Caring For Culture: Introducing Teens to Museum Conservation

By Lu Denegre

All photos by Emily Hirshorn

On June 4th, 2022, with the help of funding from the Museum Council of Greater Philadelphia, the Conservation and Learning Programs departments hosted “Caring for Culture”, a hands-on introduction to conservation for teens. We had a great time and got some good feedback, and look forward to welcoming another group of teens this year on June 3rd 2023!

(If you’re a teen in the Philly area, you can register here for this year’s workshop)

Last year, 24 students arrived at the museum for a day of activities. The workshop began with introductions and a presentation by Senior Project Conservator Molly Gleeson about the basics of museum conservation. What kind of work does it involve? Why do we do it and what can damage cultural heritage collections?  

Molly Gleeson addresses Caring For Culture Participants in Widener Auditorium, and a diagram of the Agents of Deterioration (from A Guide to Risk Management of Cultural Heritage (p. 27), ICCROM, 2016).

Next, participants were led in smaller groups on a tour of the Museum’s conservation lab spaces by Head Conservator Lynn Grant. They got to see the X-Ray room, the photo studio, prep room, and main lab. Lynn and Graduate Intern Nylah Byrd spoke about the different treatments a large wall painting, a cartonnage mask, and a stone sculpture have undergone. These objects will be included in the upcoming reinstallation of the Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries and have collectively required different types of imaging, storage mounts, cleaning, and structural and aesthetic fills. 

Lynn Grant leads a tour of the conservation lab
Nylah Byrd talks about the treatment of a cartonnage mask

For rest of the morning, the groups were led into the galleries by a member of the conservation department to do some documentation of their own. Each participant chose an object in the galleries to condition report and diagram. Condition reporting is one of the first things you learn as a conservator and is the first important step in assessing an object’s needs before starting treatment. This activity offered opportunities to look for real life examples of condition issues, agents of deterioration, preventative conservation steps, and mountmaking.

Participants observing a strategy for a large fill on an object in the Middle East Gallery
Completing condition report worksheets for an object chosen in the galleries

After a sunny lunch in the Warden Garden, participants came back in for some hands-on activities. Groups rotated between three stations: cleaning, close looking, and ceramic reassembly. These stations introduced some of the beginning skills needed by a conservator in training. 

At the cleaning station, teens learned to roll their own cotton swabs to gently remove grime from the surface of a dirty tile. They also applied warm agar gel to learn how we loosen up and remove grime without using too much water on more sensitive objects or more stubborn dirt. 

A participant swab cleans a dirty tile

At the close looking station, teens used a Dino-lite digital microscope to get up close and personal with some study objects. A UV light setup showed that the way materials fluoresce differently under Ultra-Violet light can help identify unknown substances. 

Conservator Julia Commander guides participants through using a Dino-lite microscope

At the ceramic reassembly station, teams worked to puzzle out the correct location of sherds and reconstruct a ceramic object. Small sandboxes, blue tape, and clamps to hold everything in place are essential tools for gluing a ceramic back together. 

If students tried their hand at each table and still had time to spare, there were also individual activities on color matching and inpainting prepared for some down time. 

We were happy to see such enthusiastic attendance of this program last year and hope we get to meet some more future conservators at the workshop next month! If you or someone you know would like to participate, you can find more info and register here for this year’s workshop!

Eyes are the Window to the Soul, Or So They Say

By Tessa de Alarcon

Typically, at the Penn Museum when we are working on objects, even for display, we prioritize stability over aesthetics. This means that we are often do less cosmetic work than would be done at an art museum when it comes to putting in fills and toning out areas of loss. However, I recently undertook a project where I went further than I usually do to recreate lost material. This blog post is going to walk through why that decision was made in this case as well as some of the mysteries that I found along the way

E1019 Before treatment. At this point the object was being tracked as E17632

The object in this case is an Egyptian cartonnage mask E1019. When it entered the lab it had a lot of condition issues, including the top of the head was partially crushed, it had been heavily treated before, and it was missing the inlays for its eyes and eyebrows. The missing eye inlays had been giving many visitors to the lab the creeps as the mask appeared to have dark empty eye sockets. Because of this, from the start I had been polling to my colleagues about what level of repair I should do to reduce the distraction of the missing inlays. I was not at this point considering replacing them, but was instead thinking about maybe toning out some of the other losses on the cheek to draw less attention to the eyes.

