The University of Glasgow
Research Network for Textile Conservation, Dress and Textile History
and Technical Art History.
December 6-7, 2012
Clarification: we welcome papers and posters on any aspect of
authenticity and replication. The paper or poster does not have to
be on the topic of textiles.
We look forward to welcoming you to the conference. Booking details
will be available in early 2012. The call for papers can also be
found, along with more information about the Research Network, at
http://tinyurl.com/3t3typr
Frances Lennard
Senior Lecturer, Textile Conservation
+44 141 330 7607/4097
Fax: +44 141 330 3513
Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History
School of Culture and Creative Arts
University of Glasgow
8 University Gardens
Glasgow G12 8QH
United Kingdom
10th Interim Meeting of the ICOM-CC Leather and Related Materials Working Group
Offenbach, Germany
29-31 August 2012
The 10th Interim Meeting of the ICOM-CC Leather and Related
Materials Working Group will be held in Offenbach, Germany. The
Deutsches Ledermuseum Schuhmuseum last welcomed our group in 1989.
It is a new opportunity to see the collections and the new
exhibition rooms. There will also be an opening (together with the
reception on Aug 29, 2012 of a small exhibition at the DLM: “Leather
Conservation” (Aug 29, 2012 – Jan 12, 2013)
The 2 day conference (plus 1 day excursion) shall provide a forum
for leather conservators to discuss issues and challenges of
interest to the field of leather conservation in general, ranging
from rawhide and semi-tanned skins to leathers, including wall
hangings, upholstery, bookbindings, ethnographic art, archaeological
artefacts, etc.
This meeting will focus on presenting an overview of the current
state of research, practice and progress in the field of
conservation and restoration of leather and related materials.
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should include the title,
authors’ names, profession, institution, e-mail and address of the
corresponding author. They should be submitted to the Working Group
Coordinator, Celine Bonnot-Diconne, by March 16, 2012. Preference
will be given to ICOM members.
Papers may be presented in either English or French. No simultaneous
translation shall be provided. We kindly request all submissions be
proof-read by a native English or French speaker
Coordinator: cbonnotdiconne [at] aol__com
Celine Bonnot-Diconne
Coordinator ICOM-CC Leather and Related Materials Working Group
Pensionnaire a la Villa Medicis
Academie de France a Rome
Villa Medici
Viale Trinita dei Monti 1
00187 Roma, Italia
Image 1: Object conservator Amy Byrne used a mixture of ethanol and water to lightly remove centuries of grime and debris from the exposed wax bodies of each figure. Once cleaned, tool marks used to further shape and sculpt the wax were visible for the first time. Cleaning and examination of the leg revealed Fraunces’ application of a darker resin to adhere and strengthen the joint between the hollow leg to the figure’s torso. Image courtesy Tudor Place Historic House & Garden, Washington D.C.
[WASHINGTON, DC] Conservation began in October 2011 on a rare work of wax, seashells, silk, printed papers, and exotic wood created for Martha and George Washington in the early 1780s by Samuel Fraunces, owner of New York’s legendary Queen Charlotte’s Head Tavern, known today as Fraunces Tavern. Fraunces was an ambitious entrepreneur and served as steward of the Washingtons’ presidential household in Philadelphia.
Conservators, curators, and art handlers will meticulously crate the rare and intricate tableau for transport from its home at Tudor Place Historic House and Garden to the studio of a waxworks conservator. The $37,400 restoration, funded by The Richard C. von Hess Foundation of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, will take conservation specialists two years to complete. The conservation project will entail light cleaning of the all the materials in the tableau. The delicate original figures will be removed from the case and preserved for future study, while exact reproductions of the figures and their elegant costumes will be installed in the tableau when it is returned for exhibition.
“Without this conservation, it would soon have been too late to save the tableau,” said Tudor Place Executive Director Leslie Buhler. After 230 years of fluctuating temperatures and humidity, some rough handling during the Civil War, and a 20th-century home-repair effort, it suffered irreparable deterioration.”
The intricate tableau depicts a famous classical scene almost certainly chosen to reflect the first president’s long years of service in the Revolutionary War: the parting of the Trojan warrior, Hector, from his wife, Andromache, and their infant son, Astyanax.
Image 2: The upper torso of the infant Astyanax body was cast from a mold while the finer details of his face, nose, and mouth were shaped by hand. Damage to the proper right arm revealed the hollow interior of the body, made from beeswax. Image courtesy Tudor Place Historic House & Garden, Washington D.C.
