Műtárgyvédelem, 2012-2013 (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum)
16. századi, festett és aranyozott bőrrel borított nyereg restaurálása
Kozák Brigitta • 16. századi, festett és aranyozott bőrrel borított nyereg restaurálása Conservation of a 16,h-century saddle covered with painted and gilded leather Brigitta Kozák The elaborately ornamented saddle belongs to the Weapons Collection at the Hungarian National Museum. It was first published in Wendelin Boeheim’s Handbuch der Waffenkunde (Leipzig, 1890). Featuring a drawing of the artefact, this work says that the saddle was made at the beginning of the 16th century, and that it belonged to Emperor Maximilian I. The object in question is a so-called Oriental-type saddle. X-ray investigation showed that the base was constructed from wooden elements fixed together with wooden rivets. The base was strengthened with untanned skin stretched tightly over the wooden elements and then fastened. Finally, the saddle was covered with vegetable-tanned leather dyed a bright cherry red and decorated with painted black- and-gold decorative motifs. Both the front and the back pommels were painted with shell gold, and were decorated with carving and punching. The presence of gold was proved by means of XRF spectrometry. Signs of intense wear could be observed on the artefact. Damage, too, was visible. The leather had hardened and had split into layers; also, it had shrunk, with the loss of its earlier shape. Under both the pommel and the cantle, the original seams were torn completely; in some other places, they were torn partly. The covering was originally trimmed with a leather strip all round. There were many smaller gaps in this strip, and also a larger one, 30 cm long, at the back. The leather had been overgreased during an earlier conservation, when certain repairs, too, had been carried out. The glue employed for the earlier patching had weakened with age. The entire surface was encrusted with a combination of dust and the fat used earlier. After the documentation had been attended to and the preliminary analyses performed, the object was cleaned both mechanically and with a solvent emulsion containing isopropyl alcohol, which had no deleterious effect on the colour. The out-of-shape and shrunken areas were made smooth by means of humidification using Sympatex semi-permeable membrane. This enabled the torn edges to be fitted together and fixed on a support using a 2:1 mixture of rice starch and PVA dispersion. After consolidation of the holes for them, the torn stitches were mended using the original two-needles sewing technique. The missing areas of trimming were replaced with vegetable-tanned goatskin coloured with a metal-complex dyestuff. The pattern was retouched with shell gold, again using the original technique. A szerző cime/Author's address: Kozák Brigitta Papír-bőr restaurátor művész/Paper and leather conservator MA Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 14-16. E-mail: kozak.brigi@gmail.com 81
