The bench
Every entry, filed by layer
Filed by LAYER, not by painting. Each entry says what that layer does, how it fails, and what a conservator can and cannot reverse.
Oak, grain direction, and the movement that never stops.
Oak never stops moving
A panel responds to every change in humidity for as long as it exists, and it moves far more across the grain than along it. Almost every structural problem a panel painting has begins there.
6 minQuarter-sawn
Boards cut radially move least. What the grain pattern tells you about the cut.
2 minThe join
Two boards glued edge to edge, and the seam that opens first.
2 minBevels and barbs
The thinned edge and the ridge of ground at it — evidence of the original frame.
2 minThinning a panel
A treatment once routine and now regretted. What it removed and what it caused.
2 min
Chalk, glue and the layer everything else sits on.
Chalk and glue
The white preparation, how thick it was laid, and why it is the layer that cups.
4 minThe imprimatura
A thin toned layer over the white, and what it does to everything above it.
2 minGround losses
When the ground goes, the paint goes with it. Filling and what filling commits you to.
2 minReading the craquelure
Crack networks are diagnostic: age, support, ground thickness and past treatment all leave different patterns.
3 min
Glazes built thin, and the one that fails first.
Glazes are built thin
Depth came from many transparent layers over a light ground, not from thick paint.
4 minThe blue problem
Smalt fading and azurite greening: two blues that do not stay the colour they were.
2 minLead white
The workhorse of the palette, and how it behaves in the crack network.
2 minDrying cracks
Wide, early cracks caused by the paint itself rather than by age.
2 minPentimenti
Changes the painter made, becoming visible as the upper layers grow transparent.
2 min
Yellowing, and how far to take it off.
How far to take it off
Old varnish is yellow, uneven and sometimes the only thing holding a surface together. The cleaning window, and the judgement it forces.
4 minWhy varnish yellows
Oxidation, and why the effect is worst in the blues.
2 minThe cleaning window
A clean rectangle opened in a dirty surface: the test, and what it proves.
2 minSolvent and swab
The gentlest thing that works, and the reason nobody starts stronger.
2 minRetouching
Reversible, distinguishable, and confined to the loss.
2 min
Cradles, battens and what was done to the back.
The cradle
A lattice fixed to the back to keep a panel flat, which often did the opposite.
3 minBattens
The earlier, simpler answer to the same problem.
2 minMarks on the back
Panel-makers' marks, collection stamps and inventory numbers as evidence.
2 minTransfer
Removing the original support entirely — the most drastic treatment there is.
2 min
Cracks, cupping, losses and flaking.