 you here. Thank you for joining us for the last talk of the semester in the historic preservation lecture series. We're very fortunate today to have Sarah Healy-Dilks join us from London. She is a senior sculpture conservator at the Victorian Albert Museum and also a conservator in private practice based in Cambridge in the UK. Since graduating in conservation studies from the City and Guilds of London Art School in 1990, she has worked for over 30 years on contemporary and historic art collections with materials ranging from stone, concrete, plaster, terracotta, 3D prints, and mixed media installations. She is currently working on the V&A's large-scale refurbishment of projects and new displays as lead conservator for the cast of Trajan's Column. And I first met Sarah inside of Trajan's Column when I had the good fortune of doing a contemporary art installation that involved cleaning the interior. And she was one of the people who had to approve my installation and my cleaning, but who also, and I have to say this really speaks volumes about Sarah, joined me on the scaffold to actually do the cleaning. And I recall with real excitement all the conversations that we had on the scaffold about Trajan's Column. The project that we did together, and I can really say weak as it was a collaborative effort, resulted in a monumental latex cast of the interior of Trajan's Column. And it happened right at the middle between two large conservation projects that the V&A was working on. There are two cast courts, and Sarah had been working on one for about four years. And then they were transitioning on to the one that Trajan's Column is in, that it has more architectural pieces. And so this project was really kind of at the beginning and since for the last four years, Sarah and her team have been working on the cast courts where Trajan's Column is. So it's just so exciting to have this return flight, virtual return flight, and to have you now virtually at Columbia University to tell us about these four years, these intervening four years, and about your work and methods in general. It's a real privilege and an honor to have you here at Columbia University again virtually. And thank you so much for joining us. Please, Sarah, I welcome you with great enthusiasm and I am the official clapper to hand off the podium since everyone is silenced by Zoom, unfortunately, but I know that everybody is joining me and welcoming you with great enthusiasm. So over to you, Sarah. That's great. Thank you very much. I'm just going to move that out of the way. Great. Well, thank you very much, Jorge, for that. I might quickly, before I forget, just for the fact sheet is that the opening of this second cast court was actually December 2018, so two years ago today. So actually, when Jorge was with us, we went into the program and we had a sort of period of two years in this cast court that you can see on the screen. So thank you very much, Jorge, for inviting me and thank you, Meredith, for doing all the necessary details and arranging it and getting me here on time. And I'm very happy to have the opportunity to share some of the experience and detail of a recent of the project Jorge has been talking about and which has happened at the VNA to conserve the large architectural cast of Trajan's Common. And I've chosen the title engineered iteration to describe the VMA cast in order to reference both the potentially repetitive process involved in moulding and casting and the realisation of the constructed and planned nature of this object. I also looked up potentially repetitive moulding and casting the term iteration in a moment of doubt whether I'd got the right sort of sense of the word and I really did enjoy one of these definitions that I'll share with you because I think it has some relevance to the conservation work and particularly Trajan's column is a copy. So the definition for iteration I'd like to share is it's the meaning of the repetition of a mathematical or computational procedure applied to the results of a previous application as a means of obtaining success, successively closer approximations to a solution or a problem. And I yeah I just thought I'd share that with you because I think that that is something of both the experimental preservation that is often talked about in that sphere and yeah it made sense to me and I hope it does over the talk to you. So yeah the project was unsurprisingly a completely collaborative project and it was helped, I was helped very much and supported by V&A colleagues, skilled freelance conservators particularly Chloe Stewart and Leo Crowther who were with me on the scaffold for the main part of the work and key when I look back over all the documentation in the work that was done you know they really put a lot of thought, a lot of care and time into the project and of course we had because it was a large building project refurbishment we had a lot of, we were working alongside a lot of external contractors who also were extremely helpful and skilled and really important to the project and just for some sort of frame of this talk I'm going to present it in three sections. First the context for the work, second the interrogate a little bit about the copy and then third section the actual conservation work that was able to take place and which involved the small team of us for those crucial six months where we had full scaffold access, so first slide. So the historical context is I'm not sure how well you all might know the Victorian Albert Museum but the Trajan's Column Museum is in one of the historic galleries that houses the cast collection, the past cast collection of the museum and the V&A Museum evolved initially from, I hope that's okay, I've got a sort of unstable connection. The V&A Museum evolved from a school of design formed in 1837 under the direction of Henry Cole. The school of design moved to its current site in west London in 1857 and was renamed the South Kensington Museum which is later to be called the Victorian Albert Museum. The museum rapidly expanded on the site at South Kensington with huge building projects and a vastly quickly expanding collection and part of this rapid expansion was supported by the Great Exhibition in 1851 which was just up the road from the museum and the collection of plaster cast has had a vital role in that very quick acquisition and direction of creating a collection very rapidly and so the the plaster cast may they did predate the South Kensington Museum in the School of Design as educational reference pieces for the students and they continued to have that sort of significance and role and function but also the sort of ambition that happened for the museum under Henry Cole's leadership was to rapidly increase the collection and open it to a wider public not just for art students but for the general population which at that time was quite