It may be a little early for spring cleaning, but no matter what time of the year, there is not much that I find more satisfying than a good, deep clean (on a grimy artifact). Last week, Tom Stanley (the museum’s Public Relations/Social Media Coordinator) posted this image on the museum’s Facebook page, which shows some cleaning in progress on an Egyptian painted wooden coffin here in the Artifact Lab:

He also posted this on our Instagram page.

Here is a before treatment image of the coffin board (which is in 3 separate fragments):

E12617A-C, boards from a painted wooden coffin

While Tom was in the lab taking photos, I promised him that I’d put some additional information about this project on the blog. I thought this would be a great opportunity to take another video with our binocular microscope, kind of like the video I captured of the paint consolidation on the shabti figures I worked on awhile ago.

To see the process of how we go from

————————–this————————–to————————–this———————-

click on the link below.

Cleaning an Egyptian painted wooden coffin from Molly Gleeson on Vimeo.

In the video, you’ll see (at 7.5X magnification) that I first used a soft-bristled brush to remove loose sediment and dust from the surface, by brushing directly into the nozzle of a variable suction HEPA-filtered vacuum. Then I used a cosmetic sponge to further, gently, lift away grime from the surface. Finally, I used a kneaded rubber eraser to remove the grime that is more embedded in the painted surface.

Okay, so I’ll admit that this may not be as cool as the video of Conservator Tessa de Alarcon laser cleaning a stone table from Ur (this one is hard to top), but it’s pretty gratifying nonetheless.

I’m currently trying to learn more about this object too, by checking into our museum records. I’ll keep you posted.