{"id":13068,"date":"2015-06-17T15:23:14","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T20:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conservators-converse.org\/?p=13068"},"modified":"2015-06-17T15:23:14","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T20:23:14","slug":"43rd-annual-meeting-joint-session-architecture-and-wooden-artifacts-may-14-the-salon-dore-from-the-hotel-de-la-tremoille-conservation-of-the-18th-century-gilded-boiserie-by-natasa-morovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/2015\/06\/17\/43rd-annual-meeting-joint-session-architecture-and-wooden-artifacts-may-14-the-salon-dore-from-the-hotel-de-la-tremoille-conservation-of-the-18th-century-gilded-boiserie-by-natasa-morovic\/","title":{"rendered":"43rd Annual Meeting- Joint Session: Architecture and Wooden Artifacts, May 14, The Salon Dor\u00e9 from the H\u00f4tel de La Tr\u00e9moille: Conservation of the 18th Century gilded boiserie, by Natasa Morovic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natasa Morovic, Conservator of Frames and Gilded Surfaces at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF<\/a>), addressed the conference theme Practical Philosophy, or Making Conservation Work<\/em> in her presentation of the immense gilding project undertaken over 16 months in an 18th<\/sup>-century period room, the Salon Dor\u00e9, at the Legion of Honor.
\nThe Salon Dor\u00e9 was designed as a receiving room for guests in the H\u00f4tel de La Tr\u00e9moille (a family mansion) in Paris, but has since existed in six different locations and seven re-configurations. The Salon was donated to FAMSF in 1959 by the Richard Rheem family (of HVAC fame) and first displayed at the Legion of Honor in 1962.\u00a0 The room was reinstalled in 1996 as a \u2018paneled environment\u2019; that is, without its ceiling, window, doors, or floor. The original parquet floor was sold in the 1990s. Indeed, museum period rooms in this era often served as backdrops in which to display French objects and furniture not specifically related to the rooms\u2019 histories. The re-presentation of the Salon Dor\u00e9<\/a> in 2012-2014 sought to revise this approach.
\nThe Salon was returned from a rectangular to a square format based on original floor plans. A second 18th-century parquet floor, coved\u00a0ceiling, windows, furniture, and new lighting were installed. Meanwhile, Natasa\u2019s team was responsible for the conservation of the Salon\u2019s gilt white oak paneling, or boiserie<\/em>, including five dedo panels, four doors, four cornices with cast plaster ornaments, and high relief linden wood detailing.
\nTwo hundred separate sections of gilt wood were deinstalled and relocated to an adjacent gallery turned temporary conservation lab, in view of the public. Visitors were thrilled to see the work in progress, remarking \u201cyou are our favorite exhibit!\u201d \u00a0\u00a0iPad didactics introducing\u00a0the conservation treatment steps and illustrating the Salon\u2019s epic history were available in the galleries (see a preview here<\/a>\u00a0and don\u2019t miss the French accent in the Kid\u2019s Corner).
\nA dozen gilders, conservators, technicians, architects, electricians, and a master carver worked in the open lab daily. Accommodation of all the large paneling, work benches, and people within a tight space was challenging. All treatment steps had to be executed simultaneously due deadlines, with no running water and limited electrical. Gilding efforts were impacted by dust from the adjacent construction area, which quickly settled on the prepared surfaces, and\u00a0drafts that caused the gold leaf to fly.
\nThe condition of the Salon\u2019s carving and gilding was extensively compromised by the room\u2019s repeated moves, resulting in differing surface finishes as well as mold damage. Two gilding and inpainting campaigns were present: water gilding over orange-red bolle over gesso, water gilding over dark red bolle over new gesso, as well as brass powder and acrylic inpainting.
\nThe treatment objective sought to preserve as much historic surface as possible. No aqueous solutions were used during surface cleaning so as not to interrupt the water gilding. Natasa received several questions after the talk on what materials were used. Here are the particulars: shellac coatings were removed with ethanol poultices, overpaint and soiling were removed with acetone:ethanol mixtures, and paint stripper was sparingly used in tenacious areas of oxidized brass powder paint. Flaking gesso was consolidated with <25% Paraloid B-72 in acetone:ethanol. Fl\u00fcgger<\/span>\u00a0was used for small fills, over which traditional gesso and gilding was applied.
\nLarger wood fills were freshly carved, based off of existing ornaments in the room, and water-gilded so as to replace \u2018like with like\u2019 (though it is acknowledged that oil-gilding would have sped up the process). The majority of fills were gilt before attachment; however, in situ re-gilding, or in-gilding, was done where necessary to match adjacent surface conditions.
\nIn total, $22,000 of gold leaf (11,500 leaves) and 27 gallons of acetone were used during the campaign. The result is a glowing re-presentation of the Salon Dor\u00e9\u2019s opulence, reflecting – quite literally, due to the mirrors, rock-crystal chandeliers, and gleaming gilding- its importance as one of the premier\u00a0examples of French Neoclassical interior architecture in the United States.
\n(A quirky review of the Salon project\u00a0with working images can be found here<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Natasa Morovic, Conservator of Frames and Gilded Surfaces at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), addressed the conference theme Practical Philosophy, or Making Conservation Work in her presentation of the immense gilding project undertaken over 16 months in an 18th-century period room, the Salon Dor\u00e9, at the Legion of Honor. The Salon Dor\u00e9 … Continue reading “43rd Annual Meeting- Joint Session: Architecture and Wooden Artifacts, May 14, The Salon Dor\u00e9 from the H\u00f4tel de La Tr\u00e9moille: Conservation of the 18th Century gilded boiserie, by Natasa Morovic”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":12312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22,16,1,19],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-13068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annual-meeting","category-architecture","category-specialty-sessions","category-uncategorized","category-wooden-artifacts","tag-aics-43rd-annual-meeting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}