contentious because he opened it up in the evenings and had free access so yeah there was a lot of and in fact Jorge's friend John Ruskin, is it John Ruskin? I came across the quote from him who you know was absolutely horrified that the museum was opening in the evenings and also looking at early gas lighting to facilitate that so that is the historical context and leaping into current day with the Victoria and Albert Museum over the last eight years from 2012 to 2020 there's been an enormous sort of activity around the plaster cast collection and copying with new technologies and a lot of interest globally with this sort of possibilities I guess and so yeah the key things that happened in these last eight years are the convention, the town, I'll just flip back to that, yeah so sorry I missed out one of the key points was in 1867 what really kind of accelerated the sort of exchange and acquisition of plaster cast was what they called an agreement that heads or princes of 15 countries signed up to in 1867 and Henry Cole from the V&A was a key and backed by Prince Albert was a key promoter of this and it established a convention for the promoting universally productions, reproductions of works of art for the benefit of museums of all countries so it really accelerated that whole exchange across countries and then so this had an anniversary of 150 years in 2017 so there was a lot of sort of thoughts around okay that's significant and you know sort of how would that be reinterpreted for today's reproduction and copying industry so the V&A had a period of invited sort of forums which was led very much by Brendan Cormier, one of the curators at the V&A and the publication that they at the end of this period was published in 2018 which has got a lot of the essays and the writings around this new declaration which is what the intention was and on a more mundane level the refurbishment of the galleries carried on and we moved across yeah the project that Hall Hay mentioned earlier was the one that's in the picture here and that that had smaller casts, sculptural casts, some that were built, one or two that were built into the wall and the structure of the gallery but they were mainly small-scale plaster casts which we've been involved in for two years before the opening in 2014. Another point was the V&A was invited to the Venice architectural Biennale in 2015 and that also really kind of promoted interrogating this sort of idea of copying in this digital age and that was curated jointly by Brendan and another curator who, Daniela Thorne who's moved on from the V&A but yeah so there's publication also for that that was called the exhibition was called Fragile Parts I think, Fragile Parts so there was a lot of curatorial interest a lot of sort of bringing in people from outside the museum and across the globe really who were really involved in new technologies and interrogating sort of what this copying meant today so and then in the middle of that was Hall Hay's invitation to come and do an installation so I don't know whether you've had a chance to see this piece of work and there's a really great atmospheric film that was made by Alex that I'm sure Hall Hay could send the link to that really documents the labor and the intensity and ambition of the project it was very intense because it was a sort of very clipped period of time and it's to my mind it introduced me to this notion of experimental preservation which was very exciting to have that and the curator who was part of the larger exhibition that this was part of Rory, Rory Hyde he I put his quote up there that I think you know is quite interesting for the piece that you can read at your leisure but basically he you know it really did shift a sort of you know a kind of significance and interpretation of what these objects were because I think they were still suffering a bit from the people coming into the galleries and them being fairly deceptive they you know are they real are they what are they what material are they and I think that's been addressed with the new interpretation gallery that when we finish this project that opens up and which is you know really broadening out and explaining and illustrating what and how casts were made and copies are made right up to the present day technologies so yeah so the project here was a great opportunity for me to join the team I did join it sort of after a lot of the negotiation I think it happened and Jorge had decided on the inside of one of the columns to do his insulation to construct it and then bring it out so yeah that part was done and as Jorge says I was I was sort of in a role of the V&A conservator joining the project and so I did feel I needed to to put in a few you know formal methodologies around you know sort of what might be expected of conservators and which I feel Jorge had an eye on anyway and we ended up doing some paint analysis was me the inside of the column was painted top to bottom and so we did some paint analysis that was undertaken by science in the conservation department and some good material trials on on the inside on the surfaces various sort of strengths and various latex products as well as I remember Jorge also sort of doing trials with matting to see what could possibly hold together structurally for the for the installation so that was going on and thirdly yes so with these trials internally and we were able to sort of demonstrate there was a little bit of a risk with the paint surfaces and was there an agreement of the head of sculpture at V&A you know to acknowledge though there was potential risk which he signed up to he said yes great go ahead and and so so it did go ahead and it was a yeah great great project and the one thing I did as a was involved in with during the exhibition was condition checking and I thought my worry was that it would slump and it would tear and it would get heavier and move and so I was was sort of checking the bottom the days that I was at the museum and and it did within the first week or so it it really did shift and then it sort of just settled and it didn't so so there was a sort of yeah that yeah it really endured and it was a beautiful installation and so that was really great because that we're really sort of brought to the front you know how we you know what are these objects and you know is that the inside of them you know you know are they not solid so moving on we move straight into what happened is that the second phase of the cast court and which which sits between the years 2016 to 2018 and we were facing this sculpture consolation studio which at the end there was five of us at the time you know they really recognized that we would be challenged by this project one because of the scale of the objects there were 15 very large architectural casts that were built into the fabric of the the gallery and among among a further huge number of