E1019 before treatment, a detail of the face and eyes.

When it first entered the lab the mask was being tracked as E17632 but over the course of the treatment, I found a different accession number on the interior, E1019. With the help of our curators, we were able to piece together that E1019 was the original accession number, and E17632 had been assigned to it later. When I looked up the record for E1019 in the museum collection database, I found the record included two eye inlays! I was so hopeful that this would mean that I could reintegrate two inlays, one into each eye. However, when I reached out to the curators to get more information, I found out that they are two parts of the same eye, the white part of the eye and a pupil/iris.

Eye inlays E1019.1, and E1019.2 before treatment

Well, this left a new set of problems. Especially since you can see here, the white part of the eye was not very white anymore since it was covered with a dark brown substance. I was left with a lot of options, leave the eye inlays out, reintegrate them as they are, or clean them and reintegrate them, and if I reintegrated them should I then also create a replica set for the other eye?

Before making any decisions, I checked to see if they inlays fit the eye sockets in the mask, which they did. The inlays turned out to be for the masks right eye. After that, I spent some time characterizing the dark coating on the white part of the eye inlay. This included UV examination and comparing how the coating fluoresced with the brown modern materials I found on the interior of the mask from previous treatments. The results were not as clear cut as I was hoping. It seems that there is more than one brown substance on the inlay based on the UV examination. With this data in hand, I reached out again to the curators with the options of leaving the eyes out, reintegrating them as is, or cleaning and reintegrating. The curators indicated that they wanted the inlay reintegrated, and that they would like a replica for the missing inlay as well so that she looked even as one eye seemed worse than no eyes. Together we decided to clean the eye inlay, but to keep samples of the substances on the inlay for future analysis.

E1019.1 white part of the eye inlay in visible light (top) and under 368nm UV radiation (bottom). The rectangular material is a piece of acidic board with brown residues on it that had been used on the interior of the mask as part of a modern restoration. The fluorescence on the front of the eye inlay under UV is similar though not as bright as the modern brown residues but the back of the eye the brown residues do not fluoresce.

Once clean, I set about making a copy for the masks left eye to be a close but not identical match. Based on previous experience I decided to make the new inlay set out of a two-part light weight epoxy called Wood Epox as it is easy to shape and can be sanded and carved. To start, I made a paper template of the shape of each inlay. I made sure to mark what I wanted to be the front of each so that the shape would be a mirror image of the original inlay. The white inlay is slightly curved, so I also created a form that would have the same curvature using foam.

The inlay, E1019.1 after cleaning (left), the paper template of the inlays (center) and the foam support mimicking the curvature of the inlay with the inlay in place during a test fit (right).

Next, I rolled out some sheets of wood epox, and using the paper template trimmed out the shape I needed for both parts of the eye. The pupil/iris part I let set flat, what let the one fore the white of the eye set in the form I had made so that it would have the same curvature as the original. Once cured I sanded them to finish, with the final stages being wet sanding so that the replica inlays would also have a natural gloss.

The inlays replicas curing with the white part in the curved support (left) and the original inlays (E1019.1, and E1019.2) laid out above the shaped and sanded replicas (right)

The final step before assembly and placement in the mask was the paint them to resemble but not exactly match the originals. I used gloss medium for the pupil/iris as this inlay was especially glossy and I could not get that level of gloss with polishing and painting alone.

The original inlays (E1019.1 and E1019.2) laid out above the replicas after the replicas have been toned to be similar thought not identical to the originals

Finally, here you can see the end results after treatment. You will see though, that I have not attempted to recreate the inlays for the eyebrows. Because we had the one set of eye inlays, I had something to reference for making the replica set of inlays, however, there are still pieces missing which I had no frame of reference for. There were also likely inlays that went around the outside of the eye as well. These and the brows might have been made out of a variety of materials and without the originals for reference, there is no way to be certain about what their color and appearance would have been.

