: faux bois, faux tortoiseshell, faux marble, wood graining, stenciling, trompe l'oeil, Gustavian and Louis XVI painted furniture, verre eglomise and antiqued mirrors. If you have a single surviving painted chair and need a matching set, this is the kind of shop that can reproduce the finish from your sample. There is also a fine art side covering portrait restoration, re-backing, cleaning of paintings and drawings, and varnish revival on eighteenth and nineteenth century canvases as well as Tibetan paintings.

The miscellaneous list fills in the gaps: chips and cracks in stone and marble, leather cleaning and touch-ups, and upholstery services. A leather restoration on a Roberto Lazzeroni chair is one of the posted case studies. That breadth matters if you own a piece that mixes materials, such as a marble-topped gilt console, because one studio can handle the stone, the gold and the wood together.

Henry works side by side with interior designers, auction houses, architects, antique dealers and private collectors in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and across the tri-state area. The client list on her homepage includes Christie's New York, the Central Park Conservancy, Ralph Lauren, Kate Spade, The Row and Isaac Mizrahi, and the hospitality roster names The Knickerbocker, Soho House, the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton. Corporate and institutional clients can book one-time, weekly or monthly visits for touch-ups to paneling, floors and furniture in lobbies and showrooms. The studio is a member of the American Institute for Conservation, and its press page points to coverage in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Martha Stewart and Family Handyman.

This is not a walk-in storefront. Send a straight-on shot, a close-up of each damaged area, and a photo of any maker's label or stamp. Because the shop offers pick-up and drop-off across the tri-state area, a heavy armoire never has to ride the freight elevator in your arms. For built-in paneling or a table too large to move, ask about on-site work, which the studio already does for hotels and showrooms.

Plan for patience. Gesso consolidation, lacquer fills and French polish all need curing time between steps, and a careful restorer will not rush them. If a piece has sentimental value, mention it early; Henry's posts show she often adjusts the plan once a piece is on the bench.

If you bring a small object yourself, the walk is easy. The 34 St–Hudson Yards station on the 7 line is a short walk north, and the A, C and E trains at Penn Station are a few blocks east along 31st and 33rd Streets. From the studio, walk west to the High Line spur at West 30th Street and follow the elevated park south through West Chelsea toward the galleries on West 24th and 25th Streets, where you can see contemporary furniture design next to painting and sculpture.

Heading the other way, Moynihan Train Hall inside the James A. Farley Building has a soaring skylit concourse worth a look even if you are not catching a train, plus a food hall for a quick lunch. Henry is also a working sculptor, represented by the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown and Sidetracks Gallery in New Hope, Pennsylvania, which explains the sculptural care in her carving repairs.

Address: 450 West 31st Street, Suite 503, New York, NY 10001, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Email: info@janehenrystudios.com. Visits are by appointment only. Services: lacquer and chinoiserie, water and oil gilding, French polishing, veneer and structural repair, painted and faux finishes, painting conservation, stone, marble and leather repair, and upholstery. Pick-up and drop-off run across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and the studio also works on site. Founded: 1989 by Jane Henry.