“It stands out not just for its famous provenance and association with historic events, but for its construction and materials, its figures’ elaborate silk costumes, and its connection to 18th-century theater, literature, and entertainment,” noted Tudor Place Curator Erin Kuykendall. Fraunces crafted the gift for Mrs. Washington and presented it to her husband in 1783 at the general’s formal farewell to his Revolutionary War officers. It took 15 months of transport by ship and carriage for the piece to safely reach Mount Vernon.
Fraunces dressed his figures in elaborate 18th-century silk costumes embellished with silver threads. Hector, Andromache, the nursemaid and Astyanax, are set in front of an elaborate grotto; an architectural temple portico, domestic animals and large flowers made from wax, shells, fabrics, mica, and paper fill the case and frame the theatrical scene. All are housed in the original hand-built box of pine with mahogany veneers and glass panes on the front and sides. Fraunces dressed his figures in embroidered silk and gold thread. Here, Hector’s elaborate tunic.
Also noteworthy is that the Tudor Place piece is the only waxwork known to have been made by a man. Crafting miniature wax figures and dressing them in contemporary costume was a popular ladies’ pastime in 18th-century England and France and the American colonies. Fraunces’ interest in the material is also evident from the life-sized wax figures he exhibited at his popular Vaux-Hall Gardens, a fashionable pleasure garden along the Hudson River.
Image 4: Using a soft brush to dislodge debris, textile conservator Jennifer Zemanek removes surface particles and dust with a HEPA-filter vacuum from Hector’s plush hat. Zemanek observed the use of plain-weave linens, silk damasks, and at least eight different kinds of linen and metallic laces in the construction of Fraunces’ finely detailed costumes. Image courtesy Tudor Place Historic House & Garden, Washington D.C.Image 3: After the head of each figure was cast, a separate application of colored wax was applied to create the hair. Damage to the reverse of Hector’s head revealed the flesh-toned wax below the brown wax, and tool marks indicate the hair was further worked once in place on the figure. Hector’s braided queue is constructed from twine dipped in wax. Image courtesy Tudor Place Historic House & Garden, Washington D.C.
At Mount Vernon, the Washingtons placed the scene in their bed chamber atop a chest-on-chest that, like the waxwork, came to Tudor Place after Martha Washington’s death. Fraunces’s only failing as a servant, according to an account by Martha Washington’s grandson George Washington Parke Custis, was being too “ambitious, fond of display, and regardless of expense”-traits clearly reflected in this ornate grotto-work he created for the family he adulated.
Tudor Place Historic House and Garden, a National Historic Landmark in Georgetown’s Historic District, is a house museum distinguished for its neoclassical architecture, decorative arts collection and 5.5-acre garden. Built in 1816, it was home to Thomas Peter and his wife, Martha Custis Peter, granddaughter of Martha Washington, and housed six generations of the Peter family over the course of 180 years. Open to the public since 1988, the historic home is one of our nation’s historic gems.
“I can tell you where almost every monument is. There’s over 200. It’s kind of all in my head, but we also have a database. It includes all of the structures, both monuments and architectural features, buildings — anything that’s a built feature. That gets reviewed every five or six years to determine the condition of something. And if we find that the condition is fair, that becomes a priority to work on it to make it good…”
A while back, the names of the new ECPN committee officers were announced on the blog. Now, we thought you might like to know a little more about them:
Molly Gleeson, Chair
Molly Gleeson completed her BA in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware in 2002 and her MA from the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials in 2008. She is now living and working in San Diego, CA, devoting part of her time to assist on a joint research project between UCLA and the Getty Conservation Institute, focused on Native California featherwork. In addition to her recent election to the ECPN committee, she also serves as a Member-at-Large on the board of the Western Association for Art Conservation (WAAC).
Eliza Spaulding (Vice Chair)
Eliza Spaulding is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Paper Conservation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2010, she graduated from the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University with an Advanced Certificate in Conservation and a Master’s Degree in Art History. In addition to working with ECPN, she also is involved in establishing the Philadelphia Area Conservation Association, a regional network for preservation and conservation professionals in the greater Philadelphia area.
Anisha Gupta, co-Outreach Coordinator
Anisha is an undergraduate senior majoring in Art History and Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art as a conservation intern and currently works at the Oak Street Library Facility doing book and paper conservation. She graduates in May 2012 and hopes to have a conservation internship for a year and then apply to graduate school.
Megan Salazar-Walsh (co-Outreach Coordinator)
Megan was born and grew up in southern Spain. In 2007 she received a BA in Art History from Whitman College.She interned with several conservators in private practice in Seattle, WA and in Seville, Spain. She also volunteered at the Seattle Art Museum, working with the conservation department on objects, paintings and outdoor sculpture. Last summer she was an intern at the Shelburne Museum, VT. She is currently a first year student at Buffalo State College.