E1019 after treatment. The original inlays are in the masks right eye and the replicas are in the masks left eye.

El cartonaje finalmente se relaja

por Teresa Jiménez-Millas

Durante el pasado mes, he tenido el privilegio de poder trabajar en un cartonaje egipcio, y ¡no menos es la suerte que tengo de poder escribir este artículo en mi lengua materna! Me han consentido mucho en este equipo.

Poco o nada sabemos de la procedencia de la obra, fue una donación a la colección egipcia del museo por parte del Sr. Thomas A. Scott en el siglo XIX, y es un estupendo ejemplar para estudiar tanto la técnica del cartonaje como el tipo de intervenciones que se hacían en el pasado.

La nomenclatura es una derivación del francés “cartonnage”, término usado en egiptología para hacer referencia a la técnica en la que finas capas de yeso se aplicaban sobre un soporte que podía ser fibra (lino) o papiro, permitiendo la flexibilidad suficiente para moldear y obtener las formas deseadas de la silueta del difunto, algo parecido al papel maché para que os hagáis una idea. Sobre este aparejo de yeso se elaboraban la policromía y el dorado.

Esta pieza ocupaba la zona pectoral de la momia. La imagen representa una figura alada con el disco solar sobre la cabeza, posiblemente Nut, quien junto a su hermano Geb eran los padres de Isis, cuya historia es central en la resurrección de los extintos.

En cuanto al proceso de restauración de esta obra, lo primero que nos llamó la atención fue el soporte adherido al reverso, que no formaba parte del original, y por otra parte el gran número de fracturas y pérdidas que presentaba el anverso.

Por la tipología de esta obra sabemos que no era plana y que tenía cierta curvatura, pues su función era decorar y descansar en el pecho de la momia. En este caso, parece que la persona que intervino la pieza en el pasado no tuvo en cuenta esto y añadió un cartón con mucho adhesivo en el reverso, de manera que la pieza ¡quedó completamente aplanada!

En este tratamiento de conservación lo fundamental era eliminar ese soporte trasero para relajar la obra, pese a que esto supusiera que los fragmentos antes unidos quedaran sueltos y desprendidos. Este paso se hizo mecánicamente con la ayuda de un bisturí y bajo las lentes del microscopio.

Se quiso evitar cualquier contacto con un medio acuoso, pues ante una obra tan frágil cualquier fluctuación de humedad podría afectar negativamente al soporte, a las capas pictóricas y al dorado.

Con el paso de los días se pudo observar cómo cada fragmento iba recuperando su forma primigenia, recobrando cierta curvatura y relajándose. Esto determinó el resto del proceso, pues se decidió no forzar la unión de las diferentes áreas. Cada una presentaba en este momento un diferente perfil y tratar de reunirlas provocaría mucha tensión innecesaria.

Se consolidaron y protegieron todas las zonas por el reverso y se estudió la mejor manera de realizar un soporte para cada una de ellas que permitiese también su futuro montaje y exposición.

Tras muchas pruebas, preguntas y mucha paciencia de mis colegas, se decidió que lo mejor sería hacer tres soportes para las tres áreas con resina epoxídica de madera; de esta manera cada uno soportaría un fragmento, un planteamiento respetuoso para la obra que nos hace entender que el paso del tiempo y las intervenciones del pasado dejan su huella.

Photos showing various trials for constructing a support for the fragile cartonnage pieces. The support in the third image (far right, made of wood epoxy) was the winner.

Tengo que agradecer a Jane Williams, jefa de conservación y restauración del “Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco” por sus consejos y su ayuda inestimable para el tratamiento de esta obra que tanto respeto me causaba.

Con mucha gratitud por haber tenido la suerte de trabajar con tan generosas personas y haber aprendido tanto en este fantástico proyecto, ¡espero algún día poder ver este cartonaje expuesto en el museo!

Este proyecto ha sido posible en parte por el Instituto de Servicios de Museos y Bibliotecas.

Coolness vs. cuteness

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.   

