On the left, you can see that she was in a very bad state when I first saw her (sorry about the photo). Her right arm was smashed to pieces and her left arm, which does exist was not attached in this photo, She also had an attempted repair to her right arm using some kind of flexible mastic which was painted over in a very basic fashion.
Right, the makers mark which has eluded me at every page that I have read through about marks.
I have come to a dead end, any help would be greatly appreciated. Click image for a larger picture.
Upon seeing her in this state I took upon myself to get her back to a stable state. So the journey began.
After transporting her back to my studio at home (which is up 3 flights of stairs. She weighs roughly 40kgs) I had a proper look at the damage.
Left, you can see that her left arm had been snapped off at some point. Thankfully this was a clean break and fairly easy to repair.
Right, you can see the damage in better detail to her right arm. This was after I had removed the flexible mastic and taking a chunk out of my own hand in the process
Left, is left arm (with the clean break) and various other pieces of the right arm, complete with weird pins that I knew nothing about the function of, yet...
Now, during this process of reassembling this messy puzzle, I received a phone call from one of the owners of this piece stating that they had found something that looked like it belonged to the sculpture. Two metal bars that looked as though they sat on her shoulders as a yoke for bearing baskets of some sort. I wish they had found it before I had done this to what I thought was a non functional bit of damage.....
Left, at the base of her hair you can see where I had plastered over the hole thinking it was damage done over the years. I was wrong.
Also you can see the basic filling and re sculpturing that I had started for the right arm.
Above photo, you can see her with her fully reattached arms and the work that I have done to the rest of the sculpture. Dings and chips everywhere. Front piece of dress smashed, chips on the base and in the hair and some smashed fingers added in just for fun, not. She's a pretty big sculpture, standing at about 3ft 3 in oldschool, 100cms in metric and as stated before, about 40 kgs.
Now for the fun of colour matching about 5 different coloured oxides. Oxides are what I presumed they are due to their matte nature in their finishing. I have a neat technique that uses baby powder to recreate the finish, but you never read that, and shh, don't tell anyone.
Above photo,you can see the extent of the damage done to the back of her. I can estimate that during the course of her life that at one point she was carrying baskets and someone had pulled down or filled said baskets and smashed all the housing (in her hair) to smithereens. Finding the way that the yoke fittings naturally sat was a complete nightmare and I wish this upon no one else.You can also see both arms have been undercoated with a rough colour match.
In this photo (above) you can see the way that I have re sculptured the hair, the housing channel and part of her left shoulder. I followed the underlying paint marks for the flow of the hair and just went with it. I had no photographic references for any of this work and I hope that I haven't made adjustments that far off from the original mark for the integrity of this sculpture.
Hair finished. Looking good, now to finish the rest of the colour matches all over the piece.....
Finished colour match for arms, yokes, hair and gold. The base was filled and colour matched as well. I am am pretty happy with the final results.
A long process of a couple of weeks but I think the final result is pretty in line with the way she was originally. Hopefully she will be around for another couple of hundred years or so and be enjoyed by future generations or by an owner that falls in love with her like I did.
Thanks for dropping by and having a read about the processes of restorations, drop by again next time for a new adventure. Cheers from me, Cahl.
