Conservation Skills and Techinques

Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Properties

Our mission is; minimize deterioration of Art objects and keep them in as close to its original condition as possible, preserve appearance and hand down them to new generation. Conservation/ restoration of art objects had been done by traditional techniques but we think it should be done by high skills based on advanced knowledge of modern science. Our conservation work has been done based on 2 principals.
 
1.Maintain the status quo.
In order to maintain the status quo of the objects, we research the cause of damage and repair them to delay a progress in deterioration of objects using various methods. In the case of damages on sliding screen paintings, we use same paper filling material as possible. Additionally, use handmade Japanese paper for backing to reinforce the object then we put colours on filled place to match the whole image of paintings. At that time, we do not retouch any lines or shapes which were not drown on original paintings. We basically focus on the status quo. But depend on circumstances and intentions of owners, retouch might be done by skilled professionals.

2.Use appropriate materials and reversible methods.
Most of cultural properties in Japan are repaired repeatedly once in hundreds years. In case they repaired wrongly (e.g. using inaccurate density adhesives, wrong materials etc.), even if they looks perfectly repaired, damages on objects slowly advance. Also aging accelerate the deterioration, a restoration work by the next generation will be extremely difficult. To prevent the occurrence of problems in the future, we choose papers, materials and adhesives carefully.

We do enough researches and documentations before we start conservation works based on two principals above.