In the previous two articles, here and here, I explained that the eight statues we've taken down from the Minervalaan 28-30 arrived in a very battered state. There ware several serious fractions and sometimes quite a loss of detail.
In addition, in the distant past they had already been repaired with a very hard mortar, which had started to detach from the surface in many places. The multiple paint layers didn't help this either. Time to repair them and make a reconstruction before we were going to carve the copies.
← Detail of the image Winter. Old repairs and rusty iron staples are clearly visible on the eroded pieces of of its surface.
Glue-up
In particular the right hand Faun, the lady of Autumn and the Diggin Man of Winter came down in several pieces. Pressure from the building that rested on it and seeping rainwater will probably be to blame for this.
Because these sculptures are not going to be restored, but will be copied, glue-up was not a complicated matter in this case. Just gather up all the pieces, find out how they fit, fill the fracture surfaces with glue, and clamp them right up.
Moisture transport
Now this is not something you can do anywhere. Suppose a sculpture is to be reinstalled in an outdoor environment, then you'll be dealing with moisture penetrating it. That moisture will eventually have to come out again, and it will follow a transport process from top to bottom and from the inside to the outside. Should it encounter a full dense glue layer on that journey, then problems will be guaranteed.
Over a horizontal glue surface, for example, the moisture above the glue will remain within the stone for a long time, and it's difficult to get it out sideways. The result will be a strong deterioration of the stone above the glue layer, especially in a frost period after a wet fall or winter. So what we have done here with saturated glue surfaces was only possible because these sculptures are no longer placed outside.
Old repairs
After the bonding we started looking for the original shapes of the sculptures. In some cases this meant that we had to remove large chunks of old repairs. Sometimes too much material had been applied, which particularly ended up making legs too plump, with thick edema ankles. Not all repairs have been removed; we also counted on it that we would be carving a lot of details in the major volumes later on, in the phase of sculpting in the new stone.
If you'd remove all repairs, that would also mean a loss of information, all the more so since it irrevocably comes off only while taking a layer of the original sculpture with it. The underlying stone is much softer than the tough cement repairs that were often very much stuck onto it.
Shedding its skin
Not all repairs were stuck on that much. Due to this barely permeable repair layer, and especially in combination with that dense layer of latex paint, moisture was building up within the underlying tuff. As mentioned in the previous post, there was a rainpipe hidden in the facade on the right façade corner, which dripped its moisture into the statuettes for years.
The result was rich algae bloom, peeling skin of the statuettes, and, in the case of the Man Sowing, a total crumbling of the surface. I already mentioned that for this reason recovery was no longer a solution. The repairs would one day, in the future, just come back down, underlying stone and all.
Photographic material
For carving a good reconstruction in new stone, it was necessary to have usable models, based on the old statuettes. In this case we repaired the sculptures with a soft type of plaster. For this, I first collected as much photo material as possible, in particular from the sculptures on the other side of the street, which were in a much better state. A year and a half earlier I'd also taken a lot of photos of the views of each statue : from the left, left front, front view, front right, and right.
I first printed and laminated these photos on A3 format, but those big prints were very awkward to handle. I discovered that a small book with all views in size A5 was much more convenient: because you can quickly browse through those. Ideally, these booklets would be printed on plastic, so that they wouldn't be susceptible to moisture and rain, But luckily paper also worked.
Who does what?
Jelle and I took on the reconstruction of three statuettes each. Jelle the ladies from Spring and Summer and the left Faun with a goat, and I the Digging Man of Winter, the lady of Autumn and the right hand Faun with his deer. Tim enthusiastically started working on the old woman of Winter and the Sowing Man of Spring.
Plaster needs to set between the layers and we also needed time to assess the right shape, so this was work that we undertook in phases, sometimes in addition to other projects of sculpting at the same time.
