Infilling outdoor marble sculpture

Vanessa Wiggin <vanessa [at] artworksconservation__com> writes

>I have been asked to quote on the retreatment of an outdoor
>sculpture made of black and white marble. ...
>
>The losses were previously infilled with an epoxy resin and marble
>dust mixture.  While the result was aesthetically pleasing, the
>infills began to fail almost immediately.  Now two years later,
>almost all the fills have been lost or are pulling away from the
>stone.

Considering this previous experience with epoxy filling I would
suggest you to use lime mortar with marble dust and possibly with
glass powder in order to get some transparency. It has been used for
nearly 15 years in outdoor sculptures in France (Versaille, monument
in Paris) and has been observed to age well. We usually do one part
of lime for 2 parts of powder. You can make some sample to get the
right colour varying different marble powder or coloured stone
powder. It is better to avoid pigments. This mortars are very stable
provided you soak the marble before applying it and don't add too
much water to your mix.

Amelie Methivier
Sculptures conservator
Paris, France


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 21:61
                  Distributed: Saturday, May 17, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-21-61-008
                                  ***