With most of our staff working from home these days, we haven’t been able to work on objects in the lab as much as we would like. But, I thought I would update you all on some work I completed back in March.
Some of you may remember ablog post from way back in 2017, when I found a bone-handled knife in the concretion of the turret. While the conservation department had found many objects and items in the turret before, this came as a bit of a surprise. Much of the concretion had already been removed from the turret, and we didn’t think there were many places left for objects to hide. But we were wrong! Hidden in the rails of the railroad tracking that were used to construct the ceiling of the turret was a knife!Read more
The Mariners’ Museum and Park’s own Paige Schmidt (left) working as part of the Wooden Artifacts Group Programs Chairs
If you’ve ever read any of our blog posts about conservation, taken a lab tour, or talked to a conservator at any museum, you might have heard one of us mention “AIC” or theAmerican Institute for Conservation. AIC is a national organization with thousands of members, including conservators and other museum professionals. It is a vital way for conservators to share information. So for this blog post, we thought we’d tell you a bit about what AIC is, how it helps us inform conservation decisions at The Mariners’ Museum and Park, and what we do at the Museum to contribute to AIC.
AIC holds an annual conference, which is usually located in a different city every year, giving conservators opportunities to not only attend lectures, but visit museums and conservation labs across the country. The conservation department at the Mariners’ makes an effort to present any new research produced at the annual conference. (You may have read about unique treatments we have been conducting in the conservation department in this blog before.) We make a concentrated effort to share our results at the annual conference, so that other conservators can benefit from our research. Even if experiments do not yield the results we were hoping for, the information helps other conservators when making treatment decisions.Additionally, we often find colleagues from other museums who want to collaborate in continued research through AIC conferences.Read more
Figure 3. A degrading area of wood surrounding a fastener hole in one of Princess Carolina’s timbers. Image courtesy of The Mariners’ Museum and Park.
Hi! My name is Christy and I’m a conservation intern here at the Batten Conservation Complex. Over the past eight months I’ve been working on a research project at The Mariners’ Museum and Park for the final year of my graduate program at Durham University. This project has involved a condition analysis and investigation of potential treatments for the公主卡timbers which are currently deteriorating because of acid formation.
Although my time as an intern is almost up, we have recently found out that I’ll be able to continue my work here next year! The Mariners’ has been named one of six museums to receive the Kress Conservation Fellowship which provides funding for a post-graduate fellow at the Museum. I will serve as that fellow as I continue the exciting research I’m about to tell you all about!Read more
The brush was removed from the starboard gun carriage, covered in mud and hard concretion.
Although myblogsto date give a veryDahlgren-centricview of what I do, there is far more to USSMonitorthan just its guns. And I love having such a huge variety of objects to work on! In addition to big metal objects, we find a wide variety of organic objects, ranging from the wooden sides of thegun carriagesto ropepacking sealsto awool coat. We also have a number of brushes from on board the ship, including a nearly complete bench brush that I’ve been working on!
This brush was originally found stuck to one of the gun carriages, covered in mud and concretion – the hard, rocky material that forms around corroding iron. Although the brush itself is entirely organic – wood and fiber – it was so close to the iron of the gun carriage that it was caught inside concretion formed by that object. As a result, it didn’t look like much to begin with.Read more
Cat-o’-nine-tails, from the Mariners’ Museum collection
In thelast archaeological blog about the cannon boring project, I focused on why coal is cool. This was probably disappointing for some readers who hoped to read that we found the remains of a cat in one of the cannons. I skimmed over this because I wanted to focus on the cool things wedidlearn from the cannon boring, but I think it’s time to talk about whether there is ANY evidence, other thanFrancis Butts’ 1887 sinking account, that there was a cat on USSMonitor…or other ships, for that matter.
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