Faux Artist Richard Robledo

For most of us, a faux artist is someone your hire to give the wall in your newly decorated library, the warm patina of an Italian villa - or maybe a set decorators resource for turning hollow columns into marble. 

That's NOT what we're talking about here.

 Richard Robledo is one of a very small hand-full of artists in the world who has been producing (and reproducing) finishes on Business Jets and VVIP personal aircraft his entire professional career - spanning more than 27 years.

 It may seem that at this lofty technological precipice, such hand-work is no longer viable. But the reality is, machine technologies currently available, while viable in certain lower end applications, still fall way short of what Robledo and others like him, can accomplish.

 To underscore this, I will recall a former client on a Gulfstream 650. In the final trimester of completion in Long Beach, the customer decided he wanted a star-chart of inlaid nickel onto the rosewood veneer surface at the main entry. There was literally no way to have such a delicate and intricate inlay accomplished in anywhere near the time Gulfstream needed to meet delivery.

 That is until we reached out to Mr. Robledo. Gulfstream sent him a finished panel of the wood and a sample of the nickel. Using a mylar material called A-Look that mimics the nickel, Robledo covered the panel, used a 2-D plotter to have a friskit of the star-chart made - and then reproduced the rosewood on top, including the final clearcoats.

 The entire effort was accomplished in 21 days, and here's the kicker. The customer literally did not believe it wasn't his rosewood veneer. We had to offer proof by demonstrating how it was accomplished. Rather needles to say, Gulfstream's personnel were equally astonished.

The name Robledo is well known by most completion centers, both in the US and Europe but perhaps less so by some top designers. His talents have been brought to bear on a wide gambit of complex applications, where organic materials simply weren't practical or were not possible altogether. Robledo's array of recreated fauxs range from organic stones, such as marbles, granites, malachite, Lapis and even Mother of Pearl (considered nearly impossible to mimic accurately). And of course, natural woods - virtually any varietal under the sun, including fiddle-backs, burls etc.

Additionally, Robledo is quite well known for creating proprietary finishes for end-users or the designers that represent them. These finishes can loosely represent an organic material OR something born entirely from the artist's mind in collaboration with the designer or end-customer.

 To learn more about Robledo Finishes

visit robledo@freshbook  

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