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There are certain sounds no-one wants to hear when transporting fine art: “crack”, “rip”, “crunch”. Your insured might think nothing can be done under those circumstances, but check out these two examples of a ripped painting and a smashed vase– you might be surprised. Then check out the new CE course “Art and Heirloom Claims,” now available to PLRB members.
Use the slider to compare before (left) with after (right).
A Tear in Canvas
Handling-related claims are also very common with fine art items. This was an example where the collection was being moved and handled by a vendor. And unfortunately, they dropped a painting on the arm of a chair and made a 2-inch hole in the canvas. There is a new technique that is called a reweaving under a microscope where you take the warp and the weft of the canvas and use sturgeon fish glue, which is a water-based reversible glue, and you reweave those canvas fibers under magnification under a microscope and then you inject the sturgeon glue on the backside of the canvas to hold all of those fibers in the pattern of the weave of the canvas. Then the gesso is filled where the breaks happened in the fibers and then the conservator uses conservation-reversible pigments to inpaint only in that loss area. Now, this is an example where there will be a loss in value after the preservation because the structural integrity of the original work has been permanently affected by the tear.
A Smashed Vase
This is a great object example. This is a vase done by a very well-known vase maker in the early 1900s. And this piece is beautifully executed and important to this institution. And unfortunately, one of its caretakers knocked it off a shelf and broke it into several pieces. Well, in the field of objects, there are new techniques that are being developed and one is called Hxtal. It is a material that is used with glass treatments, and it has the same refractive index as glass. So it can make the repairs oftentimes nearly invisible. Now, if you were to look at this under a microscope, you would be able to see the fissures and the cracks that were repaired and filled, but what an incredible new and innovative approach to being able to repair a glass.