Saving

Preventive Conservation

Further damage can largely be prevented by keeping objects in appropriate permanent and temporary environmental conditions. KOROLNIK RESTORATION offers recommendations and assistance for the care, custody, storage, conditioning and packaging of objects in magazines and collections, on display as well as on loan or transit.

Active Conservation

Active conservation refers to the concrete treatment measures that help to preserve the object, prevent damage or even stop further threatening changes.

These are:

• securing the substance by means of reversible consolidations
• pest control
• stabilizing measures, such as in the case of iron desalination in the alkaline sulphide baths followed, if necessary, by consolidation with suitable synthetic resins under vacuum or in the case of copper alloys, corrosion control treatment with benzotriazole
• investigative conservation followed by modest cleaning and removing layers of dirt, corrosion products or previous treatments

Interventive Conservation (Restoration)

In general, conservation and restoration measures are hardly separable. Restoration follows conservation and refers to treatment measures that not only help to maintain but also improve the appearance of an object. They may be required for structural, aesthetic or didactic purposes.

These are:

• thorough cleaning
• complete excavations
• repair and reconstruction by adhesion
• gap filling or replacement of missing parts
• colorations and retouches of the gap fills
• reshaping and reconstruction, or alternatively the possibility of reshaping on a copy
• mounts

Lifting

Objects that are fragile or large can be safely recovered from the site (such as block lifted) or treated on site.