Because there is a thing that happens when you take a ruined piece of furniture and bring it back — a hundred-year-old chair someone was about to throw away, a desk with a joint split clean through — and it is the closest thing to grace I have found.

You do not hide the damage.

That is the mistake amateurs make; they try to erase the break, to make it look as though nothing ever happened.

But a good restoration does not pretend the wound away.

It cleans it, and fits the broken pieces back true, and reinforces the joint from the inside, and then finishes over it — so that the repaired place is not invisible, but it is sound, and often it is the strongest part of the whole piece, because it is the only part that was ever tested and rebuilt.

I have a scar down the side of my leg, and it aches when the weather turns, and I would not erase it if I could.