The 5 Stages of Conservation Grief

Sometimes in conservation, particularly during a reconstruction - you reach a point when you have to decide whether you're causing more harm than you're preventing.
I have reached that point.

For my Winter Quarter independent project, I chose to reconstruct a contemporary Laguna ceramic, by Laguna potter Gladys Paquin. The ceramic had been purchased by a private collector, broken by their housekeeper, and then donated to our study collection for a student to work with one day. Being the nutty ceramics-lover that I am, I couldn't turn down the chance to put this thing back together again - it was literally calling my name.

Over the past 8 weeks, I have learned a number of things, amongst which, that not all ceramics are created equal. In fact, the Minoan and Mycenaean ceramics that I had worked with up until now had been downright easy to work it in comparison to the struggle that I faced with this piece.

It was finally during week 7, in consultation with my supervisor on this project, that we came to the unavoidable conclusion that the ceramic could not be put back together again - at least not by me in the time left in the quarter. It was at this point that I realised that this project had followed pretty accurately the five typical stages of grief:

1. Denial: "Yes, I can absolutely reconstruct this piece! It looks pretty straightforward. It'll be done within two weeks!"

Ceramic piece laid out for photography and after dry assembly

2. Anger/Frustration: "Why the hell won't these joins align?? This is ridiculous! How am I supposed to reconstruct something if I can't use tape, clamps or even touch the surface?!"

Ceramic after disassembly # 2

3. Bargaining/Desperation: "Please line up! Maybe if I just heat this join, it'll line up. I'll give up all my other projects and focus only on this one if I can find a way to get these joins to line up."

Application of indirect pressure using 3M Coban tape to align the fragments. A layer of 3mm Mylar was used in between the Coban and the ceramic to prevent loss of the powdery brown pigment.

4: Depression: "My god. What have I done. This is a disaster. I am the worst. conservator. ever. What's the point? I'm not good enough to do this. I'm a horrible person."


5: Acceptance: "The piece will be just as stable in fragments as it will be assembled. What I've learned from this project will be helpful to a future student who may wish to undertake the reconstruction."

Let's be honest - I'm still coming to terms with Step 5 - but the piece IS coming down and WILL go back into storage in pieces whether I like it or not.

I can say, however, that this project taught me a lot, even if there isn't that tangible reconstructed ceramic to show for it. As I said - not all ceramics are created equal. Some of the challenges that I faced with this ceramic included:

-powdery pigment that came off easily through casual contact
-a very sensitive surface that could not have even low-tack tape applied
-a ceramic body that was extremely prone to flaking and spalling if pressure of any type was applied, therefore the use of clamps for realignment was impossible.
-a series of fine cracks (some of which were practically invisible) from the initial impact that tended to spring when pressure was applied
-other pigments that were soluble in water and some in ethanol.
-complex breaks that necessitated partial reconstructions - which led to misalignments that could not be realigned through heating or solvent application because of the sensitivity of the ceramic to pressure.

and finally -> even though I did manage to get the entire ceramic reconstructed - there were at least three areas that were so severely stepped that they were not stable. After nearly an hour of discussion with my supervisor to think of ways to reduce or mitigate these problems, we both came to the conclusion that taking the piece down in its entirety in a solvent chamber was the only ethical solution. The solvent chamber would allow for reversal while minimizing contact with the ceramic. As we used Paraloid B-72 for the reconstruction - reversibility should (hopefully) be relatively straight forward (and so we return to Stage 1!)).

In many respects, I considered not writing a blog post for this piece. One of those reasons, of course, is because this entire project could really be classified as a failure in nearly every respect.

My thoughts are, however, that somebody else can learn from the lessons and mistakes I made during this project. Too many conservators are afraid to publish about the things that went wrong - choosing only to talk about the things that went well. It's really hard to put yourself out there for criticism by showing the world your mistakes - and on some level, I might very well regret posting this one day when someone decides to judge my abilities as a conservator on this one project and how it didn't turn out.

I really hope that this doesn't end up being the case.