The Art And Antique Restorers Handbook

Tells how to understand the material of which an antique is made, what material and what tools are needed to restore it, how to practice on a worthless object first and how to do the job.

This book is a concise guide on how to preserve, protect and analyse cultural heritage in private and public collections. Its focus is on three-dimensional works of art and archaeology crafted from materials like ceramics, glass, stone, metals, wood etc. It briefly explains the most important aspects of handling, display, storage and analysis of such art works and covers the basics of environmental conditions for an art collection. Numerous practical examples from the author's long experience are shown in high-quality colour photographs.

Ever since its original publication in Germany in 1938, Max Schweidler's Die Instandetzung von Kupferstichen, Zeichnungen, Buchern usw has been recognized as a seminal modern text on the conservation and restoration of works on paper. To address what he saw as a woeful dearth of relevant literature and in order to assist those who have 'set themselves the goal of preserving cultural treasures, ' the noted German restorer composed a thorough technical manual covering a wide range of specific techniques, including detailed instructions on how to execute structural repairs and alterations that, if skilfully done, can be virtually undetectable. By the mid-twentieth century, curators and conservators of graphic arts, discovering a nearly invisible repair in an old master print or drawing, might comment that the object had been 'Schweidlerized.' This volume, based on the authoritative revised German edition of 1949, makes Schweidler's work available in English for the first time, in a meticulously edited and annotated critical edition. The editor's introduction places the work in its historical context and probes the philosophical issues the book raises, while some two hundred annotati