casts with lots yeah so the scale was looked to be an immediate issue and the lack of any records of these objects which seemed to suggest no conservation work had been undertaken on any of them and the existing documentation system that we had at the vna i think i'm right in saying the sculpture studio at that stage didn't have any way of digitizing you know we weren't producing digitized condition reports or surveys and we were working on acetate sheets with permanent pens and supported by photographs so there was a lot of discussion and looking into how would how would we tackle that element of the documentation the surveys and the records so which moves us on to the next slide so i just quickly this section i just want to give a little bit of precise the journey of how the copy the iteration that we have came to us just to say i did take the lead for the conservation of this project and was joined by Chloe and Leo's freelance conservators so that was the team for this although it's supported very much by studio members as well so the the treasure treasure's column is the marble column in Rome carved low relief helical freeze and that was carved to commemorate the two campaigns of emperatration into Dacia which is current day Romania and that that's the original and Napoleon III in 1861 commissioned molds to be taken and two copies to be made by a local Italian cast casting workshop called Malpieri's in Rome and this was executed this picture on your left on the screen is the taken from the plus cast we have that you know sort of confirms that date of that particular intervention of casting it and the great historic photo from that was given to us by Andrea Felici in Italy who runs a casting workshop and is still very committed to the industry and that shows you the scaffold in the yeah at the time of the molds so that's the so two two plaster cast sets were made one stayed in Rome and one went to Paris and once they were in Paris Napoleon decided he would like it electroplated to so he could exhibit it outside because plus cast is not a externally robust material so he gave the task to a guy Leopold Audre operating in Paris who and I quote it was an ingenious and enterprising industrialist he had been doing known for smaller small electrotypes and you can see here this that's the sort of scale I think that's some lamp posts that he was doing sort of urban furniture on quite a large scale but the scale of Trajan's column was really going to challenge him however he did pull it off and he also brought out a couple of patents that seem to be associated possibly with that moment of him finding a way of casting the panels and one of the patents around the time that he was electroplating the the column was a patent for a an oil based protective coat that could be applied to different materials and so we're not quite it's likely that the in the process the gut percher modes were taken from the past cast the past positives and that would be the normal sort of way of process and these will be coated with a protective conductive layer and immersed in a galvanic bath in order to collect a thin regular layer of copper deposited by electrolysis which is sort of what you're seeing in that etching so that that went that happened with great success and was completed in 1865 in Paris no sorry it was it was completed 1862 3 1865 is the date when all the copper the electrotypes the the electro plates of the column were put on six wooden drums like the one you see here on display still at the national archaeological museum in san german on lay so 1865 was when they all went on on display at the Louvre but somewhere before that the vna had expressed an interest in 70 of the the panels so the understanding is that the electrotype the electrotype panels went to a further workshop run by abel matra who was a well known sculpture sculptor from the Louvre and was very much involved in the museum of national antiquities that Napoleon had set up in 1862 which took moulds from archaeological digs and different european museums so he was well versed with casting and moulding and he took the electrotypes and made moulds and cast the plaster positives for a set of 70 panels which were sent to the vna in 1864 so that so that's when we received the first section of our cast and that was displayed in in the north court which was a gallery that predated the cast courts um and yeah so the the the the complete set were quickly followed and they arrived at the vna in 1871 and were installed in the gallery in the new gallery which is what we're terming the cast court now is in 1874 and we know that because there is a very prominent um there's there's the um yeah sorry I should have shifted quickly to this one because that explains it really well um so there we see the brick chimneys that were built to support the panels and we see the what was moved out was de-installed from the other gallery the first 70 panels um that were the first to arrive in in the vna and that that they've been fixed already to to the uh what one of the brick chimneys um just to say quickly so the the structure of of the um support um are two brick chimneys and we're just going to we call yeah this column one and the one behind it column two so the column one is the base and it's got the square pedestal at the bottom um and then that rises up cuts off at 20 meters and then the second section that in reality would sit on top uh is a further 15 meters um so the the installation seemed to happen over a period of eight uh three or four years um and it was a group of these royal engineers who have inscribed their names on here um yeah uh so two brick chimneys and the methods of fixing that we found out was um different for both that um they seem to bed the panels directly onto the brick columns for this first uh column that you see in the historic photo and then on the second um it seems like they were dry fitted onto timber work that was on the outside but on the outside of the um the brick work um so that's as we progressed with the project that that also was um just one of the sort of inconsistencies and the differences between the different parts of the uh of of the column actually so um just to say quickly what else um yeah methods of fixing were different on on the um this column uh in in the historic photo they'd be bedded onto the brick and then had masonry nails um just holding them uh from slipping uh keying them in and um in and on the other column there was um more screws going through the front into the um the timbers and a dry space um between the back of the panel and the column the uh brick work um so there's over 500 plaster sections and uh mostly numbered uh and which is quite interesting I think for people to see and read um so moving on from there we had the gallery filled with the scaffold um and 10 levels in all to reach the the scaffold was purposed