Five weeks, one bench, no machine.
An artwork spends a week in intake and photography, two weeks in composition, and ten days in mounting and curing. Here is what each of those is.
Week one — intake
Your parcel is opened on the bench, not on the floor. Every piece is counted, photographed flat and laid out in the order it came out of the drawer, because that order is usually chronological and usually matters.
Anything torn is stabilised from behind with archival tissue before it is handled again. If something arrived damaged, you hear about it that day, with the photograph.
Weeks two and three — composition
This is the part that takes the time. Pieces are cut, overlapped and moved until the artwork reads as one object rather than a grid of drawings. Scale decides most of it: a small careful drawing next to a large fast one makes both look better, and putting the two best pieces side by side almost never works.
Your notes are in front of us while we do it — what must be included, what must not be trimmed, who made what. Before anything is glued down, a photograph of the layout goes to you, with one round of changes if something should move.
Ten days — mounting and curing
Mounted with acid-free adhesive, one piece at a time, working from the back layer forward. Then the seal, in thin coats, each one left to cure properly.
Curing is the step nobody can see and nobody can rush. A priority commission moves to the front of the bench; it does not get a shorter cure.
The last hour
Fixings on, level-tested, edges checked under raking light. Packed in paper, card and cotton with every unused original alongside it, and collected the working day after the balance clears.