The studio’s mission is the conservation of historic frames on paintings and other pictorial works in all the departments of the National Museum in Krakow.

Its team provides care for objects made of wood, coated with gold and silver leaf, gilding bronzes, and other metals. This involves woodcarving, e.g. to reproduce missing sculptural ornaments, gypsum casting and preparation of plastic masses used in framing, as well as making new frames according to old designs and technologies. In addition to these, the studio’s tasks include conserving decorative art objects – clocks, gilded furniture and candlesticks.

The conservation of gilded wooden objects is a multi-stage process encompassing wood impregnation (to secure substance damaged by wood-eaters), repair of the frame’s structure, protection of the existing original parts of the gilding, chemical and mechanical cleaning, filling in missing parts with adequate materials (wood, plastic mass, stucco), and also execution of gilding and silvering in a variety of techniques.

In recent years, examples of restoration works on historic frames and production of new ones include jobs done for:

• the Gallery of 20th-century Polish Art in the Main Building (2005)
• the Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace (2007)
• the Gallery of 19th-century Polish Art in the Sukiennice (2010)
• the EUROPEUM Centre for European Culture (2013)
• the Karol Szymanowski Museum in the Villa Atma (2013)

• Stanisław Grzegorz Tańcula – head
• Beata Feluś
• Barbara Kopeć