Upholstery Artist restores masterpieces

Submitted By Shirely Page 4/19/2011

Dressed in jeans and sandals with longish hair under beret-like cap,

Nick Petcu looks more like an artist than an artisan.

Indeed, this 50-year old Romanian immigrant is trained as an artist and used to

paint and sculpt.

No more!

“I found another passion”. It is a 1938 Cadillac and a 1947 Packard that underwent

restoration in his workshop.

Petcu, owner of Nick’s Upholstery, restores the interiors of classic collector cars. He can

Transform a car’s beat up and rotting insides—including door panels, carpets and convertible roofs, let alone the seats—into a flawless recreation of the coach builder’s art.

The 1938 Packard 1608 V12 Town Car is unique It was built for tobacco heiress Doris Duke and has a custom coachbuilder Rollston Company, which was founded in 1921

by Romanian immigrant Harry Lonschein.

Time had taken its toll on the interior, which had been “totally destroyed”.  Petcu says that “ much of the wood (frame) was rotten and the roof was (perished)”. Half had to be cut off and replaced.

Petcu’s skill in re-creating the upholstery is matched by Bobby Dwyer’s woodworking skills. While the two are no officially partners, they have on many projects together and a door connects the two workshops.

Dwyer is able to not only re-create the frame but also to refurbish or replace the finely veneered wood that is hallmark of classic cars.

“Hours and hours can go into one tiny piece” he said. You can invest $1,000 into a part you can hold in you hand”.

The Packard is one of a kind.  Not only is the driver separated from the passenger compartment by a glass window, but the rear of the passenger compartment has a convertible roof.

Petcu and Dwyer have refurbished the interior in extreme detail, re-creating the leather and cloth interior in beige and refurbishing (and in some cased re-creating) the fine veneer trim.

A measure of Petcu’s attention to detail is outlined in long strips of cardboard that line both cars’ massive running boards. They are covered in meticulous notes listing every task he undertakes.  He uses the notes both as records of what he has done and for billing purposes.

He had made the new convertible roof out of beige material that matched the interior, but was dissatisfied with the result because it clashed with the black paintwork.  He said that he planned to replace it with black material after a discussion with owner, collector and restorer Dick Shappy.

It would take about 30 hours or two to three days to make the replacement  or two to three days given that he works”12 to 14 hours a day, six day a week.”

He said he also often works on Sundays, breaking only to watch his beloved Celtics on TV.  Overall, he said the Packard has some 700 of work in it.

Just replacing a set of seats requited him to install them three of four time, taking them out each time for retightening or loosening and possible additional stitching.

“It’s like making a suit, you pretty much tailor it ,” he said, adding, “ A major

Aspect of the upholsterer’s art is measuring and re-measuring.”

Petcu said that interior of the massive black 1947 Cadillac 62 Series Convertible was done to the metal when he received it. He re-created the two door panels, all the seats,

the floors, the convertible top and interior of the trunk.

He pointed out the piping along the back of one of the front red leather seats of the Cadillac, which he said was very slightly crooked on one of the seats.

The flaw was invisible to a layman’s eye but he said he would be taking the seat out and tightening it up to bring the piping in line.

Petcu said he left Romania in 1990 as a political refugee from the Communist government.  He had been a foe of President Nicolae Ceausescu, who was captured and executed in 1989 following a general uprising.

“ Why leave now”? he said many of his friends asked him.

“No, no, no, I’m leaving,” he said, noting that the new government was still a Communist one. “ I knew nothing good would come out of it.”

He subsequently spent a month in Italy being processed by the U.S. immigration authorities before coming to the U.S. in 1990.

Petcu said he held a variety of jobs when he first arrived.

“I did everything,” he said, citing breaking asphalt, working at Stop & Shop market and washing dished.

He also started upholstering furniture, a skill he had acquired in Romania.

“ I had a swing machine and fixed couches and chairs,” he said. “One day ( in 1996), a guy comes to me and says, I have an old car, can you do the upholstery?”

He said he had always loved cars and thus the transition into working on collector-car upholstery was a natural fit.

Petcu shares his workshop with another artisan, Brian Sullivan of P&S Upholstery. Sullivan left the corporate life with Merrill Lynch to focus on upholstering, a skill that runs in the family as he said he learned it from his brother who has a shop in East Providence, RI.

Indeed, another Bobby, helped him refurbish the upholstery of a dark blue 1964 Iso Rivolta, a car with an Italian body with a Corvette engine.

He said he had spent some 70 hours re-creating the Rivolta’s dashboard, floor, door panels and seats, noting the work had been eased by the fact that the car was delivered from a paint shop without doors or windows.

“ Restoration is a sequence of events,” he said.

Two years ago, Petcu and his wife Shirley Page, who is Brian and Bobby Sullivan’s sister,

Bought a condo in Tagliolo, Italy, where they spend half the year.

He has established an upholstery business, Autoappezzeria di Nick, but he said he has yet to fully exploit his Italian business.

“ People were concerned that I was leaving,” he said of his American customers.

For more information, check out:  www.nicksupholstery.net

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