Painted architectural surfaces of historic buildings age significantly overtime, both in the interiors and on the exteriors. In order to protect the underlying structures or due to modernizations these painted surfaces get frequently covered with a new coat of paint. Conservators and researchers often try to uncover each separate color schemes in the search for the decorative history.
However, due to ageing and alteration, the chemical and physical properties of paint coats changes. Uncovering all layers at the appropriate level can therefore be challenging. The boundaries between the original and the coat of over paint can get blurred. Sometimes the adhesion between ground-layers and topcoats gets weakened. Very seldom a direct and undisturbed view of the original painted surface is achieved.
There are several ways of exposing the original surfaces. The uncovering methods used nowadays vary from chemically solving the paint layers to mechanically scraping with chirurgical scalpels. These methods have a noticeably visual effect on the properties of the paint itself. We will focus in this study on the glossiness of the surfaces, the craquelure, a network of fine cracks in the paint that appears over time and the change of intensity when a color fades.
The main subject of this study is to determine to what extent the original surface and intentional color scheme is affected by these uncovering techniques.
Three parameters will be examined separately: a) surface textures, b) paint compositions and c) color appearances. Both photographic and analytical techniques will be applied in order to capture these features and the changes. Additional image analysis software will allow us to locate where these changes occur and quantify the differences objectively. We will visualize the differences for each uncovering technique.
This will result in a better insight in historical paint compositions, its alterations and how these painted surfaces appear to us today after ageing and recent exposure during architectural paint research.
Edwin Verweij |