Loss of information
During such a reconstruction you will always be faced with puzzle work when sculptures are so weathered. Details are no longer easy to trace back and you need to make choices. Which version is correct? That what we think to recognize here on this statue, or what is still visible on the other side of the street? It became clear that earlier restorers have not always known it either. Flat circles turned out to be the sunflowers of the Summer, and vague lines became ears of wheat or bunches of grapes.
We noticed that the four Muses of the seasons also depicted four phases of life: the young girl stands for Spring, the young woman for Summer, the mature woman for the Fall and the old woman for the Winter. Each had their own attibutes: flowers for Spring, ears of wheat and sunflowers for Summer, vines, grapes and apples for Autumn, and a cloak for Winter.
The lines of their hair also started to become much more defined as soon as we patched up the missing pieces: they continued into the facade.
Tim's Man Sowing
I've already mentioned it a few times before: the Man Sowing was the worst case. There was actually no recognizable detail anymore at all, and after dismantling even less was left of it
. Once crumbs are still hanging on with their last edge, just a touch would be enough to lose those as well. But we already knew that in advance, hence all those photos.
Now in addition to his work for me Tim also works as a volunteer at Museum De Dageraad, where everything can be found about the buildings of the Amsterdam School. And what do you know, he just happens to find the original plaster model of our missing sower hanging there, on the wall!
To make a long story short: he was allowed to borrow it for his reconstruction, and in return, he suggested that he would restore this plaster model (which he did beautifully and in a careful way!) and then, based on this plaster model, he was able to reconstruct the entire tuffstone Sower again .
The Man Digging
I myself had taken on the reconstruction of the Man Digging from Winter. He was missing his lower legs, the clogs and the shovel, and other details had become very unclear. However, the upper body was still so sharp that the original chisel strokes of Jaap Kaas still reappeared from under the thick paint layer.
This showed that the sculptor had finished his statuettes at the time with various chisels: the round chisel, the claw chisel and various flat chisels. This would give us guidance later during the sculpting in stone.
The Man Digging had something else that was unclear next to his shovel. It looked the most like a continuous beam with a jumble above it. After studying all the photos, I thought it could represent a bare tree, which is being planted by Man Digging.
Gallery: reconstruction of all figurines step by step
After this repair round an inspection followed. Once everything was approved, we went on to the next phase: carving them into new stone. Read more about this in the next blog post.
We are currently working on a very interesting project at the Minervalaan in Amsterdam: eight weathered tuff statuettes are to be reconstructed and copied in new limestone.
Building sculptures on the Minervalaan
Corner sculpture by Jaap Kaas, Michelangelostraat Amsterdam (Photo Daniel van der Ree, 12 november 2020, Wikimedia Commons)
On the buildings on the Minervalaan, and by the way in the entire neighborhood around this street, a lot of building sculpture can be found. It was usually carved on the spot by a relatively small group of sculptors, including Anton Rädecker, Jaap Kaas and Hildo Krop. The sculptures were all placed there at the time of construction, during the height of the Amsterdam School building style, around the years 1920, 1930. The work was mostly carried out in French limestone (mostly Euville), in German tuff stone, Muschelkalk limestone or sandstone, or in Bavarian granite. Very unfortunate that this philosophy on building is currently hardly ever imitated anymore.
Ten weathered statues
The entire facade rests on these sculptures
The project that it's all about sits at the four corners of the intersection between the Minervalaan and Gerrit van der Veenlaan. Ten sculptures have been installed at each of these four street corners. They were designed and made by Anton Rädecker and Jaap Kaas. The themes are, for example, aldermen, architects, workers, seasons and Fauns playing music.
Four women for 4 seasons, and 4 working men, plus two fauns
The sculptures were carved in Ettringer and Weiberner tuff, but after a century of weather and wind and especially leaking water drains, the works are in dire need of restoration. Two of them are still good and will be preserved: the Reaper and the Apple Picker (Summer and Autumn).
