The National Art Gallery, Singapore

Untitled

May 3rd, 2010

Title: Untitled
Artist: Yeh Chi Wei
Accession Number: P-0755
Conservation carried out by: Mar / Selina
Treatment Date: January 2010

On one sunny day, Mar asked me to help her with the frame conservation of this artwork which she has been working on the cleaning of the surface. One of the frame member has lost a significant amount of wood – possibly from impact damage and it looked rather unsightly from the side.

This is quite an unusual challenge for me, as I have never done this before – but I’m always up for a good challenge! For this purpose, I consulted our Deputy Director, Timothy Hayes, who used to be an Objects conservator, specialising in wood. He was quite interested in this treatment, and offered many
helpful tips on how to do a loss replacement for wooden artefacts and for this frame.

He also lent us some of his nice set of wood carving and cutting tools which he bought from the U.K.

Frame loss before treatment (side view top & bottom)

Tim’s nice set of wood carving and cutting tools

Tim giving us advice on how to do the frame conservation and the paintings conservators looking intense and in deep thoughts

First thing first, I had to remove the damaged frame member from the painting. It was relatively quite easy, as each wooden member were nailed directly to the side of the painting. This appears to be a common inexpensive artist’s framing method as I have observed on several paintings in the collection.

Frame loss detail after removal from painting

For a loss replacement, I had to find a piece of wood with similar wood grain pattern and (if possible) colour. It is important for the fill to have similar grain patterns because wood is an organic material which responds to the humidity in the environment by expanding and contracting. So we want the fill to have a similar ‘movement’ to the original wood. Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to find a wooden piece in our lab which fits the criteria really well – it was definitely my lucky day!

Under Tim’s close guidance, I started with copying the negative missing area onto the wood fill, and shaping it gradually.

Shaping the wood fill

I then had to smoothen some of the jagged edges of the loss area to allow the wood fill to fit in and to ensure better contact between the two media when I adhere them together.

Trimming off small jagged loss edges on the original frame member

Who says girls can’t do dirty work?

After days of shaping and fitting the wood fill and the frame member, I was finally ready to glue the two pieces together. For this purpose, I used conservation grade PVA glue and clamps to stick them together. I left it for 2 days to ensure good bonding. Afterwards, the wood fill was sanded down to match the level of the original frame member and nailed back to the painting.

Frame member after treatment with loss replacement

I was all very pleased with the result, as this was my first attempt in doing something like this. Thanks to Tim’s guidance, we were able to conserve the original frame. From far, the fill is hardly noticeable, but I wonder whether people seeing the artwork would be able to notice it?

After treatment side profile