Bronze Age pot from Veszto
01
Before treatment
This Bronze Age pot is estimated to be a storage vessel which had been previously conserved, however, it was broken again by physical force. It was broken into 25 pieces and some pieces were missing. When the pot was made, it was smoothen with stone as tool marks were visible and was sun dried.
02
Putting broken pieces back together and gap filling
I worked with my conservation teammate Tara on this project in Veszto. First, we consolidated all the edges of the broken pieces with Paraloid B72 5% with acetone, then we used masking tape to secure where the pieces should be. We adhered these pieces to the pot using Paraloid B72 40% with acetone.
The gap filling material we used was epoxy putty. We use epoxy putty because of the limited resources available in Hungary without all the lab equipment, hence we could not use plaster.
03
Colour matching
We decided to match with the colour of the gap filling that was done in the previous treatment, therefore it is easy to differentiate the original pieces and gap-filled material. We used acrylic with water to colour the gap-filled epoxy putty after it has been cured completely.
04
After treatment
The pictures on the right showing the front and the back of the Bronze Age pot after treatment.
