Category: Wooden Artifacts Conservation

“Recent Investigations into a Mechanical-Chemical Method for Removing Corrosion from Furniture Brass” Delivered by Delphine Elie-Lefebvre and Mark Anderson, paper by Delphine Elie-Lefebvre, Richard Wolbers, Elena Torok, Mark Anderson & Stephanie Auffret

OK, I have to admit that part way into this talk I rather regretted putting my name in to blog about it. It had a lot of information and a lot of chemistry in a short amount of time, and I couldn’t hear the speakers very well. I recommend looking into a future article I hope the authors will publish with their fascinating experiments and findings.

The talk was the story of “observation, discovery and reverse-engineering” to evaluate new methods to clean brass furniture mounts on wood substrates. Brass is often damaged from commercial products and overcleaning with abrasives. The authors came up with and tested protein glues made into peel-off gels to remove corrosion, cleaning products and grime from brass. They tested different types of glues and gelatins at different pH, applied with Japanese paper and peeled off after 20 minutes. Then vinyl erasers were used afterwards to further reduce corrosion.

Through their discussion of the analysis they carried out, which threw me back to first year of graduate school and made my heart race from nerves, they suggested that some of the components of corrosion (which were removed from the alloy at different rates) bound with the amino acid components in the protein glue. The physical removal of the glue by pulling produced an even appearance on the brass and this suggested that chemical cleaning was part of the effectiveness of the treatment. Further cleaning with the erasers was made easier by the first part of the treatment.

Copper-alloy coupons were used to test different glues at various pH along with controls. The authors hope to carry out more tests to come up with analytical results that show more definite differences between coupons. These methods, however, have a lot of potential for furniture and objects conservation. It looks like it must take some practice, and there are a lot of variables to test, but for a big cleaning project, this is one to put in your treatment repertoire.

“Hello Walls Revisited: Conservation Treatment of Eighteenth Century Chinese Lacquer Panels at The Elms –An Update”
Talk given by Jeff Moore, Chief Conservator, The Preservation Society of Newport County

Jeff Moore gave a fascinating talk about the conservation project at The Elms to treat three Asian lacquered and one European japanned panels in one room of the mansion in Newport, installed in 1900. The panels have had a long history between their pre-twentieth-century beginnings. They have traveled the world to arrive in Rhode Island, suffered degradation from light, had detached lacquer nailed down (what a sight!), had Western varnishes applied, and suffered degradation anew. Even Urushi repairs were added around the time of the 1900 installation.

The target conservation philosophy was to restore the panels to their 1900 state. A variety of analyses were performed before treatment. More information is available on the website: http://www.newportmansions.org/learn/scholarly-papers

A complicated rigging system was designed and implemented to de-install the panels from the walls, the panels were faced, and sleeved cushions were put on the corners for removal and moving to the basement of The Elms. The climate conditions of the original room at different seasons were mimicked during conservation.

Hide glue was selected to adhere the lifting flakes, and moisture and heat were applied to manipulate the lacquer.

One of the challenges of the project was that the panels were 83 inches across, therefore clamping tables with beams spanning the panels were built and the panels laid horizontally. Several shimbari materials were tested, and Moore and his team came up with an ingenious tool: modified quick-grip clamps turned into spreader jacks with a compression spring. Another clever tip: They used copper tubes to surround the syringes in hot water to keep them warm. I confess I’m not sure how this helped, but some polyvinyl alcohol was added to the glue to help it travel further.

Varnish was removed due its jarring blanched appearance. A Pemulen gel with a mixture of solvents (I missed which ones!) were used to remove some of the gel, and was cleared with water at pH 8.5.

Moore’s public outreach is truly impressive. The treatment is part of the “behind-the-scenes” tour at the house museum, and a whopping 10,000 people visit each year. I highly recommend you try to get there before it’s over.

It is not unusual to find extraordinary examples of the carver and gilder’s art surrounding important paintings in collections all over the world. And while the provenance, subject, and materials of the paintings have been considered by curators, art historians, and conservators, equal attention has not always accorded to the work of art surrounding the painting, and so I was delighted there were two papers considering picture frames in this session.

In this paper, Cynthia Moyer, the first designated picture frame conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, shared her investigation of a French Régence frame, dated approximately 1720, which frames Atalanta and Meleagar by Peter Paul Rubens,c. 1616. Both painting and frame had been in storage for over 40 years as a result of their poor condition. As the painting was conserved, Cynthia studied the frame from a technical point of view, stabilized its damaged ornament, and repaired and compensated losses.

She observed that the frame had originally had a landscape orientation rather than its present portrait orientation based on the nature and position of the carvings, and suggests that it may have been a royal commission based on the quality of the ornament. As would be typical of the guild system in which such a frame would have been made, the frame was unsigned and its construction is typical of the period. Cynthia described the stylistic characteristics of frames of the period to help place where the ornament is situated within. The frame’s sight edge had been modified to accommodate the painting and had an added build-up on the back which obscured any marks that might have been found there.

