Conservation of Djedhor’s Statue Base

This blog post has been written by Krystina Parker, a second-year MSc student in conservation practice at Cardiff University.

 

Conserving the base

During the summer of 2022, a team of seven Cardiff University MSc Students (including myself) had the privilege to finish working on the plaster cast of Djedhor statue base (W302), which had been previously worked on by the second-year BSc students during their 2021–2022 academic year. Micah Ellis wrote a blog post for the Egypt Centre detailing the work that their year had been doing on the object (fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Conservation team with the Djedhor statue base

Our team took up the mantle of completing the work on the object so that it could be returned home to the Egypt Centre and reunited with its statue, which is housed at the Petrie Museum in London. This will be the first time the statue has been reunited since the Wellcome Collection was dispersed in 1971. The object was first cast in 1933 from the original, which is housed in the Cairo Museum. This 89-year-old replica has transitioned from a replica for display to an antique in and of itself. When our team took over the work, there was little conservation left to be done to get the object ready for display. The previous students worked hard with the cleaning or the plaster and the fills, while our team filled some small holes with a plaster of Paris mix and finished the object off with the some inpainting. For this blog post, I will discuss the inpainting work that was done by our team and the importance of the conservation of plaster replicas.

After considering the best paints to use, we decided to go with gouache paints. These worked really well as not only could we layer this paint to get the right opacity, but we could also leave the colours mixed overnight and rehydrate them for future use. A previous group had attempted inpainting on one corner of the object which, unfortunately, had the wrong pigments and was too dark (figs 2–3).

Fig. 2: Back of the statue base before treatment

Fig. 3: Side of the statue base before treatment

While the base may seem black, it is actually far more polychrome than one may guess. We used tiles to combine paints; shades that include black, white, green, red, and yellow ocher to make the correct shades. Different areas required different variations in shades. In order to make sure the colours would not look too different on the object, we tested them on plaster of Paris squares. Once we got the colours to the correct shades we applied them to the base; each zone took a varying amount of time to mix, which meant that colours were applied at different times. In figure 4 you can see an example of the tiles that were used and the plaster of Paris squares (fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Front of the statue base before treatment

As a team, it took us a few hours to mix and fill the small areas that required paint. With the work done we were able to cover the base with a dustsheet and get it ready to be shipped back to the Egypt Centre for display (figs 5–9).

Fig. 5: Back of the statue after treatment

Fig. 6: Working of the treatment

Fig. 7: Side of the statue base after treatment

Fig. 8: Back of the statue base after treatment

Fig. 9: Side of the statue after treatment

Importance of conserving the base

The base is important for two reasons. Firstly, it will be reunited with its statue giving the public in Swansea a look at a famous statue, which they may otherwise not get the opportunity to see. Secondly, these statues represent an era that opened the art history of the world to various locations without removing the originals from their home countries. Plaster replicas allowed museums, world fairs, and collectors to access and display life-size exact copies of famous pieces. Replicas also allowed cultures to maintain and display their heritage artefacts without the fear of misrepresentation, something that has been a problem that museum specialists have been tackling for the last decade or so consulting with people of the cultures they are representing.

Having the statue at Swansea will allow the students and the public to come and view the object. This allows students who may not have the ability to travel to Egypt to view, study, and work with the statue. Furthermore, the benefit that comes with the statue being a plaster cast replica is that people are able to physically interact with the object without damaging the surface too much. (Though I would still recommend the use of gloves provided by the museum to reduce skin oils damaging the paints).

As a previous volunteer of the Egypt Centre, I know that Ken and the team will make great use of the statue base and its statue when they are reunited, to educate people on Djedhor and the amazing life that he lived!

 

Further reading:

Marie, M. (2020) ‘What you might not know about Djedhor’s black basalt statue in Egyptian Museum in Tahrir’, Retrieved October 18, 2022, from EgyptToday website: https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/89133/What-you-might-not-know-about-Djedhor%E2%80%99s-black-basalt-statue

Nichols, M. (2006) ‘Plaster cast sculpture: a history of touch’, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 21(2), 114–130.

Reynolds-Kaye, J. (2022) ‘Museum replicas; recovering the work of making plaster casts of preColumbian art’. In The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology. Oxford University Press.

Sherman, E. J. (1981) ‘Djedhor the Saviour Statue Base oi 10589’, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 67(1), 82–102.

Simon, J. (2011). Plaster figure makers: a short history - National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved from www.npg.org.uk website: https://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/plaster-figure-makers-history