Conservation – Page 7 – The Kelsey Blog

Conservation

Installing Oplontis

1 Comment / Conservation, Exhibitions /

BY CAROLINE ROBERTS, Conservator, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

For the past four weeks it has been all hands on deck at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Indeed, it has taken the entire Kelsey village – curators, registrars, conservators, educators, and exhibit coordinators – to bring Oplontis to life.

The first step in installing Oplontis was to receive the objects. Over 30 crates of artifacts arrived from Italy nearly five weeks ago. Kelsey collections managers were at the Museum (very) early in the morning to oversee the movement of the crates from truck to loading dock to gallery. The crates were allowed to adjust to the climate of the Kelsey galleries for about a day before being opened.

Oplontis 3
The Nike sculpture travels from the first to the second floor galleries

 

Our next step was to unpack and install the artifacts. We did this with the help of two couriers, Giuseppe Zolfo, Head of Conservation at Herculaneum, and Stefania Giudice, Conservator at Pompeii. Giuseppe and Stefania checked the condition of artifacts as they were unpacked and helped install them in cases, on stands, and on top of columns. Both Giuseppe and Stefania have traveled to numerous museums around the world to assist with the installation of artifacts from the Pompeii area, and we’re grateful for their help in installing the Oplontis artifacts and sculpture.

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Stefania Giudice examines a wall painting fragment

 

The wall painting fragments that appear suspended on the gallery walls took many days to install, their positions needing to align with their reconstructed backgrounds. The coins and jewelry in the Villa B area were expertly mounted by Stefania and Giuseppe using covered pins and shaped metal rods. You may wonder how we moved the massive strong box onto its base. The box is too fragile to lift manually, but it is set on wheels, which allowed us to roll it from its crate onto the base with the help of a wooden block. We installed the large sculptures with the help of a company specializing in the movement and installation of works of art.

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Giuseppe and Scott install wall painting fragments

 

Our final steps will be to install the lighting and text before the exhibition opens. This is by far the largest installation I have been a part of, and it has been a fantastic learning opportunity. Among other things, I feel much more adept at using a drill.

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Ugly Object of the Month – February

2 Comments / Conservation, Ugly Object /

BY SUZANNE DAVIS, Curator for Conservation, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

Our galleries are closed at the beginning of this month as we install a major exhibit from Pompeii, Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero. So I’m taking this opportunity to feature a favorite Kelsey ugly object that is rarely on view: an ancient dirty sock. In the photo below, you see the part of the sock that would cover your toes and the front part of your foot (the heel and ankle are missing).

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Knitted Sock. Wool. 2nd – 4th c AD. KM 22558.

The sock was excavated at Karanis, Egypt, during the University of Michigan’s 1928 field season. This object is hideous, accessible (who doesn’t have daily experience with dirty socks?), and interesting. It’s obviously old, stained, and worn, with a large hole in one toe. But it’s also a very cool, very early form of knitting called single-needle knitting or nålebinding.

I could tell you more about this technique, but why not try it yourself by making your very own ancient-Egyptian-style sock? The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London did this in 2009 and 2010, in an experimental archaeology project called “Sock It!” Scholars used ancient techniques to recreate a pair of socks just like this one. Click here to read their blog about the project, and here for instructions and a pattern to do it yourself. February is a great month to make yourself a cozy pair of ancient ugly socks!

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Keeping our heads on straight: custom mount design for Oplontis garden sculpture

Leave a Comment / Conservation, Exhibitions /

BY CAROLINE ROBERTS, Conservator, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

Over two hundred artifacts and sculptures are traveling from Italy to Ann Arbor for the upcoming exhibition Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero, opening in February. Among them are three marble heads that once stood in the north garden of Villa A at Oplontis. The heads will be displayed in the Kelsey’s temporary exhibition space as they once were in the garden: atop tall, narrow plinths. Sculpture like this might normally be held in place with a metal pin inserted into a hole in the base of the neck. These heads, however, lack such an accommodation, which meant that exhibition coordinator Scott Meier and I needed to come up with another way to secure the heads to their exhibit mounts.

Scott’s idea is to create a two-part mount custom fit to each head’s neck base. The mount will essentially serve as a clamp, immobilizing the head and preventing it from tipping off the plinth if it is accidentally bumped. In order to create such a mount we needed a cast of each sculpture’s neck. Scott and I were able to do this in person in June 2015, when we traveled to Oplontis with curator Elaine Gazda. First, I covered the ancient marble surface with a temporary layer of Parafilm® M, a stretchable plastic film, in order to protect the stone from any staining that might be caused by the mold-taking material.

