[angelic orchestral music]
My name is Sara, and I am an art conservator
at Center Art Studio.
I am going to walk you through how my team and I
restore a 19th-century Italian marble sculpture
and its alabaster base.
So it's been broken,
it's been previously repaired.
It came to us broken again.
This work of art is comprised
of four separate pieces.
That includes the marble bust,
its socle base, and a pedestal,
which is in two parts, a top and a column.
We're going to clean the bust, the socle base,
and the pedestal components all separately.
We start out on all of the pieces
by using a surfactant detergent
diluted in distilled water
and spray it onto the marble and the alabaster.
We want to use what we need
to properly clean a piece,
but we never want to do anything
that's too harsh.
And this surfactant is very gentle,
and it lifts the dirt off the surface,
kind of breaks the surface tension
between the dirt and the surface,
and allows us to wipe or swab away
the accumulated surface dirt and debris.
The column is quite dirty,
and this is because a pedestal column
sits on the floor
and the dirt from the floor, from people's shoes,
it all gets brought up onto that surface.
We also use surfactant gels,
particularly in areas that might be
a little bit more stubborn to clean.
When restoring something so old,
you have to be mindful of the age of the piece.
So we never want to remove all of the dirt
out of all of the recesses
and completely remove the patina
that's built up on an item of age
because that would end up
looking incorrect and inappropriate.
So the top of the pedestal and the socle base
that the bust sits directly on
have both been previously repaired twice
with the same types of glue.
We need to entirely remove
all of this old adhesive
that's not functional, it's yellowing,
it's not good for the marble
to have on its surface.
So we want to make sure we get all of it off.
So we are using a combination of scalpels.
This is also a time
where you have to be very careful
because marble is very susceptible
and alabaster is very, very susceptible
to scratching.
So when you're using those very sharp tools
you want to make sure
that you are only scraping off the glue
and you're not accidentally nicking
the surrounding surface area.
We use a number of visual aids to help us
in the conservation process.
One tool that's very helpful
is a small spotlight.
This is a very direct, targeted light
that allows us to very clearly see the area
that we are working on.
We also use a black light, which is very useful
because the UV light
allows us to see imperfections
and residues on the surface
that are not visible to the regular human eye.
To attach the broken items back together,
we are going to use a special conservation epoxy.
It is called Epo-Tek. This is a two-part epoxy
that you combine together.
When you first mix it, it can be quite liquidy,
so we allow it to sit for a little bit of time
just to develop little bit more
of a viscous quality.
We are going to permanently attach the marble
to the socle base.
We're going to reuse the original metal rod.
Once we have it at the right depth,
we put the pin in the hole of the bust
and we use our epoxy, pour that into the recess.
And then we put the base on the marble,
check it for alignment,
front to back and left to right,
and allow that to cure for a little while.
To ensure that the repair
of the top of the pedestal is extremely strong,
we are going to pin the pieces
in addition to epoxying them.
We are going to take a stainless-steel rod.
Stainless steel is desirable
because it's not going to rust
or change over time.
We mark on the outside of the piece
where we're going to drill holes
to take the pins.
And we are using our ancient drill press.
Once we have the holes, we have the pins,
we then can use our epoxy
to attach the two pieces back together.
We are going to fill the cracks
in the sculpture with plaster.
We are applying the plaster
with small metal tools.
We tend to err on the side of overfilling
because it's very easy
to remove the plaster material.
The plaster cures quickly, so you want
to make sure that you're getting enough on
while it's still workable.
Once we've filled the cracks
and we've allowed the plaster to fully dry,
we are going to sand,
particularly the alabaster base,
which had a large crack
throughout the entire thing.
We are going to sand that down
with different grits of sandpaper.
In painting, a marble sculpture
is really the same technique that we use
for any other sculpture or a painting.
We are using our standard Gamblin Conservation Colors.
We mix them up to get the right color.
In this instance,
because the marble and the alabaster
are sort of translucent,
it makes our job a little trickier
because we're trying to replicate translucency
on an opaque fill.
In this instance, you really can't mix one color
and apply it to the whole fill.
You have to do thin washes of different colors
to mimic the texture and the veining
of the stone material.
We are going to polish the alabaster base,
and we use a very large polishing wheel for this.
And we use polishing compound applied to the wheel,
and that polishing compound comes
in a variety of grits.
We use very fine ones in this instance
so it doesn't damage the alabaster.
The final step of the conservation
is to wax each piece of the sculpture.
So we are using
a very, very fine microcrystalline wax.
And we apply this
over the whole surface of each one of the pieces,
allow it to dry for just a little bit,
and then buff it off very gently
with soft cloths.
This wax is important.
It not only makes the stone look good visually,
it also serves as a protective layer
between the stone and the elements.
Once all of the components
are complete in their own right,
we do a final assembly, and this is how
the piece will be ultimately displayed
at the client's home.
We are very satisfied
with how the whole piece came out.
We know the client loves this piece
and has had it broken for a long time.
We think she's going be very happy.
[bright, jaunty music]