Restoration Artwork Barbara Broekman
Introduction
In order to my contact with the artist Barbara Broekman (Amsterdam, 1955), I was nominated by her for the restoration of a piece of art from her, purchased by Houthoff-Buruma (Law Office in the south of Amsterdam) . (Owner)
It was a “sketchbook” / design made by Barbara, of 5 linked “cloths”, each 220x 140 cm (hxw). The total work of art is 7 meters wide.
The material is white plastic mounted on wooden frames, with on it, a collage of pictures glued, partly autobiographical material.
Due to the fact that a coffee cup was fallen through one of the cloths, a sharp crack was created. In my research, I had to find that the white plastic sheets were fairly degraded by time (aging of about 10 years) and “brittle”.
I advised Houthoff-Buruma to allow these works to be doubled in a number of years.
Then , I was given the order that I should do this immediately, together with the restoration of the crack.
The restoration
All plastic sheets are removed from the wooden frame, and via a ‘transfer’ window doubled on woven dacron. (plastic fabric of which sails are made of sailing ships). I chose this cloth because of the insensible to moisture, the strength (fabric) and the long life of the material.
As a gluing I have done several tests with a flexible, permanent adhesive, which is well attached to plastic / nylon / plastic.
The choice has been made on Polymax standard (white) (supplier: Bison). This glue / kit fits well with plastic. And because I’ve tested already another test, ten years ago, and found that this glue is still in a reasonable to good condition, this has been used to apply it.
The Polymax-glue is applied with a fine glue comb to the dacron that was mounted on the transfer window and then rubbed with a rubber roller on the back of the plastic sheet of the workpiece (s).
After drying, these “doubles” are again manually stretched on the original wooden frames. (with moderate tense.).
To make sure that the plastic sheets on the back have already shown several “loosening” (cracks and upright pieces of plastic sheet), were allright, I first repaired this with white paper tape (Neschen, acid-free paper tape P 90).
The glue is applied with a fine glue comb to the dacron mounted on the transfer window and then rubbed with a rubber roller on the back of the plastic sheet of the workpiece (s).
After drying, doubles are again manually stretched on the original wooden frames. (with moderate tense).
The end result
On site of the client, in the staffrestaurant of Houthoff-Buruma, the 5 paintings were reassembled as one piece, and hung back.
The support team Art of Houthoff-Buruma.
