Author: Paola Lucero

Restoration project for ancient tiles from Teatro Colón at Argentine by Alicia Fernández Boan.

Historical considerations were of great importance for this restoration project and therefore the first part of the talk of Mrs. Alicia focused on them.

I found really interesting the account on the techniques that were behind the production of tiles. For this restoration work Mrs Fernández performed a very interesting research on XIXth century historical formulas for ceramic materials.

In a first stage of her research Mrs. Fernández studied original tiles which revealed to be composed of  56% quartz and 40% (mullite) porcelanite.

Mullite paper on original tiles was clear as it is a material that increases mechanical strength, thermal shock resistance and lows water absorption.

This research conducted the team to import stoke paste onTrent,UK. Original encaustic impression of tiles was substituted by a modern method of screen printing “enamel”, this was because of elevated cost, and long production time of the original techniques.

Coloration of tiles was produced with copper, cobalt and iron. Nevertheless this custom material is remarkable because of its physical properties while keeping aesthetical characteristics of the original tiles. At this point of the talk Mrs. Fernández distributed among the participants at her talk, some samples of this material. I highly appreciated this gesture, as it allowed us to have first hand information about material properties.

What astonished me the most was the performance of Mrs. Boan team work: in only a few months they were able to reproduce XIXth century techniques for ceramic production,  then they were able to mixing them with modern imprinting techniques to produce a custom material,  wich lead to a fast and great restoration job.

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting – Conservation works at the Templo Pintado de Pachacamac, Gianella Pacheco Neyra, Museo de Sitio de Pachacamac

This talk presented how the works of restoration and conservation in the Inca, 1000 years old Temple of Pachacamac were conducted. The importance of this temple relies in the fact that is the only temple with painted designs in its walls besides the fact that it was one out of the two oracles in Inca times.

The main guidelines for this project were 2: maximum research and minimum intervention.

Research stage focused on several aspects:

  • The record of the structure of the building
  • The recuperation of partially erased designs from the mural paintings, as well as a research of the painting instruments that were used for the elaboration of these murals.
  • The analysis and identification of most of the pigments
  • An stratigraphic analysis
  • The record of environmental conditions and
  • The evaluation of the materials previously used in conservation treatments

Regarding the interventions they were focused on the conservation of:

  • The walls that were cleaned, hydrated and consolidated.
  • The paintings
  • The plaster which was consolidated with cactus gel recovering ancient Inca techniques
  • The adobe blocks which were consolidated and repositioned to its original position
  • The installation of roofing and wind breakers that are made out of Bamboo. This material was carefully chosen because of its weight to harm the less possible the structure of the temple.

What I appreciated the most of the work of Miss Pacheco is the respect of original techniques employed by Incas, which are sustainable, and that up to now had proven to be effective, and unlike to promote microorganism colonization as one might think. Her work raise some interesting questions about the green pigment used on paintings,  and its identification is still to be made. I will definitely follow up the progress of these works at the Pachacamac Inca Temple with a lot of interest.