By Tessa de Alarcon
The figure you see here E4893 is an ivory statuette from the site of Hierakonpolis. In a previous blog post I discussed the X-radiography that helped me determine that the large fill around the waist of the object could be safely removed. Based on that X-ray, I was able to mechanically remove the soft fill material and separate it from the object.
Sometimes the full picture is not always clear from an X-ray. While I was able to remove the fill material and the nails, one thing that was not apparent on the X-ray and only became clear during treatment, is that part of the lower half of the object was embedded in the fill. This section also keys into the upper fragment. This may seem like a minor detail, but it is very important for knowing how the pieces should go back together. The loss in the waist is large and a fill is needed to stabilize the object structurally. One worry I had as I approached this treatment, was figuring out what the fill should look like and how elongated should the body be. However, once I found that in the fill there was a section of the object that keyed the bottom and the top pieces together, I knew that the placement of the two fragments could be conclusively determined.
Even knowing how the pieces should go together joining the pieces was far from straight forward. The point of contact is too small for an adhesive join without fill material taking the weight of the fragments or to relay on the connection to hold the pieces in alignment during loss compensation. I had to instead figuring out how to support the fragments in the correct alignment while I created the fill. I decided that the best way forward was to create a removable fill using an epoxy putty. This is a fill that has to be adhered in place, as if it were another fragment, rather than relaying on the fill material to adhere or lock the fragments together. This means that I needed a barrier layer between the fill material and the object, and a system to hold the pieces together. The barrier layer is meant to prevent the fill material from sticking or adhering to the object and you will see in the images below that there is cling film between the epoxy and the object that I used as a barrier layer. The support system, however, took some trail and error before I found a method that worked.
First I tried laying it flat in a bed of glass beads to support the object, but this did not work, it was too hard to see if I had everything lined up correctly and the fragments kept shifting as I put the epoxy in place. Taking inspiration from my colleagues working on Egyptian monumental architecture at the conservation lab annex (CLA). I decided to try making a rigging system in miniature to hold the fragments in place vertically. This allowed me to see the object all the way around and check the alignment more reliably. However, my second attempt using a vertical support system with the object upside down, still led to too much shifting when I tried to put in the fill material.
As a result, I adjusted the system from the second attempt and put the object right side up, carved a chin rest for the figure into the foam support and added a piece of foam to the back to hold the upper fragment more securely in place. The wooden skewers you can see in the images are used to hold the foam pieces together. My third attempt was very effective at holding the object in place in a rigid way with no shifting and gave me plenty of visibility to check the alignment.
After I made the fill, I sanded it smooth and checked to make sure it fit right. Here you can see if dry fit in place and after everything was joined together. This should be a much more reversible treatment than what was done before should this treatment need to be redone again at some point in the future. While the object does not look all that different from the way it did before treatment, it is much more stable now with materials have better aging properties and allow for easier retreatment should that be needed.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services
