This week was a whirlwind of meeting
an art conservator, building boxes, and learning how to polish silver. You may
be thinking, “Polishing silver? That sounds easy enough.” But trust me when I say
that it takes patience often only found on the resumes of elementary school
teachers.
On Monday morning, I met Karie and
another coworker in one of the Second Bank storage rooms to meet with an art
conservator. There are dozens of racks that hold various paintings owned by the
city of Philadelphia before they were transferred to INDE’s care. One such
painting was done by a local Philadelphia painter who copied characteristics
from Charles Willson Peale. Upon a request from Mount Vernon, INDE is loaning
out the painting. While the painting is in relatively good condition for its
period, it needs to be reframed and its canvas needs to be conserved.
Before the painting can be sent to
Virginia or even to the art conservator, the painting needs to be appraised for
its market value. The museum technician and I brought the painting out for the
appraiser since the painting measured over six feet. He measured it and took several
notes on its condition so he could make comparisons to local market value. When
I asked Karie about it later, she told me that it would take about a month and
a half for him to send her the final value. I wasn’t aware that it was such a
long process to contextualize this painting among its contemporaries and
current prices attached to it. I had met an art conservator my second week at
INDE who handles the more technical, artistic side of the evaluation process,
but it was an informative process to witness how the value of a painting is
actually determined. I hope to attend more of these meetings in the future.
The following day, I built several
archival-material boxes to house some deteriorating books in one of the storage
rooms. They are currently stored in a cabinet in one of the storage rooms, but
their condition is so poor that they need to be stored with extra care. My
coworker ordered the boxes, which I later folded. She’ll later build inserts to
firmly hold the books within the boxes so that they don’t shift around when
they’re shipped to be conserved or when they’re moved to be examined.
Most of my week, however, revolved
around polishing silver. I was tasked with polishing a reproduction silver
inkstand in another building in the park. The inkstand is a reproduction of the
original that was purportedly used to sign the Declaration of Independence. It
was badly tarnished, but polishing it with a custom application of oils and
minute amounts of water would do the trick. I had never polished silver before,
so my coworkers gave me a crash course in how it’s done.
Using these small raw cotton wipes
with polishing oil removes the tarnish embedded in the silver that accumulates
over time. The oils remove the tarnish, but the problem is that it brings up
black debris that never really seems to go away no matter how fervently I wiped
it away. That’s why the process takes so long, but my coworkers showed me a
trick that helps to move it along. Once the brass-like tarnish is removed,
using very small amounts of distilled water dipped in lint-free cloths can
remove the black streaks. It worked! But what really took the longest was
working on the tiny grooves in the detail work, particularly on the base of the
inkstand. I used large cotton swab sticks to remove the tarnish, which took the
bulk of my time.
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| Unpolished silver reproduction inkstand. Gloves, polishing wipes, cotton swabs, and lint-free wipes are used to polish the silver. |
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| Top of unpolished inkstand base. |
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| Tarnished bottom of silver inkstand base. |
While it took me awhile to finish,
it felt really empowering to care for something that goes on display for the
public. Maybe you’ll see it and think of me! It’s a great skill to learn, and
I’m happy that I got some practice in it. Here are the after photos:
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