Isabel Schneider, Kate Wight Tyler, and Angela Leersnyder
Abstract
The treatment of a novel material often necessitates novel approaches, as illustrated by the recent treatment of a a chair crafted from proprietary plastics in the 1970s at the Brooklyn Museum. Along with 35 other Italian Radical design works, the Brooklyn Museum was gifted an early Capitello model in 2023, BkM 2023.76.7. Capitello is a chaise lounge designed in the form of a half-buried ionic capital that evokes neo-classical and pop design aesthetics. Studio 65, an avant-garde experimental collective founded in Turin Italy by Franco Audrito and Piero Gatti that evolved into an architecture studio, designed Capitello to showcase their new plastic material “dacron” in the 1971 DuPont Competition. The original prototypes were made of soft polyurethane ether polymers and coated in a proprietary coating trademarked Guflac®.The chair was formally manufactured a year later by Gufram, a pioneering Italian furniture brand. The praise the chair earned in Turin’s Eurodomus expo that year inspired Studio 65 to push the project further with the Attica modular furniture series. The series’ radical humor (their marketing slogan was “to sit on the past”) and resistance against traditional functionality made it an “iconic” work that has been continuously manufactured and collected for over a century and inspired generations of pop artists, architects, and designers.
The work seems increasingly like a degraded relic than merely an evocation of one. The coating on this early model is darkening, embrittling, and cracking, and there are large areas of coating loss. In the areas where the coating has been lost and the foam is exposed to light, the underlying polyurethane foam is in significantly worse condition than areas where the coating is intact, suggesting the coating likely protected the foam from photooxidation degradation previously. FTIR testing of the foam and coating will help determine compatibility of various consolidants. Consolidants will also contain UV-blocking agents to ensure long-term stability.
After cleaning and surface consolidation, the losses of the underlying foam and the surface coating will be filled with novel foams created from compatible materials using the “double syringe” technique. Various materials are being tested to create both foams that can fill the losses of the internal foam and those capable of emulating the “skin” of the exterior surface coating, including cellulose ethers, biomaterial composites, and blends of cellulose ethers and acrylate copolymers. The materials tested have all been well-researched as conservation materials in other capacities (i.e. not foams), although this application method will be novel. This treatment will serve not only aesthetic treatment objectives but also add an additional layer of protection for the original materials against light and UV radiation. They will have different solubility sensitivities than the original materials, making them distinguishable and reversible in the future. Developing more sustainable toolkits for conservators aligns with the Brooklyn Museum’s values and mission, and most of the materials being explored are made of low-cost renewable materials. In addition to discussing the materials chosen for this work, this talk will also explore other foam materials explored, hopefully inspiring future explorations.