The Stories We Wear

Posted on June 13, 2021 by artifactlab

By Debra Breslin

Over the past 18 months, I completed the examination and treatment of over 200 objects for the upcoming exhibit, The Stories We Wear, which will open at the Penn Museum in September 2021. The exhibit focuses on the idea that what is worn on the body tells a narrative about time, place, and culture. Ethnographic and archaeological material from Oceania, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas will be featured. Alongside these objects will be contemporary ensembles with local connections.

One of the most interesting aspects of treating this group of artifacts is the extensive range of materials. I worked with metals such as gold and silver, fabrics made of silk or wool, organic material such as hair and teeth, and different types of wood. For an objects conservator, this was an ideal project to challenge and enrich my skills. Below are examples of the types of materials that came across my workspace in preparation for the exhibit.

SILK

Many of the objects in the exhibit that represent the various cultures of Asia are made of silk. Since silk is a fragile and light-sensitive material, these artifacts will be taken off display after a few months and replaced with similar objects to avoid over-exposure to light in the galleries.

This beautiful silk garment is part of the wardrobe of a married Khalkha Mongolian woman. The silk on the padded shoulders had become worn and thin and was torn at the highest points. These areas were covered with toned Japanese tissue. I toned the tissue with acrylic paints to match the surrounding material and slipped it under the edges of the broken fabric.

SILVER

Another example of remarkable artifacts from central Asia are these 19^th century silver hair ornaments worn by the Daur women of Inner Mongolia. These were used to adorn their elaborate hairstyles. When these pieces came to the lab, they were dark with tarnish, and it was difficult to see their details.

Hair ornaments (20452, 20447, 20453, 20455A) in the fume hood

In a museum of archaeology and anthropology, tarnish is not often removed from objects, as it is usually considered part of the historic record of the object. In this case, I talked with the curators of the exhibit and we felt it was appropriate to safely remove the tarnish and coat the silver objects to fully reveal their details.

GOLD

Many cultures around the world valued gold as a symbol of high status. One of several such objects in the exhibit is this gold diadem. The rosettes are believed to have decorated a headdress or garment of an elite Scythian woman. They were mounted on a modern rod in the 20th century. The rosettes are made of gold foil and wire.

One of the petals of the flower on the far right had broken off at some point and was stored with the object. The petal was attached on the back side with Hollytex fabric (a spunbound polyester) and B-72 (an acrylic copolymer in acetone).

OTHER ORGANIC MATERIALS

In addition to silk artifacts, other objects made of plant and animal materials will be on display, such as this weapon made by the I-Kiribati people of the Gilbert Islands. It is constructed of wood, coconut fiber, and shark teeth.

Weapon, Gilbert Islands, 19th century
2003-32-338

After cleaning the surface with soft brushes, the shark teeth were further cleaned with enzymes and deionized water. To stabilize loose cords and teeth, I added small pieces of cotton thread through the existing holes. The red circles indicate the areas of added thread.

Here is an example of what the shark teeth looked like before and after cleaning on a small dagger.

Before (top row) and after treatment (bottom row) P3157A

These are just a sample of the artifacts that will be on display in The Stories We Wear exhibit opening in September 2021. I hope visitors will appreciate the history and craftsmanship of these objects as much as I do.

Horus gets a facelift

Posted on February 26, 2019 by mollygleeson

By Anna O’Neill, Alice and Herbert Sachs Egyptian Collections Conservator

When I last wrote about transforming a stela, I wrote about removing an old coating on a small stela fragment. Well, stelae come in all shapes and sizes, and I just finished treating another one!

We just opened Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display, which highlights some of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian artifacts while our larger galleries are being renovated. This was the perfect time for some of the pieces that have always been on display to come into the conservation lab for a little bit of TLC (tender loving conservation).

This stela is a black quartzite monument for the pharaoh Qa’a, the last king of the First Dynasty in Egypt, around 2910 BCE. It is about five feet tall and shows a falcon representing the god Horus standing atop a serekh (a boxy decoration representing a palace) containing the hieroglyphs for Qa’a’s name.

The Penn Museum Qa’a stela (E6878) before treatment with old restored areas outlined in red (left) and the Cairo example (right). A letter from Penn Egyptologist Sara Yorke Stevenson to the archaeologist William Flinders Petrie in 1901 declares that the restoration “gives an idea of life”.

As you can see in the image above, the stela was heavily restored with cement in the early 1900s to make it look whole. Unfortunately, the restoration had given Horus a somewhat comical expression. With a big beak and tiny eye, he looked perpetually disappointed and definitely not stylistically appropriate for his time. Fortunately, our statue has a mirror twin in the Cairo Museum, which it would have been paired with on site in Abydos. Because the one in Cairo is mostly intact, we can use it as an example of what ours would have looked like. The head and beak are much smaller and simpler, giving Horus the look of a bird of prey. With the curators, we decided to give Horus a facelift based on the Cairo Museum example.

