Editor in chief
Hester Lloyd
Hester Lloyd spent twenty-three years at Sotheby's before founding The Pewter. She edits the magazine's longest restoration pieces.
Beats
Published in The Pewter
A Bookbinder in Bristol's Stokes Croft
Eleri Penrose rebinds, repairs, and conserves cloth and leather books from a shopfront on Picton Street. On a Monday in June she rebacks an 1879 family Bible.
The Right Storage for Antique Textiles: A Pennsylvania Quilt Collection
Helga Schoenfeld's eighty-four quilts, the rolled-tube method, and the case against cedar chests for anything you actually want to keep.
The Bench That Pays for Itself: One Restorer's Twenty-Year Investment
A custom-built oak bench in a Vermont workshop took six months to build and has lasted twenty-three years. The owner has worked out, roughly, how much it has earned per square inch.
An English Pembroke Table with a Split Leaf, Reglued and Refinished
A George III mahogany Pembroke table, c. 1785, came into a Hudson workshop with a leaf split along the grain and a finish that had been waxed for two centuries. The work of repairing it took eleven weeks.
The Quiet Archive of American Rural Photography
Outside Fayetteville, Arkansas, the retired schoolteacher Estelle Crane has spent twenty-six years assembling 11,200 anonymous American snapshots from rural life between 1910 and 1955.
Cleaning Gilded Frames Without Touching the Gold
A nineteenth-century water-gilded frame in a Chicago apartment, the difference between gilding and gilt paint, and why a soft brush is the entire toolkit.
Irish Silver Marks: Dublin's Harp, Cork's Castle and Ship
A Dublin silver beaker dated 1796 came up at a small Galway auction last June, marked with the crowned harp of the Dublin assay office, a maker's mark JL for John Locker, and a small Hibernia figure that fixes its origin beyond doubt.
A Pewter Collection Built From House Clearances
Over thirty-eight years, the Edinburgh ironmonger Hamish Brae has built a pewter collection of 1,140 pieces, almost entirely from house clearances within forty miles of his shop.
A Barometer Restorer in the Cotswolds
Cedric Halsall has rebuilt mercury stick barometers in a converted dairy near Stow-on-the-Wold for twenty-six years. On a morning in May, he refits the cistern on a Negretti and Zambra of 1881.
The Anchor and the Bow: Chelsea Porcelain Marks, 1745 to 1769
A small Chelsea cup, decorated with a kingfisher on a branch, was offered at Bonhams last March with a presale estimate of seven hundred pounds. The single mark on its underside — a small red anchor, no more than three millimetres tall — pushed the eventual hammer price to eleven thousand.
A 19th-Century Cigar-Store Indian, Conserved Not Restored
A polychrome carved figure attributed to the Robb workshop of New York, c. 1872, came into a private conservation studio in Hudson with most of its original paint surviving. The decision was to leave it alone.
Porcelain Marks: Meissen, Sèvres, and Worcester, Compared
Three porcelain plates lie side by side on a felt-covered table in Hester Lloyd's office in Hudson, New York. The first carries crossed swords in underglaze blue. The second, two interlaced Ls. The third, a crescent moon. Each mark is older than two centuries.
A Welsh Chest, Four Owners, and a Pencil Mark
An oak chest of drawers from Carmarthenshire, traced through four named owners across 184 years, with a graphite inscription inside the back panel that closes the chain.
Re-Caning a Chair Seat by Hand: An Afternoon in Burlington
Hettie Vance has re-caned chairs in the same Vermont workshop since 1981. A 1925 American side chair and the seven-step pattern, observed.
An English Country House Sale in Wiltshire
Two days at the contents auction of a Georgian house in the Wylye Valley, where a thousand lots are sold from the rooms themselves.
A One-Room Museum of American Carpenter's Tools
In a converted icehouse outside Brattleboro, Vermont, Wendell Strauss has built what may be the most complete private collection of American carpenter's hand planes between 1840 and 1925.
Spring Decorative Arts at Christie's New York
A morning at Rockefeller Center for the Christie's spring sale of American decorative arts, where the room is quiet and the bidding is not.
The Right Wax for the Right Wood: Ten Finishes Tested Over Eighteen Months
A restorer in upstate New York spent a year and a half applying ten different waxes to offcuts of walnut, oak, and mahogany. The results were not what the catalogues promised.
The Quilt from a Farmhouse Near Lititz
A Pennsylvania-German appliquéd quilt, sold for forty dollars at a 1978 estate sale, traced through three counties and four generations to a kitchen in Warwick Township.
An Afternoon with a Chair Caner in Burlington, Vermont
Margery Pell has been weaving rush and cane onto old chairs for thirty-one years. On a wet Thursday in May, she works on a Shaker side chair from 1842 and explains why she charges by the hole.
An 1880 Walnut Secretary Desk, Restored Over Fourteen Months
A black-walnut Wooton-style desk, bought at a Hudson Valley estate sale in 2024, came back to its hinges and its slant-front lid in March of this year. A record of the work.