Page 375 - Copper and Bronze in Art: Corrosion, Colorants, Getty Museum Conservation, By David Scott

The interplay between these two approaches of cleaning deposits from a bronze and pre­
serving evidence is constantly changing. Most conservation professionals would now take issue
with the eminent French conservator Albert France-Lanord (1915-93), who in 1965 wrote a short
article about knowing the object before conserving it. The article ends with two examples: the
restoration of a Hallstatt urn, which had textile remains on its surface; and the conservation
5
of the famous Vix krater (mixing bowl), which had traces of leather covering part of its sur­
6
face. In the case of the Hallstatt urn, the fibers were retained during conservation treatment,
which certainly was not always the situation at that time. As for the Vix krater, however, the
leather fragments were removed during treatment "because they harmed the beauty of the
object" (France-Lanord 1965:13).
France-Lanord considers these two cases as examples of how the choice of treatment
method was determined by essentially human (aesthetic) considerations. The conservation
community has since come to appreciate that removal of the leather fragments preserved on the
Vix krater is a considerable loss. Much could have been learned about the type of leather, its
position in the burial relative to the krater, whether it partially covered the krater because of
religious or shamanistic reasons associated with the burial, and so on.
Today there is a better appreciation of the fact that the "beauty of the object" is not nec­
essarily compromised when associated materials are left in situ. In addition, an ancient object
is not of value for aesthetic reasons alone; it is also a repository of potentially important cul­
tural and anthropological as well as scientific information. Today the leather remnants would
be retained, and perhaps a discussion of their association with the bowl would become part of
a museum display, adding to the general appreciation of the object.
Many beautiful, cleaned bronzes already exist in museum collections; therefore, newly
acquired pieces should not need to be cleaned to the same level throughout without leav­
ing some untreated for future scientific inquiry. f mechanical cleaning is unavoidable, then
I
the removed corrosion products and soil should be stored in small marked vials together
with the conservation records to facilitate future research into the surface corrosion, the nature
of the burial soil, the possible entrapment of organic materials within the outer corrosion crust,
and the reaction interface between the soil and metal corrosion products.

Mechanical cleaning Because of the difficulties in controlling reactions during chemi­
techniques today cal treatment, which may compromise the shape of an object—
including details of design, tool marks, or surface finishes
retained within the corrosion — mechanical cleaning remains the preferred option in these cases.
In its crudest form, mechanical cleaning involves the use of chisels and hammers to break
off concretions or to remove unsightly corrosion from the surface of an object. Such mechani­
cal cleaning methods were already in use by Rathgen and others before the turn of the nine­
teenth century. In modern practice, most mechanical cleaning operations on a bronze surface

C H A P T E R T W E L V E
358