First, we did some digital mock-ups of how the head would look before I painted the outline directly onto the restored area. Using a Dremel rotary tool with a grinding stone attachment, I shaped Horus’s head and beak to more appropriate proportions, which was a very dusty but very satisfying process. Since we didn’t have any good examples of what the eye might have looked like (the Cairo Museum face is damaged), I filled this area using Paraloid B-72 and glass microballoons. I also sanded down the squared-off edges of the restored border so they sloped down into the background, again like the Cairo Museum stela, and smoothed some of the rougher areas of restoration.

Horus’s reconstructed head before treatment (left), with rough digital sketch (center), and during reshaping with the Dremel (right). Please note that I only reshaped what I knew was the restoration material! Conservators never make changes to original parts of objects.

Once the curators were happy with the shape of Horus’s head, it was time to move on to painting. The previous paint that covered the cement was a color that didn’t quite match any of the tones in the stone – fine for display in a dim gallery, but the stela’s new home would be more brightly lit. Finding the right color was challenging because the top fragment, which was found a few years after the bottom pieces, is a slightly darker color than the rest of the stela. I decided on a mid-tone that worked with the base color of the surrounding original stone, and then used a sponge to layer lots of highlights and darker shades to blend in with the actual artifact. I also used paint to create the optical illusion of “finishing” the bottom left corner of the serekh so that it appears complete from a distance.

The Qa’a stela after reshaping and repainting the old restoration.

You can now see the Qa’a stela and lots of other amazing Egyptian artifacts in Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display. The Artifact Lab has also reopened, and we look forward to being able to talk to everyone about the work we’re doing to prepare for all the exciting changes at the Penn Museum.

A Columnar Matter Part III: The Conservation and Installation of a 3rd Millennium BCE Mosaic Column from Al ‘Ubaid

Posted on April 19, 2018 by mollygleeson

By Marci Jefcoat Burton

As a last installment of the mosaic column from Tell al-Ubaid in Iraq, we are pleased to announce the treatment and remounting of the 4,200(+) year-old shell, pink limestone, and black shale tesserae is complete (Figure 1)! After a number of years in collection storage, the recently conserved column is now in the Middle East Gallery, and ready for visitors when the exhibit opens this Saturday, April 21, 2018. The treatment process was a dynamic collaborative project, involving a team of seven conservators to clean, repair and re-mount hundreds of triangular and diamond shaped tesserae over the span of 18 months.

Figure 1: The previous column support (left), with all tesserae deconstructed from each section. Only mounting materials, such as plaster ground and reconstructions, remain on the supports. (Right) The newly mounted tesserae on Ethafoam column supports.

The tesserae were originally mounted at the archaeological site in 1919 – 1924 on four hollow cylindrical sections made of wire mesh and burlap. The tesserae were imbedded in a thick layer of plaster, and the resulting weight on a somewhat flexible base eventually became a structural problem. In addition, each column section had a large area of plaster reconstruction to continue the mosaic design around the column. For a memory refresher of the previous condition and treatment protocol, visit our blog posts, column blog 1 and column blog 2.

After months of cleaning every tessera and adhering many fragments back together, the tesserae were mounted onto a new support made from solid Ethafoam, a chemically stable and dense foam (Figure 2). Each new column section support was reconstructed to the same measurements as the wire mesh and burlap supports. The previous use of plaster proved too rigid and heavy in the original mounting system, causing many cracks to develop in the plaster and tesserae to loosen over time. For these reasons, plaster was not used again, and the tesserae were mounted to the Ethafoam supports with an acrylic paste (Paraloid® B-72 (ethyl methacrylate (70%) and methyl acrylate (30%) copolymer) in acetone bulked with glass microspheres) toned black with dry pigments. This is lighter in weight compared to plaster, and compatible with the shell and stone materials. The black acrylic paste was made to resemble bitumen, a pine resin material used by the Mesopotamians to originally mount the tesserae to the c. 3^rd Millennium BCE column.

Figure 2: Mounting process of column section #2. The cleaned and repaired tesserae are mounted to the Ethafoam cylindrical supports with Paraloid® B-72 (ethyl methacrylate (70%) and methyl acrylate (30%) copolymer) in acetone bulked with glass microspheres and toned black with dry pigments to mimic bitumen. Spatulas were used to spread the acrylic resin on the support and tesserae were imbedded into the mixture.

