Check out today’s Conservation Confidential, Scaling Up: Treating Monumental Architecture with Julia Commander, Alice and Herbert Sachs Egyptian Collections Conservator. Get to know the museum’s Conservation Lab Annex and the big things going on there.
You can also catch up with other posts in this series here.
Join Schwartz Project Conservator, Molly Gleeson, as she brings you up to date on what’s been happening in our Lower Egyptian Gallery for the last two years. Lots! Almost all of it pretty monumental. Molly will be available to answer questions via the Penn Museum Facebook page between 1 and 2 pm EDT on Friday, November 6.
Sometimes the simplest treatments make the most visible impact! This Eleventh Dynasty (2081-1938 BCE) painted limestone stela from Deir el-Bahari in Egypt had a thick and yellowed coating dating from before it was installed in our Lower Egyptian around 1958. It came off easily by swabbing with acetone, followed by a simple cleaning with a xanthan gum/benzyl alcohol gel to remove any remaining dirt. Plaster from where the edges been set into the gallery wall was carefully chipped away with a chisel. Suddenly, the ibis looked much younger than its 4,000 years!
Many thanks to Tom Stanley, the museum’s Social Media guru, for making this transformational GIF:
These photos illustrate various stages in the conservation treatment of a limestone relief, created around 4,000 years ago at the Egyptian site of Deir El-Bahari. Conservators in the @pennartifactlab removed a modern gloss as they prepared the object for display. pic.twitter.com/bLYGShTYNr
— Penn Museum (@pennmuseum) September 25, 2018
We should note that, in conservation, cleaning is considered an “irreversible” treatment – that is, there’s no putting back what you’ve cleaned away. So we’re always careful to make sure that anything we remove is something that shouldn’t be there. This is especially important when the cleaning process is as dramatic as the one above, since you can’t change your mind once you’ve started! From the way the coating was applied over the break edges, it was clear that it had been put on after the stela was excavated. That meant that the coating could be removed and the ibis will be much nicer to look at when it’s reinstalled in the renovated Egyptian Galleries.
58-10-1 before, during and after treatment.
By: Anna O’Neill, Jonathan Stevens, and Céline Wachsmuth
It’s Tuesday! And time for another transformation post. As the Kaipure team is wrapping up our work, we have been reflecting upon how different everything has become from when we first started the project in June 2017, almost a year ago. We have seen many transformations, both big and small. Here are some snapshots of transformations we’ve seen throughout the project:
First thing’s first, we have our simple, but satisfying, surface cleaning transformation. Jonathan shares one of his blocks in the middle of cleaning:
Photo by Jonathan Stevens Cleaning in progress. Most of the background of this limestone block has been dry-cleaned using white rubber erasers, vulcanized latex sponges and cosmetic sponges. The brighter areas are clean and any area that looks gray has not been cleaned yet.
Cleaning is fun, especially when the results are so nice and neat!
Anna had the chance to rejoin two block fragments, something that we haven’t been able to do much of because of the size and weight of most of the blocks, even though some are broken and we know how they fit together.
Photos by Anna O’Neill For this piece, both the main block and missing fragment were cleaned and the break edges consolidated with 2% w/v Paraloid B-72. Then the fragment was adhered with 40% w/v Paraloid B-72 and held in place with straps overnight until the join had set. The cracks were filled with a white Paraloid B-72/glass microballoon mixture, which provides support to areas of loss and helps to protect the fragile edges along the break. The fill was then painted with Golden acrylic paints to integrate it with the rest of the piece.
One of the last blocks Céline had the chance to work on also had one of the most fragile surfaces of any of the blocks. It was a lengthy, but incredible treatment. Both images below show the process of stabilizing the block’s surface. After cleaning, loose and lifting fragments were secured by injecting a 30% solution of Paraloid B-72 in acetone beneath the flakes. The unprotected edges of the flakes were supported and protected with a mixture of Paraloid B-72 and glass microballoons, applied by injection with a syringe, and then in-painted with acrylics to match the surface.
Photos by Céline Wachsmuth Detail of before, during, and post treatment of a section of the block. There was significant lifting and destabilization over much of the block’s surface.
