Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
Pages - 91
with vegetable tanned, coloured thin calfskin from the grain side. (Picture 10.) In areas where even large portions of the flesh side were missing replacements were prepared from the flesh side of the calfskin. As adhesive a mixture of rice starch and poly(vinyl-acetate) dispersion (Planatol BB) was used. The missing kneecap was cut out of cowhide and tried to 12. The seam seen from the inside make it look similar to the original by coloring, rubbing and graining. The torn pieces of the upper were glued together by supporting them with calfskin. Finally the pieces were sewn together following the original stitch traces. Originally the gaiters were sewn together from the inside in an “unbuttoned” condition. The buttoning loops and the piece with the buttonholes however, were too weak to endure buttoning. Another difficulty was that the gaiters were very tight, so the original sewing method couldn’t be used. We had to sew “blindly” from the inside, so we left the thread loose and tightened each stitch one-by-one with tweezers. (Picture 12., 13.) This was a very risky procedure, as the already very weak leather couldn’t endure the tightening very well and stitches were very close to each other. For this reason we had to leave the thread somewhat looser than it must have been done originally in order to avoid damaging the leather. Originally the buttoning loops were run through small holes to the inside of the gaiters and were fixed with stitches there. The kind of stitch used did not penetrate the leather completely, so it was not seen on the outside (Picture 11.). We couldn't use the original holes for securing the loops as they were ripped and we didn’t want to weaken the leather with new holes. Since the flaps were still very stable and it was not possible to remove them without damaging the leather we decided not to sew or glue here at all. Instead we made new loops to replace the ones missing or in very bad condition. For the left gaiter from the bottom up loops 5 and 6 were replaced and on the right gaiter loops 1,3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 were replaced. The straps under the knee were in very bad condition. The surface was wetted with fatty liquor12 using a tampon and the peeling layer was glued back. Since it was not possible to determine original sizes, we prepared a reconstructed piece based on the fragments we had. A horizontal cut indicated the original closing, so we made a leather button for the 13. Tightening the long and reconstructed piece taking the button from the loose seams using tweezers 91
