A beautiful piece of silver gilded artifact depicting a war scene came to our lab in 2007. It was previously wrongly restored by applying a thick layer of silver acrylic colour to hide the faults. Our first step was to remove the silver paint layer. This took a lot of time and efforts.

Once the silver paint was apparently removed, it was required to study the original silver layer, its problems and thickness etc.

We found that the upper left corner of the artifact was repaired for some past breakage. Silver layer was completely lost at many places and there were other smaller damages in the resin layer underneath.

Microscopic observations  confirmed the silver loss and brought to light many areas from where silver paint could not be completely removed. This led us to do some more cleaning  under magnified view.

After thorough treatment the artifact was re-gilded with silver.