Themes
Spring. This image was rapidly crumbling away: only a few weeks later we found several new flakes at the bottom of the pillar
We are currently working on the northwest corner. On the corner of number 28/30 are four statues of women who depict the four seasons, four working men who highlight the work in those seasons, and two fauns with a goat and a deer. The women are just standing being graceful and depict the seasons in four stages of life: a maiden with flowers, for Spring, a young woman for Summer, with ears of corn and flowers, a more mature woman for Autumn, with grapes and apples, and an old woman in a cloak, for Winter. On the inside we see the men, working hard: a Man sowing, for Spring, a Man with a sickle, mowing for Summer, a man picking apples for Autumn and a man digging for Winter. Both of the outer sides are covered by a faun as a sign for Nature: a thoughtful Faun with a goat on the left and a pan flute playing Faun with a deer on the right.
Gallery: The eight sculptures that are to be replaced from the northwest corner
Jaap Kaas
Plaster maquette of Spring, in a box
At the time these eight statues were all made by Jaap Kaas, an Amsterdam sculptor. He is best known for his striking animal portraits of, for example, the baboons in the Artis Zoo. For the project on the Minervalaan, he made a series of designs in clay and then cast plaster models from it. We know this because one of these plaster casts can still be found in Amsterdam School Museum De Dageraad. You can also see quite well that he used to work meticulously from a maquette because on the other side of the street, on the North East Corner, exactly the same sculptures can be found. That was a big help for us during the reconstruction phase!
He must have taken these plaster casts from his studio to the Minervalaan and then carved the figurines from a scaffolding, on the spot .
Traces of carving
The digging man: Winter. in the last 15 years this sculpture has deteriorated very fast. Many loose parts and loss of detail
I can say that because four statues have been carved on the inside of the underpass and a fraction of the original block is still in place over their heads. During the dismantling it turned out that this vulnerable layer of tuff is only 1 centimeter thick: he could never have carved this in his studio and then installed it without breaking it off. The only reason that such a thin slice has been left above the heads of the working men, is that he carved it on the spot and has adjusted the upper tuff layer to the existing stucco ceiling. Other, smaller, details also indicate carving in situ.
Tuff
again the sculpture of Winter, but then 15 years earlier
The reason that we are involved in this project on the Minervalaan is that these important building sculptures have been exposed to strong weathering for decades. A lot of repair work has been done on them since at least the 1960s and on more recent photos can be seen that a lot of loss of details has occurred even in the last ten years. At the bottom of the pillars we could also notice, during a second visit to the building just a couple of weeks later, that all kinds of new flakes had come loose in those few weeks.
Patching them up won't help
The sowing man: Spring. If there had been no identical sculpture on the other side of the street, reconstruction would have become very difficult. Water damage due to a leaking drain
There have been discussions for a long time about the condition of the sculptures and all kinds of solutions have been put forward. But what it finally comes down to is clear as day: Patching them up is not going to help anymore. With these kinds of tuffstones, the weathered surface is cracking and falls off, and deeper inside the crack formation continues . Now I have to say that in Ettringer tuff this process is more serious than Weiberner tuff, which can handle internal tensions better. If you want to read more about this, I heartily recommend my article about it the weathering of tuff on this blog.
Preservation of information
peeling layers, dense coats of paint and questionable mortar repairs visible on the sculpture of Spring
The sculptures of the Minervalaan have also been painted quite a few times in the past, including with waterproof latex paint, and also been repaired with a hard cement mortar. So if you'd just patch these kinds of sculptures up a bit, it would really just be a cosmetic approach. The surface layer of the sulpture, with old and new mortar repairs and all, will come down at some point. And then the problem will be even bigger: all the information that could still be traced from the sculpture has now been completely lost. This would make it increasingly difficult in the future to make a well-founded reconstruction of what has been there. And then we haven't even talked about the structural strength of these building blocks. For this reason, it was ultimately decided to replace the sculptures with copies in new stone.