Photos by Céline Wachsmuth Detail of before, during, and post treatment of a section of the block. This section was floating on the surface, meaning it was no longer attached.
Stay tuned for a final post about the finishing touches on the Kaipure Tomb Chapel project.
The Kaipure Conservation Project is funded through a generous grant from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) which was established though a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Anna O’Neill, Assistant Project Conservator
The Kaipure lab space in the Lower Egypt (Sphinx) Gallery lets visitors observe as conservators work on a tomb chapel wall, but we don’t often have the opportunity to explain what’s going on. So, here’s a glimpse into what we might be doing on any given day.
9:00 am: We arrive in the conservation hallway, drop off our bags and grab a quick cup of tea to warm up before our weekly department meeting.
9:15 am: Department meeting! It’s getting a bit crowded in here with so many conservators working on lots of different projects. We give our updates – “Still working on Kaipure” – and listen to everyone report their progress. Since we spend most of our time working in the Lower Egyptian Gallery, it’s fun to hear all about all the various objects being treated.
10:00 am: Céline finished up the block she was working on yesterday, so our first order of business is to put her completed block back on the red shelves along the back wall and pull out a new pallet for her to work on.
Jonathan brings Big Joe into the lab.
10:15 am: We’ve completely rearranged the lab, clearing space in the middle and in front of the shelves so that we can bring in Big Joe, our forklift (no, really – his name is written on the side). Most of the time, people tend to think of conservation as a very delicate task, but we’ve had to become experts in heavy machinery, too.
Carefully maneuvering Big Joe to pick up a pallet with a completed block.
10:30 am: We use Big Joe to move Céline’s completed block to a shelf, measuring to make sure that it fits, and then raise the tines all the way up to the top shelf. It’s the first time we’ve had to reach this high, so we’ve brought in Bob Thurlow, Special Projects Manager and resident forklift expert, to supervise while we bring down a new pallet. Fortunately, everything goes smoothly and we land the pallet on a wheeled table made specifically to hold the heavy weight of the blocks.
Left, Céline pulls a block from the top shelf – it’s eight feet off the ground, but feels much higher! Right, Making sure the pallet is centered on the rolling table.
10:45 am: It’s time to play Jenga with our workspace again as we put Big Joe back in storage and get our tables back in working position.
11:00 am: Céline begins documenting her new block, which means getting to know every inch of the object. She begins photography and condition mapping, while Jonathan and I get back to work on the pieces we already had out.
12:30 pm: Lunch time!
1:30 pm: We’re back in the lab, each working on our blocks. Céline has finished documenting her new block, so she gets started on the first phase of cleaning – dusting with a soft brush and gentle vacuum.
Jonathan is busy with solvent cleaning, painstakingly rolling tiny cotton swabs saturated with acetone or ethanol over the surface to remove soiling, staining, and other substances that may have accumulated over the nearly 100 years the wall was on display.
Everybody busy at work in the Kaipure lab.
I’ve done all the cleaning I can on my block and now I’ve moved on to stabilizing loose and lifted flakes of paint and stone. This is done by a process we call “edging”, using a syringe to apply a mixture of Paraloid B72 bulked with glass microballoons and fumed silica to fragile areas, then gently shaping it with a solvent-soaked swab so they fill any gaps between flakes and the stone surface. These tiny fills serve multiple purposes: they fill empty spaces so they won’t collapse under pressure; they protect the edges so the flakes won’t be popped off if touched; and they provide light adhesion between the flake and the stone. Once inpainted, the B72/microballoon mixture blends right into the stone, but we feel much better knowing that the surface is more stable.
5:00 pm: The guards are making their rounds in the gallery to make sure all the visitors have left for the day. That means it’s time for us to close up the Kaipure lab for the evening and head home.
All photos by Lucia Scanlan
The Kaipure Conservation Project is funded through a generous grant from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) which was established though a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Inspired by our Building Transformation campaign, we are starting a series on this blog called Transformation Tuesday. At least one Tuesday a month, we will write a post featuring conservation projects underway that are contributing to the Penn Museum’s Building Transformation, along with interesting tidbits that we are learning about the collection and the Museum building as we work.