We have been carrying out our work in front of the public here in the Artifact Lab for nearly 4 years now. Despite the fact that visitors can peer in from various points around the room and watch us working for as long as they have the patience for it, it’s not always clear what we are doing, especially when the work is very detailed and only requires us to make the smallest of movements for hours on end (several of us have overheard museum visitors quietly whispering “is she real?”).

So even though we are “demystifying” our work by bringing it out in full public view, we sometimes have to rely on labels, signs, a slideshow we have running here in the lab, and, hey! this blog, to describe what it is we are doing.

For example, I have been working on this Ptolemaic pectoral cartonnage piece, and most recently started backing and filling losses and tears in the linen support. Most of what I’ve done so far is really difficult to see or appreciate, even though I’m working right by one of the lab windows.

Detail image before (left) and after (right) filling a loss

Detail image before (left) and after (right) filling a loss

These images above show a detail of an area that I backed and filled. There is nothing elaborate or dramatic about this work. As you can see, the fills are small and subtle, mimicking the surrounding areas of paint loss. These repairs were made by backing the losses with Japanese tissue paper and filling with a mixture of Klucel G, alpha cellulose powder, glass microballoons, and powdered pigments.

There are a few areas that I could not access from the front, so I decided to flip the piece over to continue the treatment. In order to protect some fragile areas while the piece is turned over, I temporarily faced them with small pieces of Japanese tissue impregnated with Paraloid B-72.

A detail of the upper half of the pectoral showing facing in progress

Below, you can see what the piece looks like from the reverse. Unfortunately, this means that for the time being, visitors will not be able to see the beautiful painted decoration.

Reverse of E352

Reverse of E352

But have no fear! We have other interesting things on view, and to keep us company as we do this detailed, subtle work. We have our mummy Hapi-Men, who is front-and-center in the middle of the lab, and for those visitors who may not see the “coolness factor” of the mummies, there is this little guy who is currently sitting right by one of the lab’s windows:

E11474: Ptolemaic cartonnage cat head from Abydos

E11474: Ptolemaic cartonnage cat head from Abydos

Because who can resist a cute kitten? We sure can’t, which is why we figure that if this adorable kitty is in the window, even if our work doesn’t appear particularly exciting at the moment, there will be something interesting for everyone to see (and the cat head actually does need treatment and a new storage support, so he is up here for a real reason too!).

A return to the Rubinstein cartonnage

A year ago, I wrote about some cartonnage that we received as a donation from Helena Rubinstein back in 1953. I started working on it but after realizing what a complex project it was going to be, decided to save it for one of our graduate interns to work on (I like to think we save the best stuff for them, and sometimes best = complicated). We didn’t have to wait too long, since this fall we were joined by Eve Mayberger, a 4th year NYU intern who is with us for the academic year, and she was happy to take on the cartonnage as one of her many projects.

One of the reasons the cartonnage is in the lab is because it’s attached to a really ugly old mount, which is no longer providing sufficient support. To remind you, here is what it looked like when it entered the lab:

Cartonnage pieces secured to a wooden mount painted blue

5 separate cartonnage pieces secured to a wooden mount painted blue (before treatment)

Not only do we want to get the cartonnage off of this old mount, but the way the pieces are attached to the mount complicates examination and our understanding of their materials and construction. Basically, this old mount isn’t doing the object any favors, and there’s not much we can do with the object while it’s on the mount.

Eve has spent some time documenting and examining the cartonnage pieces in the Artifact Lab and today she decided to bite the bullet and actually start removing them from the mount. She started with the chest piece (the uppermost piece in the image above). It was secured to the mount primarily through 2 large screws and several smaller nails. Just a few minutes ago, Eve calmly removed the last of the hardware and we were finally able to free this piece from the mount – hurrah!

Eve examining the backside of the cartonnage, recently freed from the old mount, seen on the right side of this photo.

Eve examining the backside of the cartonnage, recently freed from the old mount

Here is a detail of what the back looks like:

View of the reverse of the cartonnage chest piece, after removal from the mount.

View of the reverse of the cartonnage chest piece, after removal from the mount.

