Ralph Gardner Jr. offers a rare look inside the life and business of an art restorer, Simon Parkes, in his Wall Street Journal column:

He no longer does much of the actual restoration work himself. “I’ve had my moment, the ship has sailed,” he said frankly, as he looked over an easel on which Karen Schifano, one of his restorers, was working on a beautiful but beat up George Luks portrait of a young woman, supposedly Gertrude Vanderbilt. “It takes a particular kind of energy. You have to be left alone, in a bubble. Put on your headphones. Ideally, you could put in six or seven hours a day.”

Mr. Parkes spends as much time these days meeting with art dealers and auction house experts—examining paintings, suggesting restoration strategies, writing reports—as he does guiding his troops. “I have a good phone manner,” noted the restorer, whose personality caroms between wry and parched. “I don’t speak in unintelligible language. There’s nothing wrong with being English in this business.”

The recession, he confessed, has forced him to recalibrate his business plan, though volume has remained steady. “The number of no-charge opinions I provide has gone up,” he said. “I hardly ever charge for written reports these days. I make lots of visits as a courtesy. We’re not trying to get rich on any one picture. A picture of your granny is going to cost approximately the same as a 1916 Picasso. I’m not going to pretend it takes any longer to do a Picasso.”

Picassos in Reverse (Wall Street Journal)