Last Week with Kat and Megan

Last week!!

During my last week at Art Restoration Technologies, I got sick and had to go home early. I was so sad to miss out on my last days there! Regardless, I did get to do some fun stuff before wrapping up my internship with Megan. We had two large candelabras to clean, sort of Beauty and the Beast style, curving sterling silver centerpieces with five candle holders per piece. The silver was tarnished, so I took almost an entire day cleaning one of the very heavy candelabras with silver polish. It was such a large task, that even by the end of the day I hadn’t finished it. It was fun work though, and very satisfying to watch the dull, dark metal become bright and shining. That day, Sherry ran out for coffee and picked us up some soy lattes, which was quite the treat during work. I also had the opportunity to speak with Sherry, who attended UArts, about the pros and cons of a minor and taking summer classes. Sherry and Megan have been valuable for their experience and knowledge of art school. 

Two oil portraits of late 1700s-looking people were my next task. Megan worked on the portrait of the man slightly before me so that I could ask any questions I might have, and I followed closely behind on the woman’s portrait. They were both lightly fire damaged and had unusual frames. The frame on the woman was rather badly chipped, but there was no way we would be able to replace it, so I took some modeling paste used with acrylic paint and filled in the chipped pieces. When the modeling paste dried to a hard finish, I sanded it smooth to match the rest of the frame. Then the gold trim, which had faded slightly with our smoke-cleaning liquid, had to be touched up with a buffing paint. The canvas that the woman was painted on had to be separated from all framing pieces and paper and tape and screws, each piece had to be cleaned, and then the canvas itself had to be very gently cleaned. Using a chem sponge, quite a bit of smoke came off of the painting, but when I switched to a special chemical mix used for smoke damage, almost no smoke came off. The chem sponge must have cleaned off everything that needed to be cleaned. Unfortunately, whoever restored these pieces in the past seemed to have varnished over the oil without cleaning it, so there was some dirt we just couldn’t remove. The pieces are nice and clean now though, and ready to be put back together and shipped back to the owner.