Italian craft in Costa Mesa

When her mother’s 150-year-old mirror broke, Santa Ana resident Marjorie Gorrie thought she would have bad luck getting it fixed.

But Mauro and Franco Fallani assessed the badly damaged gold leaf frame and applied some century-old techniques. With that and some patience, the father and son antique restoration team were able to repair the heirloom.

Almost 13 years ago, Mauro and son Franco immigrated to the United States from Italy, where their family had been restoring antiques since the 19th century.

“I came for the weather only,” Mauro said during an interview in the Fallani and Sons workshop on west 17th Street, where they’ve worked for the last three years. Antique restoration, furniture building and gold leaf gilding are the workshop’s specialties, and all utilize antique tools — and methods of craftsmanship.

As for the broken mirror, “He repaired the frame itself and he repaired also the broken pieces surrounding it,” Gorrie said. “They did a fantastic job repairing it. We’ve put beveled glass in it and it looks very, very good.”

Franco learned the family craft working under his grandfather and father when he was a teenager. . But it took time for him to work up to building custom furniture and carefully gilding pieces of 24-carat gold leaf to antiques, which can date back to the 15th century.

He remembers sharpening tools in his grandfather’s workshop in Italy.

“He taught me how to sharpen every tool in the shop because he said, ‘you want to learn, you start with the cleaning of the shop,’” Franco said. “That’s the most important thing. We say in our industry that we will know how you work by looking at your tools, you can tell how good the craftsman is if you look at his tools…. My chisels are razor sharp.”

But the chisels and other wooden and metal tools aren’t the most important instruments that are important to the Fallani’s trade. Says the elder Fallani, it’s the hands that create the artistry. All of the furniture building and restoration is done by hand, and at any given time the father and son are working on five to seven projects. Most recently Mauro was working on a large custom bed frame, and another mirror that needed to be gilded with gold leaf.

The art of gilding is not easy, or for the nervous type. “You have to be calm, relaxed, you can’t have a shaky hand because the more folds you do, the more imperfections you will see later on,” said Franco. Fallani and Son is one of very few artisan shops that does gold leaf gilding, as well as French polish on antiques — a shellac that the pair make from hand using materials from Italy and southern Asia.

Antique restoration and custom furniture building can be a high-end business, but the Fallanis measure their worth by something less tangible than the dollar.

“I don’t have a rich life,” Franco said. “I’m very, very modest and sometimes I have problems too, but the feeling that I get when the people are appreciating what I do, to me It’s better than a paycheck.”

The majority of the Fallani’s business comes from word of mouth and repeat customers, like Gorrie, who said she plans on bringing an antique trunk to the father and son for restoration.

“It’s a very unique form of art; you paint a portrait in fine lines,” Franco said. “I look forward to getting up in the morning and coming to work.”

For more information, call (949) 722-9882 or visit www.antique-restorers.com.