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Carrie applies protective Parafilm® M to the base of each neck.

For the mold-taking material we used silicone rubber putty, which Scott applied in a thick layer to the surface.

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Scott creates a mold of the neck using silicone rubber.

The putty cured overnight, leaving us with three hollow, rubber neck molds — which we dubbed the “blue brains” because, well … that’s what they look like.

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Carrie and Scott pour plaster of Paris into the molds.

These “brains” eventually served as receptacles for plaster, which we used to create duplicates of the neck bases.

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Plaster duplicate of one of the three neck bases.

The duplicates are being used to cast the two-part mounts in epoxy resin. Once it’s cured, the epoxy will fit perfectly around the bases of the necks and hold the heads in place with the help of metal brackets. You won’t be able to see the custom-fit mounts when the heads are on display, but you will be able to appreciate the many steps that took place in order to recreate the sculptures’ original plinth presentation. See the marble heads and more in Leisure and Luxury next month at the Kelsey!

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Conservation Lab safety in the Zone

Leave a Comment / Conservation /

BY CAROLINE ROBERTS, Conservator, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

Conservators in the Kelsey Museum Conservation Lab sometimes use chemicals and other potentially harmful materials to carry out treatments. Like other research laboratories at the University of Michigan, our lab must comply with OSEH health and safety regulations. This means maintaining an up-to-date inventory of chemicals and other hazardous materials, supplying a ready set of safety data sheets, and filling out a compliance log in our official lab safety “Blue Book.” This also means making sure that our emergency equipment is working properly.

Last month three members of the LSA Zone Maintenance team visited the lab to inspect our shower and eyewash station. Yep, the Kelsey lab has its very own shower. Bet you didn’t know that! However, we only use this shower if a harmful material is accidentally spilled on someone and needs to be immediately washed off. The same goes for the eyewash station. This isn’t equipment we use regularly, but it needs to be functional 24/7, because you never know when an accident could happen.

This is an inspection the guys and gals at LSA do regularly — I mean, U of M’s got a lot of labs! For our inspection, they rolled in a special bin rigged up with a spout and a shower curtain to prevent water from spraying over the entire lab (not something you want with fragile artifacts lying around). I confess I was a little nervous about it all, having witnessed another inspection resulting in an indoor deluge (this was at another museum — a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away). But needless to say our inspection went off without a hitch, and we can rest assured that our emergency equipment is up to scratch. All in a day’s work for the folks at Zone Maintenance. Thanks, guys!

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LSA Zone Maintenance Team in action.

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Documenting Demons in the Infrared

1 Comment / Conservation /

BY CAROLINE ROBERTS, Conservator, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

This demon bowl, which was excavated by the University of Michigan in the 1930s, now resides in the Kelsey Museum. It comes from the ancient city of Seleucia, which is located not far from Baghdad along the Tigris River. If you look closely at the bowl, you can see that the inside is covered in rows of what looks like text, as well as four line-drawn figures. These are demons (hence the title “demon bowl”) and they reveal the function of the bowl: to trap demons.

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Two views of the “demon bowl” (TMA 1931.455). On the left, a visible-light image; on the right, an infrared reflected image. Photos by Aaron Steele.

Unfortunately, the bowl has a dark gypsum crust which obscures these super cool and creepy demons. Fortunately, we know there are ways to see though the crust, and Madeleine Neiman, who worked as a Samuel H. Kress Conservation Fellow in the Kelsey conservation lab during the 2014–15 academic year, spearheaded a project to investigate the bowl. This included looking at the bowl with infrared reflected (IRR) imaging.

IRR is a technique used by conservators to reveal difficult-to-read painted inscriptions, or drawings under paint layers. The Detroit Institute of Arts Conservation Department has its very own Goodrich SWIR infrared camera. The SWIR’s capture range surpasses that of the modified DSLR camera we use for IRR at the Kelsey, and Madeleine found that infrared light at this higher range could pass through the bowl’s darkened crust. So we packed up the bowl and drove to Detroit to see what we could see.

