This Bowl Depicting a Cheetah dates to the 10th century CE and is believed to have been created in t

This Bowl Depicting a Cheetah dates to the 10th century CE and is believed to have been created in the region that is now northeastern Iran. It came to the #BKMConservation lab in preparation for exhibition as part of the re-installation of the Asian and Islamic Galleries. Many objects are being examined closely in the lab for the first time since their arrival at the museum which has led to many interesting discoveries regarding their condition, manufacture, and history.Although the bowl appears intact, examination under magnification and in ultraviolet light showed that it was in fact fragmentary and had been restored prior to acquisition by the museum to hide damages and make the bowl appear visually complete. Closer examination showed that large sections had been overpainted, suggesting that there were disguised losses in the bowl. Some of the overpaint had darkened in color, and old restoration materials often fail overtime, so objects such as this, with no record of what materials were used, need to be re-treated using modern, stable materials.The first stage was to clean the surface of the bowl, removing dust, grime, and overpaint which had been applied to hide cracks, losses, and staining. Cleaning revealed that much of the original surface had been covered with paint, including several ceramic fragments in the area of the tail and around the rim which are not original to this bowl. If you look closely at the middle of the tail, in the during treatment photograph (right), you can see the pieces do not match. These fragments appear to have come from a similar bowl and were added to this piece during a previous restoration to fill areas of loss. It is not uncommon to find repairs such as this in Islamic bowls that were restored before becoming part of museum collections.Next week, what to do with fragments that don’t belong?Posted by Erin Anderson -- source link

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