Ceramic surgery specialty of Porcelain Doctor

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Ceramic surgery specialty of Porcelain DoctorWilmette’s Tolsky-Schwartz has been repairing collectables for 30 yearsby Alan P. Henry

Click Image to EnlargeRandi Tolsky-Schwartz, the Porcelain Doctor, does restoration work on a bronze-mounted oval porcelain bowl in her Wilmette workshop in the rear of Raven and Dove. photo:Alan P. Henry/22nd Century Media.

A Staffordshire figurine was brought to Tolsky-Schwartz …

photo:Alan P. Henry/22nd Century Media . …

December 19, 2011 | 02:35 AMArtistic virtuosity has many forms. One of them is practiced every day in the back workshop of the Raven and Dove on Greenleaf Avenue in Wilmette.That’s where the Porcelain Doctor, Randi Tolsky-Schwartz, painstakingly restores broken porcelain and pottery.In the process, she also mends wounded hearts by giving rebirth to artifacts that usually carry great sentimental value, and often great intrinsic value as well.”People are so grateful when they come in to pick up their piece,” said Tolsky-Schwartz, who has been working her magic in Wilmette for more than three decades.Tolsky-Schwartz grew up on the South Side, trained to be a dental assistant, and briefly worked for several dentists. She had the soul of the artist, however, and attended the School of the Art Institute.In order to make money for art supplies, she applied for a job with Marshall Fields in downtown Chicago doing china repair. With her dental background, they hired her on the spot.Over the course of two years at Fields, she learned the tools of the trade: properly fitting and gluing pieces together, filling and smoothing the seams, matching colors, and painting the seams.”The key to getting it to look like nothing ever happened is to match the color exactly,” Tolsky-Schwartz said. “That was something I was really good at. I could look at a white and figure out what was in it.”At the same time, working in her parents’ basement, she began to repair porcelain and pottery owned by her mother’s friends.Word of her talents got out, and the rest is history.Tolsky-Schwartz opened The Porcelain Doctor and the Raven and Dove jewelry and gift shop on Lake and Green Bay in 1979.”I figured that if I am going to be sitting here I might as well have stuff to sell, too,” she said.Her most important early mentor was Josef Puerhinger, an expert crystal craftsman and owner of the Crystal Cave in Wilmette.”He told me that if I was really good he could send me people every day, and almost every day for 35 years he has done just that,” she said.To this day, Tolsky-Schwartz’s training as a dental assistant has worked to her advantage.”The technique I have that not a lot of people who do restoration work have is that I can mold things and take impressions,” she said.For example, she has models of hands and fingers from dolls she purchased at hobby shops which she can then use to replace missing parts. Adeptness with epoxies and acrylics is also essential.Every broken piece of pottery or porcelain that comes into the store presents it own set of challenges, whether it be grandmother’s tea pot that just needs the two broken pieces of the lid glued back together, or a 3-foot high antique Imari vase with large pieces missing that requires massive restoration.Consequently, the cost and time required for repair also varies greatly.Tolsky-Schwartz glued back together a fossil of a Trilobite, which lived 250 million years ago, for $40. The owner later told her the bug was worth $15,000.Another customer came in with a box containing 83 pieces of a Picasso pottery vase.”I didn’t want to do it so I told him $5,000 because I figured he would probably walk,” she said. “He said, ‘OK, go ahead.'”The job took a year, starting as it often does with the difficult process of figuring out what pieces go where. The customer later sold the piece at auction for many times that amount.The bulk of her work, she said, involves the restoration of figurines, such as Lladro, Meissen and Hummels.Tolsky-Schwartz, who has two children in college, has never had to advertise for her porcelain repair work, thanks to local and museum referrals and a loyal client base on the North Shore. As a result, she typically tells customers the wait time will be six to eight weeks.In part, that is because she does the work on her days off and before or after the gift shop is open. It is also because repairing broken pottery and porcelain is a multiple-step, time-consuming process.The Raven and Dove specializes in many of the kinds of pottery and porcelain Tolsky-Schwartz repairs, including Majolica, Quimper and Staffordshire. But the antique business has been in doldrums since 9/11, said Tolsky-Schwartz.”People became afraid to spend money on collectibles; so repairs have always been my steady ground,” Tolsky-Schawartz said.And that is just fine with her.”People come to me with their family treasures, often with heirlooms that have been passed down through the generations, and they are counting on me to make those treasures whole again,” Tolsky-Schwartz said. “I bring them back to life, which brings their owners incredible happiness. What could be better than that?”

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