Dear colleagues, My name is Sophie Glerum and I'm working as an independent furniture conservator in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Currently I'm treating an ethnographic object: a Senufo statue from Côte d'Ivoire. The base of the (top-heavy) statue has been chewed at by the client's dogs which has caused instability to the structure. It was brought into my workshop because the statue had fallen and an old break just above the base of the statue had come apart. The break will be restored by me and a custom mount will be made to hold the statue and prevent any future damage. So far so good. What I hope to get some advice on is the following: the base of the statue has been urinated on by the client's dogs in the past, a foul smell that still lingers. For both the sake of my client as my own (it's quite uncomfortable to work on) I would like to see if it would be possible to remove the urine smell. There are two concerns with this: 1. the patina of the statue (though already damaged by the urine) and 2. the structure of the wooden base. Especially the latter has my attention since the wood is quite damaged and has a course fibrous/abraded texture that might be affected when using too much water. Do you have any thought on what might work to remove the smell? Maybe any experience in removing urine stains in general? Hopefully not a very common problem in the field of conservation..
I look very much forward to any advice and thank you in advance. kind regards, Sophie Glerum Furniture Conservator Sophie Glerum Meubelrestauratie [email protected] ****** Unsubscribe by sending a message to [email protected] Searchable archives: http://cool.conservation-us.org/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/