Of course now that we can see the other side, we have even more questions about what was done to this piece historically versus what is part of its original construction. Eve will continue to examine this piece and do some more research before beginning the treatment. We will provide updates as she proceeds.

Multispectral imaging of Wilfred/a’s cartonnage

E12328B_4viewsWhat you see above are 4 different images of our mummy Wilfred/a’s cartonnage. Each image represents a different way of looking at the cartonnage, and assists us in better understanding this object. But what are we seeing in these images, and how did we produce them? (If you have been following this blog, or our museum blog, these types of images may be familiar to you, since we have used these techniques to look at other objects, including a painted wooden shabti box. But every object is different, and in this case, I’ve learned something new that I’ve never seen before, so read on to learn more!)

Let’s start with the image in the upper left – this is easy.

E12328B_visible01_compressed

Visible image. Captured with a Nikon D5200, modified by replacing the hot mirror filter with a glass custom full spectrum filter, with a B+W UV-IR-cut filter & incandescent photo light source.

This is a photograph taken in normal (visible) light with a digital camera. This image represents what you see when you look at the object here in the Artifact Lab. We see that the surface of the cartonnage has a design painted in many different colors, and that there are some residues on the painted surface in areas. There is a lot that we can learn about this object just by looking at it in visible light, but what we cannot do is confidently identify the pigments used. So in this case, multispectral imaging comes in very handy. Let’s take a look at the next image.

E12328B_IR01_compressed

Visible induced IR luminescence image. Captured with Nikon D5200 modified full spectrum camera, #87C filter, Crimescope 600nm light source.

This is an image of the exact same view of the object, but it was captured using our modified digital camera with a #87C IR filter, using our SPEX Mimi Crimescope with the 600nm filter as a light source. With this technique, we can clearly identify that Egyptian blue was used in the areas that appear bright white, because these areas are showing visible-induced IR luminescence (in other words, they emit infrared light when excited with visible light). No other pigment used by the ancient Egyptians has this property, so we can say with certainty that these areas are painted with Egyptian blue. To better visualize these areas (since the rest of the image is nearly black) we can use the image captured in visible light and the above image to create a false color image.

False color image of the cartonnage created in Photoshop, where the areas painted with Egyptian blue appear red.

False color image of the cartonnage created in Photoshop, where the areas painted with Egyptian blue appear red.

The false color image shows us the luminescent (Egyptian blue) areas in red. If you look closely, you’ll be able to see that the red areas are slightly shifted, due to the fact that we probably bumped the camera in between shots. But you get the idea.

Finally, I wanted to see what we could learn about the cartonnage by looking at it under other wavelengths of light with the Crimescope. I was expecting that we’d probably be able to better visualize the old adhesive used to join the cartonnage fragments in the past, and maybe better understand the residues on the surface. But when we looked at it with the 300-400nm filter (with a peak emission of 365nm), this is what we saw:

UV visible fluorescence image, captured with a Nikon D5200 modified full spectrum camera with B+W UV-IR-cut filter, using the Mini Crimescope 300-400nm filter.

UV visible fluorescence image. Captured with a Nikon D5200 modified full spectrum camera with B+W UV-IR-cut filter, using the Mini Crimescope 300-400nm filter.

In this image, the areas that stand out the most are the areas fluorescing a bright orange-pink color, which appear pink in visible light. I had never seen this before and wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, but after looking into it a bit, I believe that this fluorescence indicates that the pink areas were painted with madder, a dyestuff obtained from the roots of the madder plant. Madder has been identified as being used in ancient Egypt to create pink pigments for painting, and is known for having a characteristic pinkish-orange UV fluorescence, which is how I would characterize what we’re seeing in the above image. There are other ways we could try to confirm this, but this was an exciting, and unexpected observation!

* Special thanks to conservation intern Yan Ling and Conservator Tessa de Alarcon for their help with capturing and processing these images.

Wilfred/a’s cartonnage

While we prepare our mummy Wilfred/a to be x-rayed, we are simultaneously working on fragments of cartonnage that may belong to the him/her.

