• Two broken putti and a fallen Artemis

    Restoration
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    two broken putti and the ankles of Artemis
    the two broken putti and the ankles of Artemis

    Last month I was offered an interesting challenge: two eighteenth-century putti made of Bentheimer sandstone and terracotta sculpture of Artemis. All three were seriously damaged and to me fell the task to restore them in all their splendour.

    The two broken putti came originally from an estate in North-Holland, where they apparently must have stood in the open air. Whenever I get these kind of cases, the first work will be to undo the previous bad repairs, removing iron and the fitting together of all parts, to see how complete it all is.

    Rusting iron

    the iron pegs were cast within lead, but had nevertheless caused a lot of damage
    the iron pegs were cast within lead, but had nevertheless caused a lot of damage

    In this case it could easily be seen what the cause of the damage must have been. The putti had been fixed with a thick iron support, which was cast in lead. The flow channel for the lead was plain to see. But iron can rust, and in doing so it can cause a lot of damage(about which I wrote an article here a while ago). Even in these putti, this was the case: the iron had rusted and because of that, the angels had fallen off their base and broken into pieces. A lot of pieces, that is.

    the base plate of one of the putti is broken due to rust and old age
    one of the base plates had broken by rust and old age

    During the removal of previous cement repairs was revealed that the putti had already been repaired at least twice before, with even more iron pins and hard and impermeable cement layers as a result. While fitting and measuring, I discovered that the two boys were very nearly complete, apart from some small bits and chips, and a missing leg of the boy with the ears of corn.

    Stainless steel pins

    the two putti variety of small parts are still together in a box
    of the two putti many small parts were collected in a box

    Putting such a puzzle together means a lot more work than just a little pasting with some adhesive. Each piece should retain a lasting bond with the connecting part. For that, to every break a stainless steel pin was added, to reinforce the weak spot. But this pen should be invisible bonded, so I had to drill holes in both parts, and these holes should be in line. All in all, something that's not finished in a second.

    A new leg

    When all the parts are back together, the reconstruction of the missing leg will come next. First, I modelled a new leg in plastiline clay. Next I will carve this out of new Bentheimer sandstone, because this is stronger than making a leg with restoration mortar. The challenge here is to make it so that the style and surface match the rest of the statuette. More on this later.

    Artemis in terracotta

    The statue of Artemis, a casting of the famous statue that is attributed to Praxiteles, came originally from a sculpture foundry in Berlin, according to the stamp in the foot plate. I suspect that it was cast there in parts of clay around 1880, which were then put together and then baked. This statue was easier to repair: it had simply broken off at the ankles. Maybe happened during removal ? In addition there was quite a bit of hunting damage, as if someone had tried out a hunting rifle a little bit too close to the statue. Of the drapery all kinds of shards were missing and there were lots of buckshot asterisks in the surface. There must have been something moving in the undergrowth for sure.

    This statue I first bonded together again, and then reinforced the ankles with M16 threaded wire ends of stainless steel, and then I repaired the damage with restoration mortar. More on this later as well.

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  • Four pieces at a time….

    Ov1, PP2, sculpture, vM

    Panipitha

    This past week I spent time working on four different projects at once, all of a different nature. First of all, the work on temperanceblack, square panipeetha just goes on. I've already shaped the top side and started sculpting the last four sides with the Lotus Motif.

    • upper side of black granite paanipeetham is polished. Shivalinga+yoni
    • upper side of black granite paanipeetham is polished. shivalinga +yoni

    It has been an enormous amount of manual work, especially because I could only polish by hand the rounded profile that lies deep in the middle of the block, and the same was true for a large portion of the top. The hole where the lingam has to go I mainly had to cut with a diamond saw, and because the material is so hard, that was almost a day's work for just the hole! But now it's coming along very nice. In the pictures there is a lot of dust and sludge on it, but the whole upper part is already polished deep black to grit 10.000.

    Nasty the first message over dit Panipitha project.
    Nasty the next post over Panipitha     this project.

    Contract work for others

    Then I have two projects in progress for other sculptors: the previously mentioned tombstone, and a bluestone relief.

    • cutting granite with angle grinder, phase 2
    • splitting a block of stone with drill holes and splitting chisels

    Splitting Dolomite

    Finally, I started modelling, to make a stone statue of a brick layer, about which more later. For that, I also split a block of stone, Dolomite or Anröchter Grünstein. Basically, you need to have special sets of feathers and wedges, but I don't own one (they are also rather pricey, and you would soon need something like 15 of them). But not to worry, I made up my own variant. I bought a set of thin wide chisels out of chrome vanadium. I've noticed that splitting goes fine with those when I insert them into the cut. Because the block is 50 cms thick, I drilled a series of holes with the diamond drill (which goes a lot faster than using a hammer drill), sawed a deep cut on three sides, and 10 chisels in the top cut .

    By then giving each chisel a tap until it's snug, and then hitting every chisel again, back and forth, the stone begins to crack at a certain moment. Just wait a little to give the stone time to crack, hit a few times more, and then it breaks-off splendidly! Also works well with concrete demolition, when there's no rebar in it. I first lifted the block up a bit and inserted a piece of angle iron under it, with the tip of the V pointing upwards, making it break in half nicely down the line.

    To the next post about this dolomite project.

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