for the the refurbishment to reglaze the um reglaze the ceiling do redecoration of the polychromy in the paints scheme in the gallery um and uh we fitted into that sort of schedule really so um the conservation priorities um so it in the lead up to it it was it was sort of it was significant that it was a building project because um conservation didn't have the initiative couldn't initiate um those larger sort of decisions around schedules and um resourcing to some degree um so we we were in the sort of reactive position and um um the priorities therefore um we had six six months to with complete access and then we would lose that so the the priorities um that seemed to you know really come up as as important were to be able to record materials and condition inside and out uh because we that nothing existed for it uh we wanted to trial and investigate the materials on the columns and um we also wanted to trial you know our materials for interventions and we wanted to undertake remedial conservation work and um I suppose largely um I saw it as as a phase of work that would hopefully be followed by other phases of conservation work so um and this picture on the right is is the sort of breakdown of um you know where the platforms the um left the scaffold uh intersected what we were what we were working from um so so we had um a team of um rope axis um conservators from Sally Strachey Historic Conservation um who arrived for one day in March and um for an inspection of the and assessment of the condition and then they came back in June for a week to do um vacuum clean of the insides of both and localize stabilization and more to work but the essentially the the uh structure was in good shape um it was a great opportunity we got some great um uh detailed photographs which may possibly have been taken by uh Chloe or Leo and or Leo because they were escorted down on ropes as well as part of the um June work which was great um um and uh yeah so we've got some uh great detail um here of the um column two where you get so we're looking from the inside to the back of the panel which is scored and then you get this timber um in between the back of the panel in the the brick um sometimes the gap between the back of the panel and the brick was up to 17 centimeters so it's sort of fairly various and it obviously helped in some ways to give a sort of scope and some tolerance in in when they were fitting the panels um the the heavily bricked one the aperture below it is the um looking at the back of the cast uh through from the inside of the uh column one to the outside um so yes very efficient and made a lot of sense the rope access because they they uh the the two cast courts have got a great uh Victorian iron structure above uh that could be tied you know ropes could be tied off but I think they possibly might have used the scaffold as well to tie off their ropes but uh there's a lot of potential there really for that um and so some stability so the the other thing that we were aware of because of this sort of big activity around new technologies of copying was um uh and the uh function of the column in a way there was a great interest in in this narrative and the carving and the detail on it and um so one of the things we were able to do was a quick pilot study um partly because there's a very uh skilled photographer in the VNA called George X to uh is an art it has an art practice and works for the word and image department and he was really interested in in getting as many photos so he he used the photogrammetry technique and then we were um supported by Carina from University Brighton who bought a scanner a scanner up from the University and worked through doing some scanning um and this um this section here is is George's on the right on your sort of right the the the darker one and is George's 3D model of the section that we were able to do um and I I suppose it was just taking advantage of this um access and it was also um a good key to finding out what the challenges might be in in capturing the data and estimating you know the data for storage um so hopefully that will be helpful to have on record and you know if ever there was a opportunity to for that to happen um and then the other just keeping in mind the other the other thing um that I felt was really important was uh how are we going to you know for conservation how are we going to sort of um photograph and keep uh good consistent photographs so we were able we were supported in in having a short contract for a good photographer Carlos who came and he he took very systematic good photos um after conservation and um he so what so what we have is a consistent set of raw images and then on each level of the uh the scaffold he he stitched the the image on the left we can see is he stitched um these photos together and so for one level we'll have a series of four connecting photographs and and the the plan is to make a sort of numbered grid that we can um have for conservation records um future work but also to have that publicly accessible for people who are interested I mean they're a great resolution of photographs and um you know while we were working we would never have been able to achieve that without that um without Carlos providing that so we're very lucky to have those um so uh where are we going yes and our external surveys so we did try and digitize and we ended up uh all trying uh working with Photoshop and um the yeah so um so we stitched images that we were taken in the gallery before the scaffold happened and we were able to sort of use those we got um up to 20 different uh uh criteria that we were recording uh we were trying to record both material and um uh deterioration issues um and treatment we so we used these also to overlay treatments so with those little um numbers you can see on the right uh uh sites where we've uh done stabilization or corrosion treatments on on metal bars um so quite a lot of information and I think it works reasonably well um so our deterioration patterns that came to light were soiling cracking metal corrosion um instability plaster of metal low um water damage um salt activity polychromy um sort of layering of uh paint layers and weathering of them um some alteration of the discoloration so quite a lot going on um and then we for our remedial treatments we uh we obviously had to be fairly clear about the fact that we only had the resources and the time to do remedial treatments and um so we but we had a set quite a full set of um uh activities to do and um they're listed there um so just digging a little bit deeper we've got some magnificent work of Chloe's um um these are um one of the insides that we've chosen some of um and too is it clean with uh or alternatives can we use materials can we use without uh the uh paint layers you know although we you know our understanding was growing sort of as we went um we