Cartonnage fragments before treatment, in no particular arrangement or orientation

Cartonnage fragments before treatment, in no particular arrangement or orientation

There are 35 pieces, some of which are assemblages of multiple fragments mended together, plus some very small fragments in a ziploc bag.

The cartonnage consists of 2 layers of linen adhered together, with a fine plaster coating on one side, which is painted, and a thinner, more coarse layer of plaster on the other side. Here is a magnified image of one of the fragments, and an image of it in cross-section:

The painted side of one fragment of cartonnage (left) and the same fragment in cross-section (right), 7.5X magnification

The painted side of one fragment of cartonnage (left) and the same fragment in cross-section (right), 7.5X magnification

It is unclear what these fragments originally belonged to. They definitely do not make up an entire object, and they are mostly flat. We can see that there are at least 3 figures depicted in the painted decoration, but we’re still in the process of trying to piece together the rest of the design, and trying to figure out which pieces join together.

Pre-program intern Yan Ling examines the cartonnage fragments with the aid of an optivisor.

Pre-program intern Yan Ling examines the cartonnage fragments with the aid of an optivisor.

Yan Ling, our pre-program intern and an art conservation undergraduate from the University of Delaware, is helping me document the fragments. As part of our examination process, we will be looking at the fragments with our Mini Crimescope, and we’ll post anything interesting that we find on here soon.

 

More on Madame Rubinstein

Helena Rubinstein built her life and her wealth on beauty, so it should come as no surprise that she was attracted to this stunning Ptolemaic cartonnage funerary mask and it’s related pieces, which we are working on in the Artifact Lab.

Rubinstein was known as a great art collector (she bought pieces by the truckload, according to this article in the New Yorker) and she decorated her many homes with modern art, as well as artwork and antiquities from all over the world (she amassed an especially large collection of African art). When I found out that these cartonnage pieces in our collection had once been in the possession of the Madame, as she preferred to be called, I was hoping that I’d be able to find a photo of them on display in one of her homes.

Rubinstein, photographed in 1951, with some selections from her Africa and Oceania collection on display

Rubinstein, photographed in 1951, with some pieces from her Africa and Oceania collection. Image from “Over the Top: Helena Rubinstein: Extraordinary style, beauty, art, fashion” by Suzanne Slesin, 2003.

While I found many photos showing the interior of her homes, I didn’t catch a glimpse of the funerary mask in any of them. And it’s possible that she never had it, or the rest of the cartonnage, on display at all.

Based on letters found in our Archives, I found out that we ended up receiving these pieces as a gift from Mme. Rubinstein through the Carlebach Gallery in New York. The gallery owner, Julius Carlebach, acted as the intermediary for the donation, which was given to the museum while Dr. Rudolf Anthes was Curator of the Egyptian Section, under the directorship of Froelich Rainey. In his letter offering the cartonnage pieces to the museum, Carlebach noted that he was sorry that Madame Rubinstein had no further information about them.

But I did find something interesting in Froelich Rainey’s thank you note to Mme. Rubinstein.

UPMAA_Rainey_Page_2The letter is a little confusing because he refers to the mask as a “mummy portrait,” but I’m sure he’s talking about the cartonnage. As you can see, he mentions that the lower section would be included in the museum’s television program “What in the World”. “What in the World” was a Peabody Award-winning television program, where Rainey moderated a panel of experts trying to identity artifacts, while viewers were given clues to the answer (it ran for 14 years and by the early 1960s it was one of the oldest programs on television!). The episode featuring the cartonnage aired on May 23, 1953.

Unfortunately, as far as we know, only a few episodes of this show have survived, not including this 1953 episode. Those that we do have are now digitized and on the museum’s YouTube channel (follow this link to view them). Is there any way we might be able to find the one featuring Mme. Rubinstein’s gift? It seems unlikely, but I’d love to think that it is possible.

In the meantime, we’ll be doing our own investigations on these pieces right here in the Artifact Lab, and we’ll report on the blog as we learn more and make decisions on treatment.

Special thanks to Alex Pezzati, our Senior Archivist, for his help in locating these documents.