For instance, we are in the process of fully documenting the architectural elements of the palace of Merenptah currently on display in the Lower Egyptian Gallery, in preparation for the future reinstallation of this material on the 3rd floor of the museum. This includes documentation and research on a variety of levels, and just last week, the palace elements were laser scanned** in order to document them as accurately as possible before they are moved.
Black and white targets placed around the Lower Egyptian Gallery as part of the laser scanning process (left) and the scanning of a column in progress (right)
To supplement the laser scanning, we are creating condition maps of each of the architectural elements. These are big pieces, so it requires us getting up on a lift so that we can examine all surfaces of the columns, gateways, and doorways.
Last week, we began by examining and documenting one of the palace doorways. We always thought that this doorway had been up since 1926 like the rest of the palace, but in the photographs from the opening of the Lower Egyptian Gallery in 1926, this doorway isn’t there!
Lower Egyptian Gallery in 1926 (left) and in 2017 (right). Note that the doorway on the far right in the 2017 image (indicated by the red arrow) is not in the 1926 photo.
We know that the Lower Egyptian Gallery opened on May 19, 1926. So when was that doorway installed? Well, when we got up on the lift to examine it from above, we could see that there were some very minor differences in the way that it was installed, but we also saw a scrap of newspaper stuck between the plaster restoration on one side and the wall.
A piece of newspaper wedged between the wall board and plaster restoration and the wall behind the doorway.
And this piece of newspaper has a date on it! It is a scrap from the Philadelphia Bulletin dated to Thursday July 22, 1926. So it seems that they intended on installing the doorway for the opening, but may have run out of time, and installed it just a couple months later. This isn’t a huge revelation, but it is an example of some of the fun investigating that we do as part of our work to reconstruct the history of our galleries and the objects that are installed in them.
Stay tuned for more Transformation Tuesday blogposts!
**The laser scanning of the palace of Merenptah was funded through a generous grant from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) which was established though a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
by Anna O’Neill
Hello again from the “Other Artifact Lab”! It’s been a while since we’ve checked in here from Kaipure’s tomb chapel and a lot has changed in Lower Egypt since the summer. Since June, we have been working to clean and stabilize the painted limestone walls of the Old Kingdom (2415-2298 BCE) mud-brick mastaba tomb chapel for a high-ranking Egyptian official named Kaipure. In the winter of 2015-2016, conservators Emily Brown and Madeleine Neiman worked to disassemble the tomb chapel wall from its wooden 1920s support and performed triage treatments (read more about that here) to keep the blocks safe from vibrations caused by construction next door. This past spring marked the start of the current phase of the project: cleaning and stabilizing the blocks so they can be moved to off-site storage in 2018.
If you’ve been through the Lower Egypt (Sphinx) gallery recently, you may notice some new and familiar faces in the lab. While Céline Wachsmuth and I (Anna O’Neill) have been working on the wall since June, in September we were joined by a third project assistant, Jonathan Stevens.
The view from our lab space, with two of the blocks reflected in the foreground. We may be biased, but we think we’ve got the coolest lab-mate around.
Between all of us it’s been a very busy fall! We’ve continued to clean and stabilize each individual block from the wall, becoming familiar with some different techniques for cleaning, consolidation, infilling, and documentation, as well as repair methods used by the ancient Egyptians (more on these later). Dr. David Silverman, Curator-in-Charge of the Egyptian Section, stopped by to tell us a little more about the history and imagery of the chapel. We’re also improving our proficiency in fork lift handling as we move the pallets supporting the very heavy stones. Just a few weeks ago, we reached a very important milestone – we officially passed the halfway point, with more than half of the 59 blocks stabilized for their move off-site next year.
A view inside the lab. The largest blocks (up to 700 pounds!) are housed on the red shelves along the back wall; the ones covered in tissue are cleaned, consolidated, and ready to move off-site.
If you find yourself in Lower Egypt any time soon, you are welcome to come watch us work in the lab and read more about the history of Kaipure’s tomb chapel (on our new, informative signage!). While we don’t have open window sessions downstairs, we do occasionally find ourselves in the main Artifact Lab and we’ll be happy to talk about our work then. We’ve got more Kaipure blog posts planned, so keep your eyes open for updates and insights.
The Kaipure Conservation Project is funded through a generous grant from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) which was established though a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).