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Reviewed by Rui Bordalo
9 October 2008, Lisbon, Portugal
National Museum of Ethnology
Organised by: Area de Papel do Departamento de Conservação,
Instituto dos Museus e da Conservação (IMC)
http://www.ipmuseus.pt/
Conference based on 4 lectures: - Observations on the Mutual Influence of Asian and Western Paper Conservation Practices; - Compensating for Losses in Historic Wallpapers;
- Globe Conservation;
- The Drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright: Observations on their Conservation.
On the occasion of the visit of the American conservator T. K. McClintock to Portugal, the Paper Area of the Conservation Department of the Instituto dos Museus e da Conservação (IMC) organised on 9th October 2008 a conference to present some of his projects. T. K. McClintock is the director and founder of Studio TKM, a private conservation enterprise located in Boston and specialised in the conservation of fine art and historic works on paper. The conference, divided in 4 individual lectures, turned out to be one of the most interesting I have attended so far: not only were the projects outstanding, but the author proved to be a very good speaker, retaining the audience’s attention for more than 6 hours.
The event was opened by Isabel Raposo de Magalhães, the vice-director of IMC, who welcomed T. K. McClintock and briefly presented to the audience his background and professional experience: he holds a master’s degree in Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works from the Cooperstown Graduate Program, and graduated from Boston College with a bachelor's degree in Art. After he worked over a decade at the Northeast Document Conservation Center he established his private studio, specialised in the conservation of fine art and historic works on paper. Mr. McClintock started his speech with a brief presentation of his private studio, which has been in existence since 20 years and is specialised on the conservation of works on paper. An interesting aspect is that since the beginning the studio has been working with the same people, which is important for an effective team work based on "institutional memory", that is the accumulated team experience. Several other aspects that are important to achieve a successful private conservation practice were underlined: the good communication among the conservators in the studio; the communication with colleagues in the same profession and with clients; the constant training by attending conferences and programs; and the research of collections and exhibitions in order to gain knowledge on practices and materials as well as familiarity with objects that are in good condition. 80 percent of Studio TKM’s works come from public institutions and the rest from private collections. Their projects, half Asian and half western, are frequently very large, taking several hundreds of hours of work. An impressive number of case studies were presented during these 4 lectures. The first lecture - Observations on the Mutual Influence of Asian and Western Paper Conservation Practices - focused on how conservation methodologies greatly benefit from reciprocal share of experience. Mr. McClintock took a step into the past and reviewed some of the few available documentation resources as publications or training opportunities in the field of paper conservation thirty years ago, showing how the professional exchange has developed slowly but gradually with time. One important documentation resource for the author was the film The Art of the Hyogushi, produced by the Freer Gallery, which presented in detail the conservation treatments executed by Takashi Sugiura and his colleagues on several works on paper. Even if today the methods described in the movie are no longer in practice, for the 1970s they had an impressive impact on the western professionals. The fact that information about Chinese and Japanese studio practices started to spread was an important step in the development of paper conservation. Western professionals have learned from the experience of Asian paintings conservators on how objects respond to treatments, from their confidence in executing large scale projects as well as from the quality of materials, tools and procedures they are using. With time, the communication difficulty between these two cultures was overcome, western conservators going to Japan and Asian conservators coming to the west to mutually benefit from working and teaching experience. Today, Asian painting conservators benefit from research results and western developments such as the suction table for consolidation, synthetic resins consolidants, and cellulose ether adhesives among others. On their turn, westerners adopted Asian tools and supplies such as brushes, wheat starch paste and Japanese papers, and mounting, lining and reinforcement procedures. Above all, west conservators have improved their knowledge on the Asian objects, and have come to understand that there are many differences between Chinese and Japanese art objects, between their production technologies and implicitly, between their conservation methods and traditions. Mr. McClintock continued explaining the technologic differences between a scroll and a screen painting, showing that besides the inherent construction of the objects, their purpose and role greatly influences the exposure degree and thus their state of conservation. It was also emphasized that Asian works are seen as adaptable and their method of display can often be changed: handscroll sections, for example, can be remounted as hanging scrolls while hanging scrolls can be remounted as folding screens. Unlike for other works of art, these changes are seen as part of an already accomplished change of circumstances and not as a compromise to the integrity of the object. As a general conservation observation, the author has noticed that Asian paintings, even if not uniform in execution or condition, show a more regular pattern of problems than those encountered with western works. The rapport between the complexity of a treatment and the time spent by the conservator to perform the intervention was also discussed, as well as balanced solutions for conservation treatment. Among the interesting case studies presented, the intervention performed on a 17th century Ming copy on silk was described. The painting was mounted for display at Taliesin, the summer home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin. A particularity of this treatment was the partial removal of the linings but the maintenance of the so called "life layer" - the paper layer behind the silk. Also, the remounting was done using a honeycomb panel, which is resistant to contraction strength and allows only one side covered with layers of paper. This was done in order to fit back the painting into the original niche of the wall. In the end of his first lecture, Mr. McClintock paid tribute to Mr. Sugiura, who passed away in 2005 and with whom he had the honour to work in 1984. The second lecture - Compensating for Losses in Historic Wallpapers - dealt with the complex task that conservation of wallpapers is. In this case the conservation procedures for Asian and western works differ a great deal. There are several factors that make this type of conservation particular: the large size of the papers, the high level of exposure to degradation factors, the time consuming treatment process and the