decided on um uh a dry cleaning uh vacuuming and using wish abs and smoke sponges uh so in that way we could have some control some sort of uh consistency between the two uh columns that were seen to be quite different in the materials they had and their construction and um uh yeah so the cleaning was decided to be a dry clean uh it's an example of the different paint layers that uh in places we couldn't really understand why they were there uh but suspected they may you know was there a loss of paint there or were they a sort of consolidating uh or an artistic um intervention um we sort of held the question for many months I'm still not sure uh and this is very interesting we were we more and more we were aware of this sort of spotting uh throughout both columns actually but much more um evident on the column one towards the base and uh we did have that analyzed and they were seemed to be spots of copper which seems seems to relate really to the uh fact that the the molds for our casts were were taken from the electro plates the copper plates in Paris so um so that's what we're going with at the moment but uh who knows uh then we also had some possibilities a limited possibilities actually for um laboratory analysis um uh we have some we had um not full want of um trying or wanting to be available it was just the um themes there being in science were very under pressure and um however we we got uh cross sections done some FTI are and um so we got some began to get some information about what materials were in these layers um and we also had the opportunity to do send uh some samples a few samples to a lab in Earthfoot in Germany uh because they had slightly different um possibilities uh to look at uh organic um materials um so it was what still is sort of unclear really is because of the size of uh trade the the the cast um you take tiny samples and it's hard to see them as fully representative of the whole thing so what we did get from Earthfoot um is the idea that there was definitely oil uh and wax and the white paint there and um there is this term of lithopon which is a very popular uh paint used uh late 1800s um so quite a lot of materials to look at and um it really uh is about okay so how are those materials now how are they characterized and how will are they behaving in relationship to the location and the other elements that are going on the environmental in elements conditions in the gallery and um various treatments and interventions also uh we had no compositional um work done on the plaster um so we don't know what was yeah what traces there were in the actual plaster either so that's an indication of the sort of levels of soiling um and um we were aware that some areas were heavily soiled and there was a sort of cementation um which can build up um particularly um with fibers um on horizontal levels um also if you've got salts and sugars um in the materials around then they do apparently bind a lot deeper and unfortunately I'm where where are you getting heavy soiling we were also aware that um there was some weathering and uh absence of polychromy so um yeah they um so if yeah I mean it's sort of well it was important to sort of uh I feel that um the levels of the cleaning we didn't uh do a hugely an interventative clean and um possibly um um the layers of dirt may you know that we didn't remove uh if we had removed them we would have exposed the weathered uh more vulnerable surface so um that's uh it um and we get cracking I'm overrunning sorry Jorge a bit of crack well lots of cracking the pattern for the cracking was essentially there was uh cracking along the edges of the panels sort of vertical and horizontally throughout both columns and um uh fortunately the rope axis was able to sort of see that there was really good stability in the brickwork so it those cracks weren't didn't seem to to relate to the internal structure and um it seems possibly they are shrinkage cracks from the joints the material in the joints which was sort of more vulnerable than the solid panels and then we get the embedded iron erosion of the embedded iron all the panels were had um square bar strips sort of almost framing them but embedded uh in the plaster some were very close to the edges of the panels uh some were very close to the front surface and these were cracking a series of cracking and pushing away and um loss there we are there's a picture of loss of uh what that corrosion has done and there's some uh work in progress in the middle one with Chloe's um uh what handy work about to happen so we we were stabilizing grouting and treating the visible corrosion um and there's the future so we need to continue with further um material characterization uh particularly for the corrosion and soiling and yeah and we have done a little bit of uh acoustic emissions uh uh yeah um with a colleague who who uh we we did uh gather data for a week uh looking at the cracking you know sort of whether it was responding to RH but we're still looking at that data and watch the space and um yeah I think it's all there and uh I'm sorry I've sort of over gone so thank you very much for listening and uh here we are thank you Sarah wonderful presentation really appreciate the the level of detail at which you took us and also the broad frame that you presented to us to understand this um the the context for the conservation work that happened so we have some time for Q and A and since we are um an intimate group I'm going to encourage anybody that wants to ask a question or anybody indeed that wants to just turn on their camera to ask a question rather than go through the cumbersome process of me having to read your questions off of the chat uh you can just you know raise your hand and you know there's the or you can just turn on your your computer so as you all think about your questions uh for Sarah um uh I of course was just fascinated by this whole process Sarah and I'll just get started with some with some thoughts that maybe you can expand upon a little bit and that has to do with the difference that you pointed to between the two sections of the columns um so you made a case that these were two different casting campaigns if I understood correctly that they came to the museum at different times the two sections of the column correctly well um it's um all all I've got so far is a bit of archival sort of work about the sort of timings of them but certainly we received the lower section which was 70 panels we received that um at least four years uh before the rest and uh they were on display in one of the other galleries so we believe they were under different conditions um they they were cast by the same workshop so it's likely that they were possibly you know had the same treatment and uh were made in the same way but they did have at least um almost 10 years just under 10 years in a different location in in the museum and