Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 94. (Budapest, 2001)
DÁGI, MARIANNA - SIPOS, ENIKŐ: Report on the Conservation of Coptic Textiles in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1999-2000)
REPORT ON THE CONSERVATION OF COPTIC TEXTILES IN THE DEPARTMENT OF GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITIES (1999-2000) RESULTS The restoration program of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities 1 continued in the year 1999-2000 with the conservation of the Coptic textile collection. The textiles had been subjected to sustained damage by the far from optimal conditions of storage in which they had been previously kept. 2 Their degeneration cannot be halted, only slowed; rapid intervention was therefore imperative. Restoration was also made urgent by the progress of renovations in what is to be the sixth display gallery of the antique exhibition, the Doric Hall, where the Coptic artefacts will find a home. The restoration, therefore, apart from conserving the textiles as long as possible, aimed also to put them into a condition in which they could be exhibited. The first three textile fragments were restored by Enikő Sipos, Restorer-in-Chief of the Hungarian National Museum, on a volunteer basis in the summer of 1998 for the special temporary exhibition entitled "The Hunting Centaur". The larger part (almost 150 pieces) of the ca. 180-piece Coptic textile collection was conserved in 1999 by Enikő Sipos, Katalin Z. Fikó, restorer at the Hungarian National Museum, and Katalin E. Nagy, Restorer-in-Chief at the Museum of Applied Arts. The costs of the program were covered with the financial support of the National Cultural Fund and the Cultural Heritage Ministry. 3 Twenty-three new pieces purchased over the course of the year 2000 were conserved by Katalin E. Nagy and Enikő Sipos; the work was funded by the Museum of Fine Arts. A proper method of storage and conservation for the textiles has not, up to now, been developed. The constant relocation of the Collection caused by the Museum's renovation program made the creation of permanent storage facilities for the textiles impossible; hence a solution - at least partial - to this problem was one of the aims of We owe thanks to the Museum of Applied Arts for permitting use of photographs of textiles in their collection mentioned in this article. 1 The restoration of a complete body of the Collection's material became possible first in the 1990s. On the restoration of the antique marble sculptures (1993-1997), see Á. M. Nagy - J. Varga - M. Tóth et al., BullMusHongrBA 86 (1997) pp. 25^1. 2 See, in greater detail, E. Sipos' article. 3 Number of NKA grant application: 081599-03/1999. The file number of the grant application to the NKÖM is 4.3. /559/MÚ/-383/99. The restoration is a preliminary phase of the catalogue-program carried on with the support of the National Scientific Research Grant program (OTKA: no. T 032 434)