Amy Brost, Communications Coordinator
Amy is a pre-program intern at The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary (paper), Wilson Conservation, LLC (objects) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (photographs) as well as a chemistry student at New York City College of Technology.Over the summer, she worked for the Research Foundation at CUNY, assisting chemistry faculty with research pertaining to the development of solid oxide fuel cells.She came to conservation after 10 years working in advertising and communications.She has a BA in Art History and a BS in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Carrie Roberts (Professional Education and Training)
Carrie is a recent graduate of the Winterthur / University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, where she majored in objects conservation with a preventive minor. Her areas of interest include the conservation of stone and archaeological materials, and the impact of environments on the stability of art objects. She has interned at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, English Heritage, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Kaman-Kalehoyuk archaeological excavation in Turkey. She currently works as a Samuel H. Kress Conservation Fellow at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan.
Amber Kerr-Allison, who has been serving as co-Professional Education & Training, is a Paintings Conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Lunder Conservation Center. She will complete her ECPN term in December. She has made a great contribution to growing ECPN over the past four years.The committee is deeply grateful for her sustained commitment to ECPN.
We are holding our committee calls on the third Monday of each month at 1 pm ET.The call-in information is on the ECPN page of the AIC website.Any member of ECPN is welcome to join those calls.Alternatively, keep up with our activities through the minutes from our calls that are posted to the blog each month, and feel free to reach out to any of us with your ideas and feedback.
Amber Kerr-Allison (co-Professional Education and Training)
Caroline Roberts (co-Professional Education and Training)
Rachael Perkins Arenstein (AIC e-Editor)
Rebecca Rushfield (ETC Liaison)
1. Basecamp orientation and training (Rachael) – Rachael conducted training on Basecamp and did an overview of the basic features.
a. General notes – Everyone controls their own username and password, not Ryan or Rachael. In order to change this information or your email address, go to account information settings. If you use Basecamp for projects outside of ECPN, you should have only one login username and password but have access to all your different groups through one account.
b. Uploading Files — You can upload different versions of the same file to Basecamp. These versions will appear as different files and be nested on top of each other. You can email people to alert them that you have uploaded a file. Other people can edit files and their versions will appear as separate versions of the file. If more than one person is editing a file, both of their versions will appear as two separate documents.
c. Writeboards —This is a useful tool when a project is in its early stages and formatting is not crucial. The Writeboard can be used to compare different versions of an idea and keep it all in one place. More than one person can edit the Writeboard simultaneously. Rachael suggested that this was a good place to put the meeting minutes so anyone can go in and add to the minutes.
d. Messages —A good place to brainstorm ideas and also archive ideas so people within ECPN in later years can come back and see our ideas. Files can also be attached to the message. These files can be found in the file list under that particular project. Important note: the author of the message can include anyone on the message, but if other people want to be added onto the thread later, only the author can add more people to the recipient list.
e. Calendars —Basecamp calendar can be synced with iCalendar (Apple calendars). Two different types of things can be created on the calendar: events and milestones. An event is of short-duration and had a set beginning and end time. Our monthly conference calls would be examples of events. A milestone is a bigger project that requires different tasks leading up to the milestone that need to be accomplished. A milestone can be assigned to the whole group or just one person; multiple people cannot be assigned with a milestone.
f. To-Dos—To-Do lists can be created to organize projects. A full description can be given for what the to-list pertains to. To-Dos can be added to milestones. One can comment on a To-Do list and have multiple To-Do lists going at once.
2. Minutes – 13 October 2011 meeting minutes were approved (Molly)—Molly suggested that we start putting the agenda on the Writeboard for everyone to look over before the next meeting.
3. Student Research Database (Carrie and Amber)—Carrie and Amber have been working on creating an online platform for student work to be accessed. Right now, they are trying to gauge interest in this project from graduate schools. They are still discussing whether it will be a database or website. When talking to contacts at the graduate schools, some issues were raised, such as how it would be supported financially and who would contribute the up-front costs. In order to gauge interest, they have put together a questionnaire of what they would like to ask grad school programs. This document has been uploaded to Basecamp. They plan that the responses to this survey will inform a budget and a second proposal. Reaching out to Abby Aldrich was also discussed because she expressed interest in getting involved. She can help with the continuation of the project when Amber steps down.
4. Allied Professionals List (Eliza)—The list of Allied Professionals is being updated and expanded and is currently on Basecamp. The pre-existing list on AIC was checked and updated. Carrie and Amber are getting together more organizations we can call our allies and those have been added to the Writeboard. Eliza said some doubts had come up about some of the organizations. She will send out an email with further details.