um there was great improvements and interest uh in the building of the cast courts to look at ventilation and heating and um you know that possibly wasn't there with the other cast so yeah there was certainly a difference with that section from the rest of the shaft and then from the uh one section to the other uh there was definitely I think in terms of I mean the rest of the column the panels arrived um together and they're likely to have been from the same workshop because one of the really interesting things that you raise is that okay this is supposed to read as one column even though it's split down the middle and of course if in the process of conservation you change the color of one and one is lighter than the other or darker than the other then they're not going to read as one column so you you were facing this fundamental problem of making these two separate physical pieces kind of integrate within the context of of the visual experience of the visitor uh and that to me is very interesting that kind of you know um uh uh aesthetic anticipation of the work and and um so I was I wanted you to reflect on that a little bit more because it seems to me that um you did very little to the to the actual scope to the actual cast right you you you you did some remedial work you call it um but um and you mentioned well we were constrained by time you know we weren't in charge of the the scaffolding we had to get it done including and so on and so forth limited means you know this is a typical project in other words for for architects uh in architectural projects is always about you know how long can you afford that scaffolding up and how much money do you have and so there's no luxury to bring the painting into the into the lab and have it sit there for years you're you're on a you're on a time schedule but let's imagine for a moment a kind of counterfactual history where you had all the money in the world and all the time in the world um to work on these columns I'm going to call them columns because there's two although we're mentally supposed to put them together would you think about what you would do on them differently in terms of their color and did you see you know would you for example clean them both um and see what what and then take a step back and see what they look like and then apply something to them would you consider an application of some sort to them to even out the color I mean I know and you had done a bunch of research on the use of original patination and kind of coloration techniques on the plaster and linseed oil was applied to them and different kinds of things so would you consider that application of a surface to the to the column in a conservation campaign or would you again in a in a complete um you know ideal world would you would you feel that it would be more appropriate to only stabilize and remove or clean what is damaged so with all the time in the world I think there would there would be an order of priorities one would be the corrosion and the ones that were sort of actively working on the column and the form and the surface you know because they they have a risk you know and the corrosion was one of those you know serious risks and I think things like the cracking I think we would probably prioritize work on that to close up you know ingress of dust and moisture possibly and so yeah there would be sliding sort of scale and certainly there would be some really serious characterization and materials because I think I I suppose what what what may be a little bit deceptive in those images that I showed is is that I mean when you're standing in the gallery I don't think the aesthetic uh difference is is visible in some ways but when you're up close um like we were trying to understand okay what materials have we got on on the surfaces um you know you start to see the multiple layers and um the differences you know of behavior of the materials so I think for the spectator the aesthetic um and it might have been a little bit deceptive in those photographs the aesthetic wasn't didn't you know isn't isn't visibly apparent I don't think but um I I mean I've never really taken the aesthetic very um as the uh important issue but but you know it absolutely is there but it's it's it's um it's not one I I um give much time to actually tell me more about that what why is it that for you the aesthetics is not at the core? I don't know actually I don't know I I suppose it's uh yeah I mean for Trajan's column the um um you know the complexity of what we saw is quite active um deterioration was the uh what held our attention mostly really um but the the interesting thing is I mean there can there is a there was a difference between the two sections but within within the columns there was also you know vast sort of inconsistencies and um it was quite interesting to in conversation with one of the decorators who was there um for the refurbishment and he said oh yeah no that's um that's a scumble that's a scumble it's a it's a term for um how um decorators mix oil and and wax and pigment and to give um an appearance of stone so you get you don't get these contiguous paint layers but you get a sort of uh mixed effect a painted effect so I don't know that that's uh also a question scumble scumble that's the term scumble and would that effect have been put on after the pieces were assembled together in other words that would have been the kind of final finishing touch at the vna or were or were they treated prior to arrival um I think it would be one of uh once they were installed because it was a sort of contiguous over the gap fill and the joints and the and um uh what was I going to say yes and no one we did get sick we did find signatures that very definitely uh indicated that there was um uh interventions serious interventions um there was a cleaning phase in the 1920s I think throughout the gallery 1920s 1929 there was a signature on the column um and again in 1950s I mean it's sort of there were phases of redecoration in the gallery and it's probably not a surprise that they uh would have had some impact on the on the columns but so I did notice I've got one of the uh great conservators in the chat room could we could ask her about the uh what she thinks to the um uh paint layers by army she's called she's called Chloe Chloe are you there are you still with us I am I'm still here yes ah and I showed all your lovely photos of the solubility tests and uh did you hear Jorge's question about the aesthetic and difference between the two columns and the paint layers and I did I mean in terms of when we were working on on the columns in terms of the sort of solubility tests they were um we kind of established a broad pattern in terms of spectrum to solubility and on column one with the base um the 20 meter column the polychromy or all the coatings and the layers were predominantly water soluble and