All four column sections stack and connect with an internal wooden dowel system. To accommodate the large areas that were once plaster restorations, our Photo Studio printed high resolution, archival images of the tesserae, which were custom scaled and fit to each column section (Figure 3). The digital photo fills integrate a complete mosaic design to give the appearance of a fully mosaicked column (Figure 4). This is a great example of how recent technological advancements help conservators with approaches to treatment and display options.

Figure 3: (From left), Conservation Interns Tessa Young, Alyssa Rina and Jennifer Mikes installing digital photo fills to the top and bottom mosaic column sections.

Figure 4: (a): Column section #2, after remounting tesserae. The locations with previous plaster reconstructions are padded with Volara (closed-cell polyethylene foam). (b): Column section #2 after pinning archival photo fill into place over the Volara.

The mosaic column, and over 1,500 objects await your visit in the Middle East Galleries (Figure 5)! To our visitors in the Artifact Lab who witnessed our many, many hours of treating these column sections, we thank you for your brilliant questions, comments and curiosity about the tesserae and our conservation process during our Open Window Sessions. You will find the assembled column has transformed into an impressive and complete piece, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Figure 5: Bob Thurlow (Special Projects Manager) and Marci Jefcoat Burton (Conservation Curriculum Intern) installing the four mosaic column sections in the Middle Eastern Gallery.

Ancient faces in the Middle East Galleries

Posted on April 13, 2018 by mollygleeson

Our new Middle East Galleries open next week and they will feature over 1200 artifacts from our collection, including many iconic objects like the Ram in the Thicket, the Bull-headed lyre, and Queen Puabi’s headdress. Oh, and for those of you who are always asking about our cuneiform tablets, do we have a treat in store for you – there are dozens and dozens in the galleries. The majority of the objects in the exhibition were excavated by Penn archaeologists, many nearly a century ago.

ALL of these objects came through our Conservation Labs to prepare them for the galleries and many needed significant treatment in order to ensure their stability for long-term display. Our Middle East Galleries (MEG) team has worked diligently and tirelessly on this project – you can read more about some aspects of this work on the Penn Museum blog here.

The triumphant column team poses next to the 4 recently conserved mosaic column drums from Tell al-‘Ubaid, Iraq. This project took months to complete.

In just over a week, visitors to the Museum will have the opportunity to get up close and personal with these newly-conserved objects. Everyone will be drawn to the highlight pieces mentioned above and here, but the other pieces are worth lingering over too. It’s usually impossible to see them as closely as we do during the conservation treatment process, so I thought I’d give you the opportunity to see 2 small but beautiful objects closer than you can in the galleries.

B8997 (left) and B9026 (right)

These 2 female figures, both excavated from Nippur, Iraq, will be on display in the same case in the Middle East Galleries. They’re small, just several inches long. The figure on the left was likely a doll which would have had articulated arms; you can see the holes where they were once attached. Fortunately, both artifacts required very little treatment. B8997, the figure on the left, does have a large, but stable crack that did not require any treatment. Examination under the binocular microscope revealed small amounts of burial dirt on both figures which had escaped previous cleaning campaigns, so both were carefully surface cleaned to remove this soil.

Detail of B9026 before (left) and after (right) cleaning, 7.5X magnification

As I worked on these figures, I captured some images with the camera attachment on our Leica microscope. Both objects are made of bone and are delicately carved. The reverse side of the doll’s head has an unworked area that nicely shows the cancellous (or spongy) bone features.

B8997 detail of front (left) and reverse (right), 7.5X magnification

Their time in the lab was brief – they only stayed for a day or 2. But in the midst of the hustle and bustle of preparing for these galleries, it’s nice to take a moment to appreciate the details.

The Middle East Galleries open to the public on Saturday, April 21. Our department has a few loose ends to wrap up with that project (and a few loose ends on the blog – stay tuned for a last blogpost on the mosaic column treatment) but we’re already turning to our next big tasks – the renovation of our Mexico & Central America Galleries, Africa Galleries, and Egyptian Galleries.

A glimpse of upcoming changes

Posted on February 16, 2018 by mollygleeson

There are a few new objects on display in the Artifact Lab this week, which give visitors a glimpse of upcoming changes in the museum.

Newly-installed case with objects slated for the renewed Mexico & Central American Gallery

These 4 pieces were recently conserved in the Artifact Lab to prepare them for installation in our forthcoming Mexico & Central America Gallery (from left to right: a stone metate from Costa Rica 11819, two burnished ceramic jars from Mexico 31-41-34 & 87-42-1132, and a ceramic tripod vessel from Costa Rica 2013-11-1) .

