Château and period house boiseries: making what is missing to match

Mostly panelling, or lambris: joinery panels set in moulded frames. Dado panelling stops at leaning height, full-height panelling rises to the cornice, and the dado rail marks the line between the two. Then come overdoors, carved or painted; trumeaux, panels of wood or mirror glass taller than they are wide, set between two windows; and carved panels. For country houses and hunting lodges, Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted overdoors of hounds and game.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, château panelling was more than ornament: according to the Centre des monuments nationaux, it marked the social rank of each room, improved acoustics and insulated against cold and damp. Its style helps to date a scheme: symmetry under Louis XIV, softer lines during the French Régence, the shells and acanthus of rocaille in Louis XV boiserie, and a return to straight lines and ribbon bows in Louis XVI boiserie, from around 1760. Our guide to decorative mouldings details the profiles and ornament.

Because many boiseries were dismantled and sold, while others suffered from damp, insects or building work. At the Château de Bercy, demolished in 1861, the décor had been auctioned in 1860: some panelling was reinstalled in Paris town houses, sometimes mixed with unrelated elements, and some in England. The panelling of the grand salon of the Château de Draveil, from around 1735, was sold to a Paris dealer, then acquired in 1928 by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

As the Musée des Arts Décoratifs points out, the demolitions of Haussmann's works under the Second Empire revealed the market value, and the historical value, of these interiors. Wood also has its enemies: house longhorn beetles, furniture beetles and dry rot, a fungus that thrives after water damage or a renovation that has blocked the ventilation. Then there is building work: a partition moved, a duct to run through. Even at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the boiserie from the Hôtel de Lauzun includes one modern panel.

To remake château boiserie to match, you need a workshop that makes new pieces from what survives (a fragment, a survey or photographs), in the same wood and with a finish matched to the décor, working with the restorer and the architect. That is what AC Boiseries does: each piece is designed in 3D, made in our workshop in Cornebarrieu, near Toulouse, then finished and detailed by hand. On a château restoration project, we make the new part; the original material is the work of a restorer, your own or our partner.

Making to match does not mean inventing. The Venice Charter (1964) sets out two principles: restoration 'must stop at the point where conjecture begins', and replacements of missing parts 'must integrate harmoniously with the whole, but at the same time must be distinguishable from the original'. For carved panelling, you therefore copy the ornament that survives, not a catalogue design: writing about the cabinet from the Hôtel de Rochegude, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs stresses that every ornament in it was designed and made as a unique piece.

On a monument historique, any work on protected boiseries requires authorisation from, or a declaration to, the French State. A building that is classé, the highest level of protection, cannot be restored, repaired or altered without authorisation from the regional prefect, except for routine maintenance; the work is then carried out under the State's scientific and technical supervision. If it is not State-owned, its restoration is entrusted to an architecte en chef des monuments historiques, or to an architect with ten years' experience in restoring historic buildings who meets the conditions to compete for that title; its repairs, to an architect holding the 'architecture et patrimoine' (architecture and heritage) diploma.

A building that is inscrit, the second level of protection, cannot be altered without four months' notice to the regional prefect, whose consent is required if the work needs a building permit or a prior declaration. Whether classé or inscrit, detaching an element of décor fixed à perpétuelle demeure, that is permanently attached to the building, requires authorisation. According to the DRAC Occitanie, the regional cultural affairs office, any work beyond routine maintenance goes through an application to the département's UDAP, its architecture and heritage unit. Outside the monuments historiques system, a plan de sauvegarde et de mise en valeur, the protection plan of a historic town centre, can also protect interior décor.

For a historic house, first check the property's status: the Mérimée database, on the French Ministry of Culture's POP platform, shows the level and extent of protection; the Palissy database lists protected objects, including some boiseries. The workshop does not give legal advice: it makes pieces to the architect's specifications and supplies the drawings needed for the application.

The workshop works in stages: a photo file, a survey or a fragment; a drawing and 3D design, approved; making in Cornebarrieu; finishing and detail work by hand; a patina matched to the existing woodwork; then delivery. Owner, architect, decorator or hotelier: everything starts with overall and close-up views, a few dimensions and the original fragment if there is one, even a broken one. The drawing is approved by you, and by the architect on a protected monument, before anything is made.

Pieces are supplied ready to fit, according to the project's requirements; fitting is carried out by the joiner or firm you choose, with whom the workshop is happy to liaise. On-site surveys are possible, mainly in Occitanie, from the Gers to the Tarn and from the Lot to the Aveyron; for a house in the Loire Valley, the Périgord, the Bordeaux region or Burgundy, we work remotely: photos, dimensions, a template or a fragment sent to us, and a drawing approved before anything is made. Full method: antique boiserie reproduction.

The same wood as the existing work: most often oak, sometimes walnut or fir. A joinery manual of 1829 ranks oak first among building timbers, ahead of fir, and notes that most fixed joinery, panelling included, was intended to be painted. Walnut is found too: at Puycornet, in the Tarn-et-Garonne, early eighteenth-century church panelling is in painted and gilded walnut.

The finish follows the décor. On waxed or bare-wood panelling, the workshop matches colour and patina to the old work; on painted panelling, the piece can leave the workshop ready to paint, and the painter or restorer blends everything together. For a whole interior to be redesigned, see our bespoke woodwork; for a lost carved shield, a family coat of arms can be recreated from a stone, a seal or an armorial. To begin, send us your photos.