The Goodrich camera was able to reveal the bowl’s inscription, thanks to the IR transparency of the gypsum crust and the heavy IR absorption of the inscription. The result is a higher visual contrast between the inscription and the surrounding ceramic, making it easier to read. Okay, actually “reading” it is hard to do, given that the inscription is not real script! But you get the picture. What I found fascinating is the high level of detail revealed in the images of demons on the bowl, including flames, raised arms, and scary faces. These unique characteristics are all the more visible thanks to the power of infrared light.

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Detail of a demon in the infrared reflected image. Photo by Aaron Steele.

I’d like to thank our DIA colleagues Aaron Steele and Aaron Burgess for taking the time to capture these images, as well as Madeleine Neiman for helping us uncover the demons who have been hiding underneath that dark (and scary) crust!

 

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Ugly Object of the Month — October 2015

1 Comment / Conservation, Students, Ugly Object /

BY SUZANNE DAVIS, Curator for Conservation, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

October’s Ugly Object has a nickname in the conservation lab: Scary Hair. When Scary Hair was excavated at the site of Karanis in Egypt, the excavators classified it as the head of a rag doll. But based on other similar objects from Karanis, this might not be the head; it might be the whole doll.

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“Scary Hair” the rag doll, front view. Wool, mud, hair. 2nd–4th century AD. KM 7512.

Scary Hair is about 10 cm long and is made of scraps of three different wool fabrics, plus mud and hair. Is it actually a doll? It could be, but what about the SCARY HAIR? And the mud? Could this doll, maybe, have been used for nefarious magic instead of play? Like a voodoo-type way to curse your mean neighbor? Curses! I don’t know.

I do know that this object looks kind of yucky, what with the hair and the mud. At the same time, the yuck factor is what makes it so special. Two-thousand-year-old hair! How cool is that? Whose hair is it? What about the mud?! What is the mud for? Is it for shaping the hair?

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“Scary Hair” rag doll, back view.

The little scraps of fabric are also kind of cool. Scary Hair’s blue hoodie is a type of fabric construction called “sprang.” Sprang fabric is like a knit, in that it’s stretchy, but it predates the invention of knitting. Sprang is made entirely with warp threads in a technique that’s sort of like braiding.

We’re especially into Scary Hair right now because we have a new graduate intern in the conservation lab, Janelle Batkin-Hall, and she has a research interest in — guess what? — hair artifacts! Janelle is working with us while she completes her graduate degree in conservation at SUNY Buffalo. We hope to feature Janelle’s work on our hairy dolls in future (yes, Scary Hair has friends). In the meantime, please come see Scary Hair for yourself. It’s located in the “toys” drawer, just like last month’s Ugly Object. This drawer is in the first floor case focused on Kelsey Museum excavations; if you’re standing and facing the black basalt statute of the seated dignitary, it’s the case directly behind the statue.

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Ugly Object of the Month — August 2015

1 Comment / Conservation, Ugly Object /

BY CARRIE ROBERTS, Conservator, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

Hawk mummies
Above, hawk mummy #1. Below, hawk mummy #2.

This month’s ugly object is a double feature! (Or creature feature, depending on how you look at it.) Here we have two not-so-lovely, but oh-so fascinating, Egyptian hawk mummies. While neither of these mummies is beautiful per se, they are perfect examples of the ancient Egyptian practice of animal worship. Certain animals were sacred to the Egyptians, and hawks and falcons were closely tied to the sun god Horus. Animal mummies such as these were often left at temples as an offering to the deity residing there. I like this intriguing pair because while they each appear to be mummified birds, one of these mummies is not necessarily like the other.

To meet the demand for mummy offerings, stalls were set up outside the temple where worshipers could buy animal mummies. Sometimes the supply of animal remains couldn’t keep up with the demand, leading to somewhat “shady” practices. It was not uncommon for mummies purported to represent one animal to be composed of … well, other things. Some of you might remember the dog mummy featured in the recent Kelsey Museum exhibition Death Dogs: The Jackal Gods of Ancient Egypt. Looking closely at an X-ray of the mummy, KMA Associate Research Scientist Richard Redding was able to identify a number of bones — none of which belonged to a dog.

Our two hawk mummies are similar in shape and color. They are similarly prepared—each wrapped in linen and treated with resin. But only one reveals what’s going on inside. The beak and eyes of hawk mummy number one peek through its wrappings, as if to say — see? Genuine article, folks! No ibis bones here!

Hawk mummy #1
Detail of the hawk’s conspicuous face and head.

