Issy & Grace's Conservation Journey

A new jam! Natalia has excelled herself with another lovely batch of strawberry. She labelled the jar in Portuguese and English. We think this may have been so that we will stop asking her what the flavour is. Or because she knows how much we love it. It might just be to do with the recent influx of English speakers- two Brits and three Americans this week!

Today has been an interesting but more difficult day for  both of us.

I started the day with the varnish removed on half of my painting.

The good news is that the varnish is very easy to remove and the difference is pretty striking. The removal has revealed some beautiful colours and allows us to distinguish the brush strokes more more. I am very happy with the treatment so far in this respect.

There is bad news too and I have to write about it because we’re not doing this blog to make ourselves look great. We’re doing it to show  how much we’re learning.

The bad news is that I removed more varnish than I should have. I wasn’t aware beforehand but it is not common practice to remove the varnish on the signature of a painting so I continued to remove it like I had in the other areas.

There are several reasons why the varnish should not be removed:

1.The signature is one of the most important parts of a painting.

2.The varnish protects the signature.

3. The signature is usually the last thing to be added to the painting so may not have bonded to the other areas of paint as strongly.

4. The abrasive nature of the cotton swabbing may loosen pigments.

Fortunately it does not look like I have removed any important information and I will never forget this lesson! There was still a small area of varnish that I hadn’t removed and I have taken care to ensure that I will not take it off.

I also had a little panic that I had removed to much paint on the left hand side of the painting as the cotton swabs were much blacker and I began to expose white areas. However, Manuel assured me that the cotton swabs were coming back darker because of the pigments that were loosened when the wood split and because some areas that may have been retouched.

And now I have rambled about me and my day, I will tell you about Issy’s. We both figured that now we’re working on seperate projects we will probably write a bit more about ourselves and our experiences on our blog day so you will have more details on Issy’s work on her sculpture.

Today Issy started her day by recleaning areas where dirt had bloomed as a result of the previous cleaning processes.

She had also noticed that many cracks and fractures had been revealed during the cleaning process and had to record them in her drawings.

After lunch Issy experimented with tinting Milliput using powder pigments. She didn’t have much luck with this endeavour- even when she tried using stronger pigments such as “Burnt Turkey Umber” and mixing the pigments with water. The Milliput only changed colour very slightly but she will retouch the restoration later using some type of paint with a matt finish to match the rest of the sculpture.

Issy also had issues when trying to create the shape of the thumb in a form that matched the shape and size of the thumb on the opposite hand. She was altering it for hours and ended the day thinking it still looked slightly too fat for the hand. Its a tricky restoration to create as it is viewed from so many different angles and because she is creating it using a material that is such a different colour to the rest of the sculpture. She decided that she ought to come back to it on Monday with fresh eyes!

Have a good weekend everyone!

Here is Friday I’m In love by The Cure to get you started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGgMZpGYiy8

Today Natalie revealed that the latest jam flavour is- drum roll please- tangerine!

Also, all of our family and friends in Britain who have been complaining about the weather will be consoled to know that Brazil is forecast rain all week and its so chilly that I walk a coat and boots today! I’m sat in a jumper and I’m freezing! This isn’t what we came here for Brazil!

We felt on top of things when we walked into the museum today.

We greeted everyone in Portuguese… the security guards at the gate, the maintenance guys, the receptionists and all of the conservators. Then we got into the lab and cracked on without bothering Ana or Priscilla or anyone else! We’re like real Pinacoteca conservators…kind of.

I really want to put some photos up from today but I think I might have to just add some on later because our Internet is feeling under the weather.

We used the large communal packed lunch heater which was pretty exciting for us (our kicks are still small, we’re just far away!)

Other than that things have been progressing quite quickly with our projects!

Issy removed the Agar and cleaned the remaining surface dirt using cotton swabs and water. She cleaned the black mould off the papyrus underwear using the latter method with great effects.

She also removed the hands on the priest part of the sculpture today as they had been readhered poorly in the past using PVA or a similar adhesive that had been covered in plaster. This repair was unstable and unsightly so after consulting the other conservators at the Pinacoteca, Issy removed them using a scalpel and acetone to dissolve the adhesive where necessary.

I finished cleaning the painting and the frame using smoke sponge and then Manuel and I conducted some solvent tests to remove the varnish on the painting. It is necessary to remove the varnish as it has discoloured over time and obscures the original painting.

We tested four solvent combinations in total and concluded that Metil Etil Cetone (MEC) or Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) in English was the best choice in terms of removing the varnish efficiently and without harming the original painting.

Removing the varnish makes an instant  and very apparent difference to the painting akin to Barry Scott’s penny test (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGooQ8yYC0c) and raises one of the biggest conservation questions about how clean an object should be.

Many people may know and love this painting as it is now with yellowed, aged-looking colours and will be adverse to seeing the bright, original colours. They may also argue that the varnish is part of the object’s history.

However, it is likely that the varnish has discoloured overtime and the artist did not originally intend to create a painting with the dull, toned down colours that are now visible. Additionally, during the removal of the varnish today we discovered some abrasions of the pigments so it is possible that the varnish was added to cover these and was not part of the artist’s original plan for the painting.

There are plenty of other theoretical and scientific details that I could ramble on about but this isn’t an essay so we’ll save that for another time.

Hopefully the Internet will be back to its speedy self soon and this blog will be filled with colour again.

Until then!

Good morning England, good evening Brazil!

Today has been very good, so much has happened.

Valeria has very kindly given us each two bags of books about the museum and the collections to take home with us!

Last week we were each given our main projects for our placement here.  Grace is working on a oil painting landscape by Jose Perissinoto and I am working on the religious terra cotta sculpture by a Japanese-Brazilian sculptor called Tadakiyo Sakai.

Today we carried on researching, documenting and starting work on them both.

Grace set to work with the documentation; referencing the museums notes on the piece and artist, then using a magnifying UV and white light to help spot touching.

I set to work making more Agar to re-cover some of the piece that the agar did not clean completely. It took quite a long time to make this batch as the microwave decided to break so I had to make it over a pan of hot water.

Once Grace had filled out the condition report she started cleaning the painting, at first with a vacuum and then with a selection of sponges. After I had cleared up after using the agar, I started to clean some of the surface that was not covered in agar with water on cotton wool swabs and then the papyrus using a rubber and a electric air compressor to remove the rubbings.

We have made good progress on our projects already today and can not wait to carry on and complete them.

Something that I think is so great that we have both forgotten to mention is the finger print recognition entry system to get into the labs. Its so clever and shows a little welcome message and your name when you enter. It makes you feel as if you are entering a MI5 lab!

Tonight we had a lovely evening eating bean burgers with an Englishman, a Frenchman, a American and a Brazilian. Followed by paying our hostel bill and changing our bedding with brand new clean sheets!  We are rebels.

Thank you to everyone who is reading this, we hope you are enjoying what we get up to as much as we are!