Radiographs were taken to understand how the carving was applied. Although the resulting image was difficult to read, they did confirm that the frame had been enlarged along the sides. Cross sections of the gilding layers were examined under the microscope and using scanning electron microscopy. Microscopy revealed a simple glue layer over the water gilding. No toning was evident in the sections examined. Hematite and carbon black were identified in the bole layers in SEM, and the gold leaf was found to contain less than 1% each of silver and copper.

After describing the conservation treatment undertaken on the frame, Cynthia went on to consider how this frame, which most likely related to architectural moldings, came to be associated with the Rubens. The circumstances of this French Régence frame stands in contrast to the one presented in the talk given by MaryJo Lelyveld earlier in the same session, which was commissioned for the painting it contains. Although curatorial files for the Rubens record an extensive history in and out of private hands, dealers, and auction houses, Cynthia could find no images of the painting in its frame nor any descriptions. There were many opportunities to reframe the painting over its lifetime, and it was not unusual for frames to be replaced and thrown away on the whim of a collector. It remains unclear where this frame came from and when or how it came to be associated with the Rubens.

Museum docents report that visitors are often curious about frames on paintings. A study of frames helps flesh out the story of the people who owned the paintings and how they lived. Important frames, their history and the manner in which they were constructed need to be published more often so that their context can be better understood as well as any underlying messages that may be communicated when a painting is reframed.

Carey Howlett suggested that the title of last year’s meeting “Ethos, Logos, Pathos: Ethical Practice and Critical Thinking in Conservation” evoked the first two of Aristotle’s principles, ethos and logos, but the last of these, pathos, fit more comfortably in this year’s topic, Outreach and Advocacy. Pathos is rhetoric that targets emotion, and while emotional appeals may not fit easily with a professional presentation of what we do, conservators do need to create messages that appeal to the emotions of the general public. Drawing from case studies from his career, Carey indicated that too often we focus too strongly on environmental and condition issues in a manner that are emotionally neutral or negative and disconnected from context that conveys why others should care about saving cultural property.

Suggested solutions included sharing the excitement of discovery that comes as a result of examination and technical analysis in a summary in treatment reports provided to stakeholders. Carey illustrated this with his investigation of the painted surfaces on Fouquet’s 1:60 scale plaster model of the Virginia capitol, commissioned in 1787 by Thomas Jefferson.

“Cheap tricks” like repackaging presentation titles to reference popular culture can also provide a hook. The example he gave was retitling a talk he had given to conservators “Conserving the Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom” as “Extreme Makeover: the Boudoir Edition” for a general audience. The point – to utilize irreverence as a means of engaging- was also brought out Rosa Lowinger’s presentation in the Communicating Conservation session in talking about her posts entitled “Ask the Art Nurse” on the blog C-monster.net and James Jankowski’s suggestion that we all learn to be more “bilingual” when talking about what we do in his presentation during the Articulating Value session.

Further tying this presentation to the one he offered last year, Carey urged us to publish more often, especially in arenas outside of our own, to make our efforts more widely known and understood.

I’ve been following MaryJo Lelyveld’s work with interest for while now. In addition to working a conservator of frames and furniture at the National Gallery of Victoria, she is pursuing a Masters of Management (Strategic Foresight) at Swinbourne University. Based on one of her articles, I’ve added Plextol B500 in my arsenal of options for adhesives I use for replacement gilding, and I’ve told more than a few people about her work looking at possible scenarios for the future of the conservation profession.

In this talk, MaryJo applied a framework called Integral Theory to help navigate the various ways help articulate object values and understand our audience’s perspective on our work, using her work on a carved and gilded French frame made in 1710 for The Crossing of the Red Sea by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1634. [A  short tirade digression: Note that in this ArtDaily.org article celebrating the restoration of the painting and frame which even quotes MaryJo about her work, the frame was not included in the image. There is an image of the framed painting on the National Gallery of Victoria’s homepage.]

Integral Theory, as developed by Ken Wilber, uses a 4 block grid system, similar to the one Barbara Appelbaum uses for her Characterization Grid which maps various values as they apply to artifacts to assist in developing proposals for conservation treatment, and likewise provides a systematic overview of a complex practice. In MaryJo’s rendering of Wilber’s grid for conservation practice, each quadrant relates to a particular viewpoint, the personal, the physical, the cultural, and social as they relate to the conservator, the artifact, and the audience. The graphic nature of the grid, I think, is really important in explaining this as applied to conservation, and without one of her examples I’m afraid I won’t be able to explain it well here. I look forward to seeing her work on this topic published.

She pointed out that each single quadrant only provides a single perspective, a partial truth. By navigating the viewpoints, the grid enhances a conservator’s ability to combine these partial truths to gain a fuller understanding of the object and its place in society and explain its importance and why it might merit conservation treatment.