You can see many other objects that will be going into that gallery, both on display in our current Mexico and Central America Gallery as well as being worked on in the Artifact Lab.

Artifacts currently being treated in the Artifact lab.

Visit our Building Transformation website to learn more about this gallery, which will look something like this:

Treatment of a Huron cigar case

Posted on May 18, 2017 by mollygleeson

To prepare this jewel of a cigar case for exhibition, lifting and detaching moose hair and splits in the birch bark had to be stabilized.

Before treatment image showing the cigar case from the side, with arrows indicating lifting and detaching moose hair (red ) and splits in the birch bark (green)

A small piece of twisted Japanese tissue paper used to replace some of the missing threads

Some of the lifting moose hair was stabilized with dabs of 5% methyl cellulose. For the lifting moose hair around the edges of the case, much of this damage was exacerbated by the missing brown thread stitches. For these areas, after re-positioning the moose hair, I recreated the missing threads with twisted Japanese tissue paper fibers, toned with acrylic paint.

The fibers were adhered in place with Lascaux 498, an acrylic emulsion.

Before (left) and after (right) treatment images, with red arrows indicating the locations of the replacement stitches

Unstable splits in the birch bark were repaired from the interior with Japanese tissue and Lascaux 498. Additional support splints made of twisted Japanese tissue fibers were added to the exterior in one place on the lid.

Before (left) and after (right) treatment images of the lid. The red arrows indicate the location of the split and the repair splints used on the exterior.

The cigar case is now on exhibit in our Native American Voices gallery. I only learned after it was installed that it dates to 1850 – much older than I realized! Its age makes it an even more remarkable piece.

The cigar case on display in the Native American Voices gallery

Back in business

Posted on April 7, 2017 by mollygleeson

Update – this post contains outdated language. We no longer use the term “mummy” and instead use “mummified human individuals” to refer to Ancient Egyptian people whose bodies were preserved for the afterlife. To read more about this decision, follow this link.

Saturday April 8th is the official reopening of the Artifact Lab, complete with a modified name and some new objects on exhibit and in the lab.

View of the Artifact Lab, ready for reopening on Saturday April 8th

The Artifact Lab: Conservation in Action looks a lot like it did before we closed in December, but as you can see from the shot above, our focus has shifted from Egyptian mummies and funerary objects to a wider range of artifacts, with a special focus on objects being prepared for installation in our Middle East Galleries next year.

This glazed clay slipper coffin from Nippur, excavated by our museum in the late 19th century, is front and center in the Artifact Lab:

The slipper coffin (B9220) on display in the Artifact Lab

It has a fascinating history, including its restoration here at the museum in the 1890s, which is noted on its catalog card as being carried out by the restorer William H. Witte. The restoration work allowed this coffin and several others to be displayed for the opening of the new museum building in 1899, where they remained on display for 40 years. We are particularly tickled that this coffin was displayed in this very same gallery where the Artifact Lab is now housed, the Baugh Pavilion.

The Baugh Pavilion, one of two galleries devoted to the museum’s Babylonian expeditions, as it appeared in 1899 with four slipper coffins on display. UPM Neg. #22428

118 years later, the slipper coffin has once again been installed in this space. It’s exhibition this time would not be possible without the extensive treatment carried out by conservator Julie Lawson in 2005. You can read more about its history and her work in her article in Expedition Magazine. For those interested in a more in-depth discussion of the conservation treatment, Julie also wrote an article that was published in the American Institute for Conservation’s Object Specialty Group Postprints, Volume 13, 2006.

There are many more stories to share about the objects and work being done and we’ll continue to write about them on our blog. In the meantime, come visit us now that we are open again! Our open window times also have changed slightly – they are now as follows:

Tuesday – Friday 11:00 – 11:30 and 1:30-2:00

Saturday – Sunday 12:00-12:30 and 3:00 – 3:30

Tawahibre, front and center

Posted on November 18, 2014 by mollygleeson

As promised, Tawahibre’s coffin lid is now on display, front and center, in the Artifact Lab.

Tawahibre’s coffin lid on display at the entrance to the Artifact Lab

Getting this Late Period painted wooden coffin lid ready for display required months of treatment to clean the surface and to stabilize the flaking paint, powdery and crumbly gesso, and loose wood components. I blogged rather extensively about the treatment – follow this link to view some of my previous posts.

Here are some treatment images that were posted on the museum’s Facebook page last week, showing details of the head/upper body before, during, and after treatment:

Come visit Tawahibre in the lab, where you can examine the coffin lid up-close, read the conservation treatment report (which includes some materials identification reports), see more before, during, and after treatment images, and discuss the treatment with the conservator during open window times.

In the Artifact Lab

Category Archives: on exhibit