The History of Conservation interest group

At the 15th Triennial Conference in New Delhi September 2008, the Working Group “Glass and Ceramics” launched a new specialty group named “History of Conservation”. The idea of starting this group came about earlier at the Interim Meeting in Slovenia (2007), where some of us already had some interesting discussions about this subject. We felt that time had come to bring together the various people and initiatives. It became clear that many people are interested in the topic. Some of our colleagues have already published thorough papers on the theme.

Many of us come across the topic on a regularly basis, while dealing with old repairs during the conservation of objects that have been restored before. These restorations can be traced back to many different periods in the past. Some are quite recent, others date to the 19th century or earlier, and occasionally they even date to ancient times. When dealing with these old repairs, conservators come across many issues. How do we handle old restoration materials and their sometimes negative effects on objects? Do we have to keep them as examples, knowing that they tell us about old conservation techniques and materials? What is the best way to record them? What can old restorations tell us about ethical considerations in the past and about the history of the profession in general?

Beyond our own ICOM-CC working group, the interest in studying the history of conservation has been growing for some time now. As some of you might know, there has been a conference in Berlin in 2006 under the title of “To Conserve or Restore? Restoration of Greek Ceramics from ancient times until the present day”. This colloquium was organized and published (see book section WG Newsletter 17) by the Committee for the CVA Germany (Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum), in collaboration with the Antikensammlung in Berlin (leading organizers: Martin Bentz and Ursula Kästner). For more information on this meeting, see the account in the WG Newsletter Winter 2006-7. In addition, the British Museum Department of Conservation, Documentation and Science organized a conference in February 2008. It was named “Holding it all together, ancient and modern approaches to joining, repair and consolidation”. The conference papers will be published in a volume to be produced by Archetype Publications (due 2009).

The subject “History of Conservation” is very broad. Presently, we can already define two broad areas of specific interest:

1. The history, (social) meaning and technology of ancient repairs (archaeological repairs on ceramics). Studying ancient repairs has a huge scientific potential, since it can contribute to the interpretation of archaeological cultures and artefacts. An ancient repair “marks” an object and provides it with a “cultural biography”. It tells us about the society in which the object played a part and about technical knowledge in the past. It also says something about ancient systems of value and ethical and aesthetic perspectives.
 
2. The history of the profession in general, with a special focus on 19th century Europe. The emergence of museum collections and the upcoming need for conservation and restoration in this period played an important role here. The emergence of artists-restorers, their ideas about authenticity and ethics, and their views on (for example) the ancient world are studied. These studies show how their ideas reflect on the way restorations were carried out. In this area, we hope that some of our working group members can make use of objects from their museum collections to contribute to this topic!

Of course, these are only some of the aspects that can be studied within our new subgroup. With your help, we intend to produce a more comprehensive list of interesting issues.

With our new History of Conservation interest group, we hope to be able to bring together interested colleagues and people who are already researching the subject. Making use of the experience of our colleagues of the Enamel on Metals group, we plan to send out a questionnaire to people who are interested to contribute. This will help to bring together existing information on literature, ongoing research and so on. An important aim would be to create a bibliography. Another proposal is to construct an interactive database for old restoration materials and ancient restoration techniques. Last but certainly not least, it would be great if our new interest group would be able to present some lectures at the Interim Meeting at the Corning Museum of Glass in 2010. We therefore urge you all to hand in proposals for interesting contributions (see the Call for Papers on the website)

The History of Conservation Group will be coordinated by Renske Dooijes and Isabelle Garachon (see contact page for addresses). If you are interested in joining, please e-mail to r.dooijes@rmo.nl.