A gift from a late, great, beauty magnate

Some of the newest objects to come into the Artifact Lab are pieces of cartonnage which are related to this beautiful funerary mask, currently on exhibit in our Upper Egyptian gallery:

53-20-1A A funerary mask made of gilded cartonnage, currently on display in our Upper Egyptian gallery.

53-20-1A A funerary mask made of gilded cartonnage, currently on display in our Upper Egyptian gallery

Here are the pieces of cartonnage currently in the lab:

53.20.1bt01_compAnd here is a detail of the chest covering, adhered to fine linen with a black resinous material:

53.20.1bt03_chestcoveringAll of the pieces are unfortunately nailed down to the painted wooden (contemporary) support below. I’ve been working on documenting the cartonnage and getting the nails out, so that I can better evaluate the condition of these pieces.

I also have been doing some background research on these pieces, and found that, unlike most of the objects that I work on in the lab which are from excavations or which were collected early on in the museum’s history, this cartonnage assemblage was donated to us by cosmetics magnate Helena Rubinstein. Rubinstein, who is known for her wildly successful brand of cosmetics, and who, when she died, was one of the world’s richest women, was also an art collector. I’m not sure exactly how she wound up buying these pieces and then how they ended up here at the museum, but I’m heading over to the Archives now to see what I might learn there. More on this soon!

 

 

The “conservation story” of Nefrina’s Funerary Mask, Part 2: Tear Repair and Reshaping

As promised in the previous posting on the condition of Nefrina’s Funerary Mask, here is the next installment on its conservation treatment.  Because this treatment was so involved, in this post I am just going to talk about the temporary stabilization of the exterior and the repairs on the interior of the mask.

1)     Facing: Facings are often used by conservators to temporarily stabilize surfaces so that an object can be handled and other structural problems can be addressed first.  In this case, the flaking and cracked paint on the mask had to be temporarily stabilized before the tears and deformed areas could be repaired.  I used Japanese tissue that I adhered onto the exterior of the surface so that the object could be safely handled and the interior examined.

Left - detail of facing test before the facing was applied overall. Right - image showing     the front of the mask after facing was applied (it may look like clear tape but it’s not).

Left – detail of facing test before the facing was applied overall. Right – image showing
the front of the mask after facing was applied (it may look like clear tape but it’s not).

2)     I made a temporary support to hold the mask safely so I could flip it over, remove the storage mount made in 1993, and examination the interior.

The mask after it was flipped over in the temporary support

The mask after it was flipped over in the temporary support

3)     Removal of the previous treatment: In 1993 patches of spun-bonded polyester had been adhered onto the interior.  I had to remove some of these so that the object could be reshaped and the tears aligned.

Left - detail of a spun bonded patch; Right - detail of the same area after removal of the spun bonded polyester patch

Left – detail of a spun bonded patch. Right – detail of the same area after removal of the spun bonded polyester patch.

4)     Humidification: I humidified and reshaped distorted and crushed areas using localized humidification with our Preservation Pencil.  The preservation pencil allowed me to apply warm moisture to discrete areas of the object (you can see the stream of moisture coming through the orange nozzle in the picture below).  Once an area is humidified, it becomes soft and pliable.  The humidified area is reshaped by supporting it with ethafoam inserts or with rare earth magnets and ethafoam padding.  This support is critical to maintain the correct shape as the humidified area losses moisture and stiffens again.

Clockwise from top left - the preservation pencil in use; ethafoam supports used to hold the correct shape; interior view of rare earth magnet used to re-shape the area; exterior view of the same area with the magnet on the exterior

Clockwise from top left – the preservation pencil in use; ethafoam supports used to hold the correct shape; exterior view of rare earth magnet used to re-shape the area; interior view of the same area with the magnet on the interior

5)     The tears were repaired from the inside using Japanese tissue patches toned with acrylic paint and adhered using methyl cellulose.

Interior of the mask after tear repair

Interior of the mask after tear repair

Once the interior problems were addressed, I could return to the instability on the exterior parts of the mask, but you will have to wait for my next post to hear about that!

– posted by Tessa de Alarcon