then on column two they were it was far more complex they seemed to be solubil and almost all the solvents we trialed actually and I think it was is it column two Sarah that you were thinking of that was more of a scumble approach in terms of the decorative schema and the way the paint has been applied um no it was the other one it was the sort of the grays and the the ochres that I felt were more apparent on the column one that's sort of I wondered whether they might fit into that did I mean do you Chloe do you have a strong aesthetic uh sense of what you would have done if we'd had limitless time and would that have been a priority for you um not from an aesthetic point of view I mean I think it was really important although the cleaning was subtle and and of course we were working within you know a number of constraints um it did make a significant difference and I think there was a priority on trying to make sure that the panels could be read clearly and with such a large object yes spending over such a great height yeah not really fantastic lighting a lot of attention paid to lighting with this second phase I think that um it's easy to get lost when you're working up close on such a big object but I think the cleaning did make a significant difference although it was it was it was just dry cleaning so from that sense aesthetically I mean that was a priority for me making sure that the object could really be read and that the detail could be brought out and um yeah that was a priority I mean I think you know in terms of applying coating or protective layer in a sense that would have been not appropriate perhaps in this instance um because probably because the objects are just so complex in terms of their their layer and their history and also perhaps in terms of a level of the scale of intervention that would have um entailed applying a coating I think and also perhaps that it's what isn't wasn't necessary um although the objects had sort of been significantly damaged over the years through various leaks from the roof from the enormous glass roof um so there were consistent patterns as we were doing our condition survey of areas of damage down the east side of the column and the west side of the column um where water had run down the plaster cast and and where you know huge amounts of detail had been lost um and that was I mean that was the fantastic thing about the project wasn't it really sorrow but having that length of time to be up close on a scaffold I think it's the first time it'd been scaffolded out in that way since one of the doors back in 1854 so it allowed the unique community to establish patterns on you know micro and macro so I have one more question and then I there's one question from Norman that I'm going to turn the microphone over to him but Sarah would you mind going back to that one slide of the date that that says 1861 Rome um uh that's on the column yes I'm trying now let's what's happened how do I go back to that um yeah I'm not sure what's all right but maybe you are screen sharing um yeah I'm trying to go I'm just going to get some technical support if it's uh if it's too hard but it's a circle right it's it's inside of a circle yes no I know it yes and how do I get back to and is it um is it the case that that was an infill from a um I mean it the the column has these damages that seemed to me to be like uh cannonball strikes well you know um there was some great thanks Roger which way are we going up yeah there's a cannonball yes well so um there is some uh the thing that I read that these were actually um they were actually um original to the marble construction and they were somehow pegs they were pegs of possibly lead that joined the marble drums because the the whole column the original yeah the does that make sense I don't know I'm just gonna see so for example on here can you see my cursor you've got one here yeah exactly uh and they're not they're not regular I mean the wind the the apertures go regularly up straight but these appear um fairly irregularly but and um but yeah I did I didn't I haven't followed it up but I think I did read that they were plugs because the the original had a series of 19 solid marble uh drums and uh they carved the spiral spiral steps inside and then they carved the um the relief and then they went on top of each other and I think these were somehow um uh plugs to stop them shifting just what interests me about is maybe not so much what what was there before but the fact that the fact that there was something missing was the place where previous I'm gonna call them conservators that made right um introduce their yes a bit of information a date a place sometimes a name you know where the hand of the conservator shows more obviously than than than less and certainly in the work of conservation one is always um or for the most part um trying to not show one's hand but to let go itself and I'm curious about these moments when the conservators decide to take that take that step into asserting their presence and their hand in the history of the object and you mentioned it several times that there were all these dates that were introduced go up you can see them and so did you sign the column did you put a date did you introduce a uh uh your own register within this campaign these these kind of several campaigns did you leave a visit on the actual object um yeah well we found um we found a lot of time capsules in a lot of the large objects that um are a way that um some people who are working on them do leave some quite interesting time capsules of various things um we did get signatures um I suppose um yeah no I I haven't done that and I I I sort of feel um you know we've got all these sort of um parallel parallel worlds because we've sort of formed this this whole um you know other um documentation and other sort of object through documentation I suppose that's that's our juror so we we've we've you know created these these uh kind of yeah parallel documents that are the object now but as well um I see so that's where I mean yeah it's also interesting on there that we're getting the uh that's a panel number above it the two one six so you know that relates to the next uh casting because that I couldn't see those on the electro plates so they must belong to our uh set of casts yeah that's that's fascinating yeah there's a sort of layering of it accumulates all these levels of information within it yes um I'm going to turn it over to Norman who had a question yes just a just a quick question if you could comment a little bit more on the composition of the plaster itself um was it a pure gypsum plaster was there any filler at all in it with their fiber reinforcements that you hadn't commented on so far or other things that you found well um hello Norman uh are you are you up um so yeah we had no um opportunity to do any compositional work on the