When it came time to move

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"This is the kind of furniture that was done as a real tour de force," Gary Calderwood said last week, standing amid ragged rows of furniture that he and his wife intend to exhibit in new quarters in Bala Cynwyd. Tomorrow, the Penn Valley couple will open Calderwood Gallery Main Line, a low-slung, whitewashed cinderblock building on Rock Hill Road that will provide needed space for their expanding collection of period furniture and decorative arts. The building, cluttered with all sorts of workers' tools last week, also houses the restoration studio for the gallery, where a team of artisans will refinish works that the Calderwoods have found abroad. They buy most of their pieces from France. Calderwood, who used to earn his living as a commercial photographer before plunging into the gallery business with both feet, said that expanding to the Main Line was a natural choice because of the great interest in their collection by those who live in the area. "We have so many clients out in the Main Line area," said Calderwood, who said the prices for the Art Nouveau and Art Deco works can range from less than $1,000 to more than $100,000. "When it came time to move, we decided to come out here." He acknowledged that the works he sells are not for those who faint at high price tags but added that it was costly to put some of the furniture back into good condition. "Restoration - well done - is expensive," Calderwood said, adding that his workers use a technique called French polish to restore works. It involves applying numerous thin layers of shellac by hand, in circular and figure-eight motions, with a linen-covered cotton ball. The Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements blossomed in France, where the former took seed just before the turn of the century as a reaction to the highly ornate Louis furniture that had been popular for the latter half of the 19th century. It was a short-lived, lasting roughly a decade. Art Deco, which flourished from the mid-1910s until 1950, blended technology and the material of the industrial age with the highest quality of craftsmanship. Exotic woods enhanced the decorative designs and shapes that came to symbolize a new, quicker-paced lifestyle. The works that will be on display this week include a 1925 Majorelle bibliotheca that is eight feet tall, made of Cuban mahogany and ebony macassar with a Cubist marquetry design of rosewood and mother-of-pearl and hand-forged iron doorknobs, along with a matching desk and arm chair. Calderwood said he got interested in the period furniture after seeing a book on the 1925 Exposition Universelle in Paris, which was largely dedicated to the decorative arts. "It took years before I ever found anything," he said, adding that his first purchase was a Scottish cabinet made of rosewood in the English arts and crafts tradition.