A BANK has awarded a contract to a Beaconsfield art gallery to restore and reframe some of its most valuable paintings.

Coutts & Co, bankers for the Queen, commissioned the Warwick Gallery in Holtspur Parade to carry out the work after a representative from the bank saw other work the gallery had carried out for an interior design company.

Owner Simon Edwards said he was delighted to have been asked to carry out the prestigious contract.

He added: "Last November I had a meeting with Coutts who then asked me to make a prototype frame.

"I took it up to their head office in The Strand and they said it was fantastic."

The gallery has already finished working on 12 paintings in the Bishopsgate branch of the bank and is beginning to reframe and restore the pictures in Fleet Street.

The contract to carry out the work should last until the end of the year and will involve Warwick Gallery carrying out work in most of the bank's main branches.

Much of the work is carried out in a workshop in Beaconsfield by Simon himself, although there is another workman who cleans the pictures a process that can take up to 18 weeks.

Such prestigious projects are not new for the Warwick Gallery which has carried out work for the BBC, hung paintings at Lords cricket ground and is the official supplier of pictures for BMW.