difficulty of treatment due to a limited access to the back of the wallpapers. A first arising issue concerning the conservation project is whether the treatment can take place in situ or the paper must be partially or fully dismantled and treated in the studio. Another very important factor that comes into discussion is moisture, where many of the conservation procedures rely on water and at the same time, water constitutes the base for forming the paper, for the colour binders and for the adhesives used for mounting paper on the wall. Mr. McClintock emphasised the risks arisen by moisture introduction, the importance of assessing objects’ tolerance to water prior to treatment and the ways in which it can be safely introduced. Several examples of treatment strategies were given, from in situ to studio treatments and from simple pattern papers to complex printed or refined papers with status of fine art. Again, balanced solutions for treatment options with respect to time consuming specific procedures such as inpainting were discussed. The conservator’s approach to inpainting is based on the use of transparent watercolours as these allow for a gradual effect in value, hue and intensity and because they are rather reversible when compared to acrylics. Concerning the reconstruction of loss areas, it is possible as long as another impression of the same paper is available. The available reproduction methods for historic wallpapers and their achieved level of authenticity and some of the factors that "legitimise" the use of inpainting in historic wallpapers were also discussed. The third lecture, and the most memorable one, was focused on Globe Conservation. These works on paper with three-dimensional format require a challenging and complex conservation treatment due to the fact that tech nically they are made of different materials. Globes can be distinguished from other works of art by being objects with decorative purposes besides being cartographic records and historical references. For a public less familiar with this subject, Mr. McClintock made a short summary of their history, occasion on which he showed a beautiful collection of images of historic globes. Globes require a special conservation approach due to their construction technique which involves other materials in addition to paper. In their case, the paper covers the surface area of the three-dimensional object composed of several elements: core structure, plaster, paper, varnish, etc. The condition of a globe is mostly influenced by the state of the plaster sphere, which is normally affected by moisture, generating cracks and distortions, and in acute cases, compromising the state of the fragile layer of paper. Other often seen problems with globes are varnish and paper degradation due to abrasion against the horizon ring and as a reaction to the acidic nature of the wood, dirt deposits especially on the superior half of the sphere and varnish discoloration, among others. Concerning the treatment of the paper, similar procedures to those used for other works on paper are effective, but as the author noted "experience with a specific type of object teaches that there is a threshold of treatment, beyond which the paper should not be subject to additional procedures to achieve a theoretical, ideal appearance". The treatment is introduced gradually through the layers, generally starting with surface cleaning and sometimes partial or complete varnish removal and proceeding to the cleaning of the paper itself. This was described as a laborious process that can take over one hundred hours of work, generally under the microscope. Other complex treatments were also discussed, such as the removal and treatment of the gores, lining, filling, remounting and inpainting. Concerning this last complex operation, it is important to take into consideration the individual appearance of the object but also the overall appearance in relation to the other instances of the same edition. The rest of the globe elements are to be treated in rapport with the final appearance of the paper surface. When these elements are in need of complex procedures, the task is undertaken by other conservators with relevant experience. The last lecture was focused on The Drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright: Observations on their Conservation. The 20th century well-known architect produced an impressive number of works (437 constructed projects and around 1000 designs), major part of his drawings being in storage at the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives and at Taliesin West, the architect’s winter home. The collections gather some 20 000 drawings executed in "every available medium on a wide variety of paper and fabric supports with great purpose and originality". Commonly seen are drawings on tracing papers executed with graphite and coloured pencils, drawings in black ink or watercolour on thicker paper and illustration boards. In addition to this materials abundance, architect’s practices such as cutting and pasting sections of drawings onto other drawings and assembling several sheets with adhesive tape make this conservation process even more complex. The condition of the collection items greatly varies and a strategy to draw up a list of priorities in respect to the available resources had to be developed: drawings with adhesive tape, inadequately mounted or in very poor conservation state that require critical treatment constitute the highest priority; discoloured, distorted or very dirty drawings are the next priority and finally the drawings in stable condition, slightly distort or with torn edges that require a minor treatment. The drawings were treated in groups so that projects would maintain a homogeneous appearance. The treatment of tracing paper drawings may represent a challenge, as they are large in size and depending on how the paper was produced it can be easily affected by moisture and can greatly expand parallel to its grain direction. Methods of addressing problems like poor mounts, adhesive tape, stains, discoloration and losses and procedures like stain reduction, filling, lining, burnishing, flattening and inpainting were discussed in detail among others. Inpainting is done with transparent watercolour as the basic media, sometimes with the addition of pastels or metallic inks. Su-su, a material obtained from the brown distillation of boiled paper, is used by the conservator for inpainting. As mentioned earlier on, su-su is a very light stable product and relatively reversible when compared to watercolour. For the architectural drawings, this material was used to tone light areas that could occur after bleaching, and several other procedures for areas with losses or that required more extensive inpainting. In the end of the lecture, Mr. McClintock overviewed his 20 years long experience with this collection and the way treatment strategies have changed, acknowledging that the drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright have taught him "more about paper conservation than any other single body of work". After the lectures, Mr. McClintock answered a series of questions from a public that was still keen to learn more about his treatment strategies. To conclude, this exhaustive conference was a memorable experience for us all and we can only encourage the organiser to continue this sort of initiatives. ▲TOP
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