Restoration Gallery

Historic Carriage Restoration

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Check out our Original Cannon Carriages

These were built from scratch for historic reenactments!

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This Rustic Chinese Carriage was a great project. Found outside of Princeton just waiting for restoration, our client saw the perfect accent piece to their garden landscaping. Destined for a simple shale pad, the piece provides color against the backdrop of evergreens and a black rail fence. This was a drastic transformation, and we thoroughly enjoyed working on the piece.

We're still in the research phase of dating this piece, it's approximately 150 years old and obviously of Asian origin. We believe it's a Chinese conveyance often pulled by an Ox or small horse. The piece is teak, so it's not rotted at all, a few stress cracks (we call that character) ... overall it is in excellent structural condition. We'll be preserving some of the silk and newspaper originally found lining the carriage roof soon. Check back for photos of the text!

We added the symbol of the dragon, shown below, on the back center panel of the carriage for good luck.

Stanley and Cindy are shown below painting the carriage. Shop space overflowed, and we ended up working on this piece at Eric's house. Restoration included a complete cleaning, removal of years of dirt, rust, and old paint residue, sanding preparation, rust treatment, and finally painting the piece. We also overlaid the canvass top with a fresh oil painted canvass sealed in place with tar.

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Monmouth Battlefield State Park Cannon

The first cannon in the Monmouth Battlefield State Park Museum, this reproduction French four-ponder was donated through the Friends of Monmouth in dire need of attention. Artisans provided services to reproduce a new cannon trail section to replace the existing rotted piece. More...