• A faun with loss of face, for a castle

    Restoration

    Loss of face

    repairs on a fractured sandstone faun
    The broken pieces are glued back together and the first mortar is applied

    (Bicentenary post on this blog!)

    From the garden of Singraven Estate in Denekamp, the Netherlands I received a faun in my studio this week. It was a cheerful fellow with a flute on his belly. Only he had lost the face; apparently something had fallen on top of it, for the whole right side of his face was missing. What was left of it was lying beside him on the pallet, neatly packed in a container.

    What to do? I was asked that he should be restored to its original state as much as possible. I had been given a new block of sandstone.

    Weather-beaten

    But actually this stone is just at the end of its lifetime. It would be best if a copy were made in new stone, and that the old one would be put somewhere indoors where it can survive for centuries. For as a result of how it's presently situated, it's strongly in decline now. The Faun had a deep fissure along the layers of the stone (the deposition direction of the stone) on the backside of his head, and other cracks are beginning to form, and the surface of the stone loses its sharpness and becomes more granular. As always it is a matter of balance between cost, value, historical considerations and emotional value.

    Restored Faun

    Sandstone Faun with restored face
    The same Faun after repairs

    In this case I was asked to repair the faun. I glued the pieces back again and remodeled the face with restoration mortar. To imitate the skin of the rest of the stone, I didn't make the features and surface of the repairs too sharp, so that it blends seamlessly into the rest. The tear in the back of his head was carefully opened and filled with a thin liquid mortar for natural stone. After that, the surface of this tear was also remodeled with restoration mortar. Finally the sculpture was cleaned and the repairs were colour-matched.

    This was not my first faun for a castle; earlier I restored a complete garden bench with dancing fauns for castle Twickel.

    Garden bench with fauns or satyrs as theme, with lead relief and new sandstone elements
    a restored garden bench with faun- or satyr theme for Castle Twickel

  • Jesus back into place again

    Latest projects, Restoration
    Installing Jesus statue

    With a new set of hands and on a new pedestal of the same French limestone the Sacred Heart statue is looking wonderful again.

    The statue was installed last Friday in a nice place, inside the school where it formerly stood in the basement: College Hageveld in Heemstede. The statue had to be placed in a fairly empty room, where once the altar of the school chapel used to be, when it was still a minor seminary.

    placement staue of Jesus Hageveld

    Getting it there was a tricky job, because we had to overcome a stairway of about 1 metres 60 high. To make it even harder there was also a bridge spanning the stairs, leaving very little height for lifting the statue. With a batch of pallets, we filled up the stairs, and with an engine hoist we could lift the statue on the pallets.

    The staue of Jesus again in a good spot on a new pedestal.

    And even upstairs we could make good use of this hoist, to lift the statue onto its new base. The hands were still not in place, that only came after the statue was anchored to the wall and to the pedestal with a solid stainless steel wire end in the back and in the base plate .

    As I already explained in wrote before, I had first carved two hands out of the same limestone, but by accident both middle fingers broke off. Actually a good thing, for this way I found out that this wasn't strong enough. Now the hands are made with special restoration mortar around a solid stainless steel frame. This way, the statue should last for another century.

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