plaster um I I think that would be great in uh in the next phase and so there was nothing visible um added to the plaster in terms of fiber um and um um I guess what we uh the reinforcement that we did see very visibly was the uh iron bar uh that was embedded in in the plaster panels or you know to structurally support them um uh what else um yeah we're we're not sure whether there was uh additives in the plaster fine yeah do you do you have uh an interest in gypsum some experience of gypsum in plasters in general if you have some samples that you can spare you might send one over to us great maybe we can help you on this are you are you a colleague of uh Jorge's I am I am indeed oh great okay and of many people and of many that you work within London um Jennifer Dinsmore for example Vanessa yes um yes Abby I've worked with the Sally Strayche team at the tower wow yes unfortunately not flying anywhere these days but I usually I usually come over many times a year fantastic well yes when you can do you know make sure you come to us at the uh V&A of course of course and if you find a piece of plaster send it along to Jorge thank you but I mean all we we I do know that it's a really complex uh material and and you know even colleagues who've worked in uh wall painting uh conservation you know feel it's a really under published sort of element aspect to uh conservation anyone who's you know kind of got the courage to really uh look at gypsum do you feel that is that your understanding as well I agree and by the time this was done in the middle of the 19th century there were a lot of tricks to working with gypsum plastered it wasn't just yeah the ordinary stuff and and in addition to accelerators and retarders they were partners and surface treatments that we are just beginning to understand now yeah uh there's a question from James James go ahead okay I cannot meet myself hello nice to meet you I am another fellow brett so it's great to see the work that the V&A is doing over there before lockdown last summer so you know it's a great institution thank you for all your work um okay so I had a quick question about you talked about the corrosion and I'm assuming you're talking about the iron bar which you just mentioned uh when you're talking about rusting or you're talking about other corrosion and what are your plans to stabilize it um that's going to be probably a difficult decision and I was wondering you know when you're considering you know more advanced processes maybe like lasers or were you thinking simply chemical kind of decisions or what what what were you thinking about that yeah no no a really significant question I'll just go back to those I know we're going the wrong way um yeah so these those are the uh embedded iron bars in each panel um and the uh treatment we did so there's one up to the right um and so what what's we treatment we did do was um we used tonic we did a very sort of light touch really of what was visible um and uh used tonic acid to um stabilize the the uh convert the um the corrosion and then we put a layer of um uh paroid b44 over as a protective layer yeah I saw the tonic acid I was wondering if that was uh yes that's all we uh that's all we we did this time around and we stabilized around it we didn't um uh fill and cover them um partly uh I guess the decision was that that I felt throughout the project we only had a partial understanding so uh you know it wasn't necessarily our decisions weren't necessarily all about you know or not having enough time they were also about only having a partial understanding for a lot of these materials so um but I think uh at the end of the project um you know that would have been something I probably uh you know I do regret that we didn't cover them because it seems to relate yeah it seems that you know where where it's sprawling and cracking and uh pushing the plaster off you know they're they're sort of within a millimeter to four millimeters cover over that corrosion so it's it's it would be helped as a support I think not only the uh kind of protective layer of resin and leaving them as that but having also sort of material physical cover to them so um uh yeah I mean so in terms of sort of long-term treatment I mean one of the things we were interested in looking at is is using acoustic emissions to monitoring to find out what's you know what is happening and how active is the cracking um and I understand that acoustic emission monitoring you can really kind of uh you're aware of it before you can see it you know it's a very sensitive the Getty bought out quite a nice um um publication or they've been doing a lot of work on it so I think that would be a good way to go I don't know do you have any uh experience of treatments for corrosion that yeah I mean I've just so I've just um so I'm part of the program uh I graduated this year and I'm working for a metalwork conservator just north of Philadelphia right now but I'm I'm uh I talk a lot to David Watkins at Cardiff who you probably know and um I'm not sure if you're aware of him but he's the expert in corrosion on iron work in the UK um so I've been discussing a few things with him and they've done a lot of work on corrosion in iron so and he's not attached to Columbia um but um I just yeah Cardiff University oh okay thanks so they do a lot of the corrosion work uh out of the UK uh for the universities um but no I was just curious because there's a lot of talk about corrosion inhibitors and there's so many different options uh and it must be so difficult to choose which one but uh definitely I would say um testing for audio or testing the audio I should say uh sounds very interesting way of at least you know much like you know testing for cracks sounds uh like a good way to go yeah and I think I think you can see in these photos there there was some residue of coatings uh on on them and there was there there was some sampling and uh it seemed to be a zinc coating that was applied at some stage to the eye um and having said that actually I have uh we I did get in touch with something called David Farrell who uh is very keen on the um cathodic um treatment for corrosion you know where you you yeah while yeah so uh but um kind of not really appropriate for this because they don't as far as we can see that the bars don't link up but I mean I I'm not sure how that would look that might be an aesthetic uh issue there Jorge if we wired it all up let's uh I really would well Sarah I just want to thank you James yes thank you so much for for your great lecture thank you for bringing us into this amazing uh project which is only the tip of the iceberg of course in in your practice and to share your knowledge with us today so so really um deep gratitude from all of us for for for participating in the lecture series and bringing your expertise and sharing it with us so thank you so much thanks okay