Hawk mummy number two has no such pretentions; there is no visible beak to show the customer they are getting the real deal. Back then, buyers would have had to depend on the word of the vendor and shape of the wrappings. Today, ethical considerations prevent us from physically peeling back the wrappings to discover what animal lies beneath. Only an x-ray, or CT scan, can shed light on the true identity of mummy number two.

What do you think? Hawk … or faux hawk?

Come see the hawk mummies for yourselves! They are currently on display in the exhibition Passionate Curiosities: Collecting in Egypt and the Near East, 1880s–1950s, until November 29 at the Kelsey.

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Ugly Object of the Month — July 2015

2 Comments / Conservation, Ugly Object /

BY SUZANNE DAVIS, Curator for Conservation, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

figurine mold
Left: Plaster mold for a figurine of Aphrodite. 2nd–3rd century AD. KM 9938; right: detail of face.

This month’s ugly object is a mold for the front half of an Aphrodite figurine. The mold is made of plaster, and ancient craftsmen used it by pressing damp clay into the carved depression. Molds like this one were an easy way to mass-produce many versions of the same figurine. This utilitarian object was never intended to be decorative, and time and burial have not been kind to it. Broken at the knees, chipped on the top of the head, stained all over with splotchy black fungus, and discolored from years of use, this moldy mold is not a thing of beauty.

And yet it has a certain fascination because it gives us a physical connection to the ancient craftsmen who used it again and again. Along the sides of the mold, we can see the depressions that allowed the artist to easily separate the front and back halves of the mold after the clay had been pressed into shape. The reddish-orange stains come from the clay that was used to make the figurines, and those figurines must have been quite fine. The female figure is carved precisely, from her elaborately curled and ornamented hair to her tiny navel. At first glance this object might be ugly, but look again and you’ll see that it conveys an ideal of female beauty that is both voluptuous and delicate. This humble, sexy-ugly object is on view until July 26 in the special exhibition Rocks, Paper, Memory: Wendy Artin’s Watercolor Paintings of Ancient Sculptures.

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Ugly Object of the Month — June 2015

6 Comments / Conservation, Ugly Object /

BY SUZANNE DAVIS, Curator for Conservation, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

Beauty isn’t everything at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology; we value all evidence of life in the ancient world, even when the object is, erm, ugly. This month’s ugly object is an Aphrodite figurine made from copper alloy (aka bronze).

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Figurine of Aphrodite. Bronze. Late 3rd century AD? KMA 10888. Before treatment.

I would never argue that Aphrodite herself is unattractive, but this figurine has seen better days. It was severely corroded when excavated at Karanis, Egypt, in the 1930s, and the legs were in pieces. Sometime after excavation, the corrosion patina was stripped with an electrochemical treatment that was once popular for archaeological metals. This resulted in a dull, brown, pitted surface with multiple holes.

Fast forward to 2015, when this object was chosen for a special exhibition. We wanted to reattach the feet and other fragments, but the latter are very thin pieces of metal from the fronts of the legs. They did not attach well to the upper thighs, each other, or the feet, and they could not support the weight of the torso. Our solution was to make prosthetic legs for the Aphrodite, legs that would support the torso and to which the metal “skin” fragments could be attached. I was the conservator for this treatment, and I began by masking the metal surface with Parafilm, a plastic paraffin wrap that is used as a sealant in labs. This protected the metal surface as I worked with the object. Next, I formed new legs with a two-part epoxy putty.

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At top, the surface is being masked with Parafilm. In the lower image, epoxy putty is being shaped for the left leg.

I shaped the new legs one at a time by pressing them into the voids in the upper thighs and placing the feet and other fragments into position on the putty while it was still soft. Once it had cured, I removed the putty from the figurine and the metal fragments from the putty. I then painted the white putty and sealed all the join surfaces with a conservation sealant. Next, each leg and its fragments were glued into place with a conservation adhesive.

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At left, the glue is setting for the finished left leg. At right, the right leg is being shaped in place on the figurine.

We conservators like this object because it looks very real to us. This Aphrodite is almost 2,000 years old, and she is not lying about her age. In most museums, we see perfect examples of objects like this one. But in the field, on a real-life excavation (or at the Kelsey!), an object like this Aphrodite is incredibly special, even though it’s not perfectly gorgeous.

You can appreciate this ugly object yourself; from June 5 through July 26 it is on view in the exhibition “Rocks, Paper, Memory: Wendy Artin’s Watercolor Paintings of Ancient Sculptures.”

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Figurine of Aphrodite, after treatment.

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