5. Outreach Coordinators’ Questions (Anisha)—Anisha asked about how we would like to proceed with forum calls. Molly suggested putting ideas about the subject of future forum calls on Basecamp. Anisha also asked about moving to the AIC blog. Ryan said we can move whenever we want to. ECPN will get authors’ privileges and will post on the blog with the tag “Emerging Conservator.” When we want to move is something that the group needs to discuss more. When we decide when to move, Rachael Perkins Arenstein can give us all a tutorial about using the new blog. In general, Ryan does not need to be informed of blog ideas but it may be a good idea to run administrative issues by him. Stephanie would like to be cc’d on emails about blog ideas and posts.
6. Email Blasts (Molly)—Ryan said it would not be wise to do email blasts too frequently so people are not annoyed by too many emails. He can do email blasts before forum calls or if we would like to really advertise a particular initiative. For most other things, continue advertising through the blog or Facebook page.
The next meeting was confirmed to be on Monday, November 21 at 1pm EST.
Please remember that if you would like to nominate a colleague for an AIC award,the deadline is December 15, 2011.Every year, AIC gives out seven different awards to exemplary conservators and other professionals for outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field of conservation, in addition to two awards for organizations that have shown a strong commitment to conservation. AIC members nominate the candidates for each award, and the winners are selected by the AIC Awards Committee. The Awards are:
Robert L. Feller Lifetime Achievement Award for exceptional contributions to the conservation profession over the course of one’s career
Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award for excellence in the education and training of conservation professionals
Rutherford John Gettens Merit Award for outstanding service to the American Institute for Conservation
Honorary Membership for outstanding contributions to the field of conservation
Conservation Advocacy Award for accomplishments and contributions of conservation professionals who, through substantial efforts in outreach and advocacy, have advanced the field of conservation
AIC Publications Award for excellence in an article, e-publication, or book on conservation
Special Recognition for Allied Professionals for contributions by professionals in other fields in the advancement of the conservation profession
AIC/Heritage Preservation Ross Merrill Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Preservation and Care of Collectionsfor organizations that have been exemplary in the importance and priority they have given to conservation concerns and in the commitment they have shown to the preservation and care of their cultural property
Distinguished Award for Advancement of the Field of Conservation for institutions for vital and long-standing support of professional development activities of conservators
AIC awards are truly special and meaningful to their recipients, especially because they represent peer recognition and distinction. Please take a few minutes to let us know about the colleagues and institutions that deserve recognition for making significant contributions to our field. For more information and application forms, please visit AIC’s website.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is scheduled to consider a transportation reauthorization bill, the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21),” that would eliminate the current authorization category specifically dedicated to supporting transportation museums within the Transportation Enhancements (TE) program.
“Targeting transportation museums in this way represents a fundamental misunderstanding about the role that museums play in our communities,” said AAM President Ford W. Bell. “This is a misguided effort, especially if the goal of the legislation is to increase states’ flexibility in administering TE funds.”
Since 1992, the Transportation Enhancements Program has provided more than $110 million to support programs in transportation-related museums, and has allowed states and communities to rehabilitate bridges and tunnels, restore historic structures and revitalize local historic districts.
The Committee is scheduled to take up the bill for consideration on November 9 and AAM is continuing to monitor ongoing developments.
Please consider taking 5 minutes to send an email to your Senators today. You can use the email generating tool on the AAM website.
The frescoes in the Church of Santos Juanes in Valencia, Spain, have been damaged by fire (the Spanish Civil War), glue (botched restoration attempts in the ’60s), and salt blooms (a side effect of pigeon nests). But the 17th-century masterpieces aren’t lost yet. The Polytechnic University of Valencia’s Institute of Heritage Restoration and Centre for Advanced Food Microbiology have joined forces to rejuvenate the priceless works. Tool of choice: bacteria.
The idea is to use the harmless Pseudomonas stutzeri microorganism to clean the works in lieu of toxic chemicals or the jittery hands of restorers. “We grow the bacteria in a culture that has the substrate we want to eliminate,” says Pilar Bosch, a biologist who helped refine the method after studying with the team that cleaned Italy’s Campo Santo di Pisa (neighbor of the Leaning Tower). Effectively trained to eat salt and glue, the bacteria are brushed onto the frescoes and covered with a gel that, when heated with lights, creates humid conditions (perfect for nibbling) and aids cleanup. Just 90 minutes later, the surface is rinsed with water and dried, killing the bacteria. For the Pseudomonas, every masterpiece is the Last Supper.
Bosch and her colleagues have restored a third of Santos Juanes’ frescoes so far. When that’s done, they’ll team with startup Restaura BioTech to explore what other surfaces can be scrubbed by these hungry little technicians. They plan to offer their services to private clients, too—bacteria car wash, anyone?
