Traveling conservator fixes up Monroe museum's nearly 200-year-old rocking chair

MONROE — When he retired, professional conservator Mark Gervasi didn’t want to stop preserving history.

He’d worked for 30 years at The Henry Ford, and he did conservation projects for the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House, Cranbrook, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Kentucky’s Shaker Hill Museum . He worked on presidential pieces and even helped with President Abraham Lincoln’s famed theater seat.

So, after retiring, Gervasi, 70, took his talents on the road. Today, he does conservation work for small Michigan museums for free. He’s done just about all the work he can do near his home in St. Clair Shores, so he's starting to branch out. He recently found the Monroe County Museum System.

“When I retired, I didn’t want to give up that world. I love what I do so much,” Gervasi said. “I’ve helped numerous small Michigan museums. I go through their collection and find pieces that warrant restoration. That excites me. I don’t charge. It brings me a great deal of joy.”

Monroe is about an hour away from his home-based conservation workshop.

“It’s a bit of a distance,” Gervasi said. “It was my first venture into your area. Monroe is the smallest, most southerly museum that I’m helping. I’ve stayed mainly in Macomb and Sanilac counties.”

Gervasi’s first project for the Monroe County Museum was an 1830s Boston rocking chair once owned by Laurent Durocher, a War of 1812 veteran, a Monroe probate judge and this town’s first justice of the peace. Durocher died in 1861.

The chair and other historical pieces were purchased for the museum in 2004. The items were part of a collection from local memorabilia collector Charles Verhoeven, according to Monroe News archives.

Previous Coverage: The Honorable Laurent Durocher: A man of many hats

“(The rocker) was not in very good condition when I received it. It was kind of held together with Scotch Tape and wooden bandages. That kept it in one piece, but it certainly wasn’t useable. It wouldn’t have been a sitter,” Gervasi said. “There were areas of color loss on the crest rail. It didn’t present in any complete fashion in that condition. In my work, it wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t read well for being displayed.”

Gervasi completely disassembled the rocker, spending about 12 hours on the project.

“The seat plank came apart. I screwed a piece of wood on the underside to hold two pieces together. It was very tenuous,” Gervasi said. “I re-glued all the joinery. I touched up areas, many, many little spots. I took several hours to in-paint those losses. It was pretty straight-forward, nothing taxing or challenging.”

The completed rocker is back on display at the museum, 126 South Monroe St. in Monroe.

“We are very pleased with his work," said Lynn Reaume from the Monroe County Museum System.

But, visitors shouldn’t expect to see a completely restored chair.

“The goal was not for it to look brand-new. That was never the goal,” Gervasi said. “You take what you have, stabilize it, make it look like an almost 200-year-old chair, but a well-cared-for chair. It had a lot of hard usage. I left some of that. I didn’t want to disguise the wear, but I alleviated any sign of neglect.”

Now, Gervasi hopes to work on more of Monroe’s artifacts.

“I’m looking at other things for the museum in Monroe. I drove down and earmarked some things. I’m looking forward to helping. It’s a very nice museum,” Gervasi said.

The conservator works on more than just furniture.

“Furniture is my specialty, but I got bored after all these years. I worked on a slot machine for a New Baltimore museum. I loved working on two reed organs in Port Sanilac. They were in really rough shape. It was really challenging. There’s no YouTube on how to put back a reed organ,” Gervasi said. “I like the mechanical things, taking them apart and putting them back together. I like Civil War items; Monroe has those. I like challenges, diamonds in the rough.”

After decades in the field, Gervasi can’t name a favorite project.

“There are too many things to say, ‘that was the piece,’" he said.

Gervasi is self-taught in conservation. He started by helping his neighbors fix up their antiques.

“Nickel-and-dime antiques that people have in their homes. I was glad I was able to start with those. I almost worked for free for the first couple hundred pieces,” Gervasi said.

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Today, he said his peers in the field need a master’s degree.

“I could never duplicate my career without a master’s degree. It’s very competitive. Now there is a lot more science. I was very much interested in the craft of conservation, not the academic side,” Gervasi said. “I feel very fortunate to have fallen into it. It didn’t cost $50,000 a year for graduate school.”

Anyone with information about the lineage of the Laurent Durocher chair is asked to contact the Monroe County Museum's Archives and Collections department at 734-240-7790.

— Contact reporter Suzanne Nolan Wisler at swisler@monroenews.com .

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Traveling conservator fixes up Monroe museum's nearly 200-year-old rocking chair