Why Restore Something?

Usually 'restoration' refers to the art of improving an object's appearance; but restorers also stabilize and strengthen objects, removing accumulations of dirt or repairs that may injure an object.

Stablility is important, even in an old repair, because it is movement between the pieces or replaced material which will wear away the precious original material. The more of the original that you have - the better chance of treating the object to preserve it for the future. 

The owner of an object might not always think in terms of heritage concerns - but are led by sentiment and/or guilt. They might only wish that regaining the original appearance of the object by any means is the priority.

A good restorer follows a code of ethics regarding the treatment of objects and their repair. They have to be a 'doctor' to the object which is their 'patient' - not the owner. This means that they might decide not to treat an object at all, if at this moment in time the old repair is stable. They may also decide that less paint is preferable to the original surface even if the repair is still seen or that old adhesive or in-fill must be removed and replaced.

Here's an interesting case that came through the studio in recent years. The picture you saw above is the finished product. When the object came in, it was extremely unstable and many of the old in-fills were crumbled away. There was a lot of movement between the pieces and alignment of them was quite questionable.

After all the pieces were freed from old adhesive and fill, it was found that the object was pieced together from shards of at least 2 - 3 ewers without almost no registration between many of the parts. The 'antique' was a 'marriage' of parts.

This was not from a museum which might have had other shards awaiting identification. It required a great deal of 'fudging' and in-fill to make the ewer look like a reasonable object.

As you can see from the top picture - we had a happy ending, after all - and this was accomplished without the addition of paint over any original material.