Picture the scene. You work in an auction house. An item is on the move when disaster strikes. A trip, a stumble, an accidental drop. Suddenly, you are faced with the prospect of a broken, smashed antique alabaster sculpture needing repair. The panic and guilt is very real… until Hxtal NYL-1 comes along and saves the day.
Jane Chambless Wright is no stranger to repairing broken antiques and ornaments. An eclectic career has taken her from children’s book illustrator in her native New York to living in a restored stone schoolhouse in County Leitrim, from where she repairs items on behalf of several auction houses in northwest Ireland.
“I get a lot of weird, broken things,” says Jane. “I specialize in the ‘Whoops!’, the ‘Uh-Oh!’, and the ‘I don’t even know what this thing is SUPPOSED to look like!’… it all ends up on my table eventually.”
“I clean and restore antique oil paintings and their frames. Victorian taxidermy shows up fairly often. Antique clocks, furniture, and ephemera – old prints and advertising display items. It’s all interesting, and I love bringing things back to usefulness and beauty.”
Jane’s journey to restorer began when the illustration scene was changed forever by the arrival of computer-based art programmes. As a result, she moved into the picture frame industry and a second career working with many high-profile clients, including art collectors, museums and art galleries.
“I managed a couple of factories filled with incredible crafts people – gilders, carvers, woodworkers – who gave me some of the best years of my life,” explains Jane. Then came the biggest change of all.
In 2015, Jane and her husband bought their current home in Ireland online without ever seeing it in person. They sold everything they owned, jumped on a plane and moved over 3,000 miles to the other side of the Atlantic.
“A wild ride,” is how Jane describes it. It did not take long for her restoration skills to impress on the Emerald Isle; all Jane’s commissions come via word-of-mouth, as she has no website promoting her work. After all, you cannot showcase repairing items nobody is meant to know are broken.
“My value is in doing repairs and restoration which are pretty much undetectable – things look as though they’ve been sitting quietly in an attic, just waiting to be discovered. The truth is, I’m often handed a bucket-of-bits and have to figure out what the thing was supposed to look like in the first place!”
One such bucket-of-bits Jane was handed contained a sackful of arms, legs and other body parts from an antique alabaster sculpture. The figure and its base were not joined together. As one of the lads at the auction house went to pick it up by the base, the statue went flying.
The smashed antique statue presented Jane with a new challenge – alabaster repair. Alabaster is a soft, fine-grained marble-like variety of gypsum. Its softness enables it to be carved readily into elaborate forms, making it a popular material for sculpture and interior ornamental stonework.
Colour-wise, alabaster is either white or a high, translucent gloss. It can be polished to achieve translucency, after which the surface looks deceptively hard and glass-like. As the unfortunate lad at the auction house found it, it is anything but hard.
The properties of alabaster make it difficult to repair, as Jane explains when discussing the smashed antique sculpture the auction house had subsequently scooped into a sack and delivered to her door.
“Alabaster is transparent, soft, and the statue had been broken into so many different pieces. The transparency and number of bond lines meant a clear resin was required. It couldn’t turn yellow or be globby, like epoxy. So, I did a little research and found SylCreate.”
Or to be more specific, Jane found Hxtal NYL-1. Used by professional curators and restorers around the world, Hxtal NYL-1 is a crystal clear epoxy adhesive with exceptional non-yellowing qualities used mainly for the bonding and repair of ceramic and glass.
The 72 hour initial cure of Hxtal NYL-1 allows time for pieces being bonded back together to be adjusted and fitted seamlessly. The British Museum famously used Hxtal NYL-1 to restore the broken Portland Vase after 144 years, earning the epoxy a deserved reputation as the world’s best antique restoration adhesive.
One 60g bottle of Hxtal NYL-1 was sent from SylCreate HQ in West Sussex to Jane in County Leitrim. It was now down to her to work her magic, repair the antique alabaster sculpture and return it to the auction house.
“Adhesives are critical; they can’t look new or out of place. It all must look original and unaltered,” explains Jane. “This was the first time I had ever used a resin-based adhesive. Hxtal was the perfect choice as the transparency of the alabaster was maintained and the seams of the breaks joined perfectly.”
“Both of the figure’s hands had been missing for many years. He will have to go without them for the next few as well, there wasn’t much I could do about that.”
“I did take the opportunity to fix the problem which caused the smash in the first piece, adhering the base and the figure together to prevent any future ‘Oops!‘ moments. Hopefully, the poor auction lad felt a bit better when he saw the repair. It really wasn’t his fault.”
“The piece will be sold with full disclosure that it has been professionally repaired – and I hope that it can be enjoyed by whoever gets to bring it home.”
Jane might not have a website – but she does have an email address. You can contact her here to discuss any restoration projects or potential commissions.
If you would like more information on Hxtal NYL-1 or any other SylCreate products, please email sales@sylmasta.com or phone us on +44 (0)1444 831 459 to speak to one of our technicians.
Related Products
-
Hxtal NYL-1 Clear Epoxy Adhesive£38.15 – £420.20 inc. VAT
Related Articles
Epoxy and the gnome: Geomfix Original used in the restoration of family heirloom gnome
Epoxy modelling putty – Your guide to model making & sculpting putties
The benefits of mixing modelling putties