Photography has been a great invention around first half of nineteenth century. It created possibilities of experimentation for the creative minds interested in making real images on paper. Following is a picture of a badly restored and mounted photograph created by one of the older techniques. We tried to analyze the technique by which it might have been created. For confirmed identification of the photographic … Continue reading Historic Photographs

We had already completed damage mapping at Sri Darbar Saheb Ji, in the months of October and November 2013, but gilding started playing peek-a-boo once test patches of cleaning were started later in November and December. There were many places where gilding was uncovered not just beneath the thick grime layers, but also under thick ocher paint layer. Continue reading Gild playing peek-a-boo

Conservation and personal scene at Sri Harmandar Saheb Ji (My personal dairy of professional and personal scenario in December of 2013) December 2013 was strange, i had committed to start actual on-site work at Sri Harmandar Saheb Ji  and at home my father-in-law suffered second paralytic attack (he could not survive it after 27th December), son’s board exams and i was flying from Amritsar to … Continue reading December 2013

Discussions a day before site visit and practical experience, Continue reading Moments from brain-storming session during Fresco Conservation Workshop

Working on Hukumnamas (2015) Continue reading Instructions of Gurus

Since the paintings were created by Bhai Atma Singh directly over the paintings done earlier by Bhai Gyan Singh, the grip or binding to the ground (earlier painting was serving like ground layer) was minimal and there was huge amount of flaking. The paintings of Bhai Atma Singh were in turn over painted by different people in an attempt to arrest or hide the flaking! … Continue reading Extent of damage in wall paintings (Darbar Saheb Ji)

Initially it took some three to five trips to Sri Amritsar, all by myself as a conservation expert and with managers of Sri Harmandar Sheb Ji to understand the extent of damage to the wall paintings and gold plates. Following pictures were taken by me during these earlier trips somewhere in the mid of 2013. Though i was very confident and enthusiastic about this holy … Continue reading Wall paintings(at Sri Harmandar Saheb Ji), as we found them before starting our work

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FHeritagePreservationAtelierPvtLtd%2Fvideos%2F1101497629983655%2F&show_text=0&width=560 Continue reading First Team at Sri Harmandar Saheb Ji

(Just that this piece of ceramic is unique and historically important.) Small jobs like cleaning are actually meditative and provide, much needed peace, focus and purpose. Conservation lab tends to glamorize the small jobs too, with a pinch of specific knowledge and the confidence of the practical application of the knowledge of the material and whatever easy to complex technique… A simple replacement of the … Continue reading Conservation lab loves to elaborate even an extremely simple job of fixing a broken ceramic

(Just that this piece of ceramic is unique and historically important.) Small jobs like cleaning are actually meditative and provide, much needed peace, focus and purpose. Conservation lab tends to glamorize the small jobs too, with a pinch of specific knowledge and the confidence of the practical application of the knowledge of the material and whatever easy to complex technique… A simple replacement of the … Continue reading Conservation lab loves to elaborate even an extremely simple job of fixing a broken ceramic

…continued from the previous post A Case study of an oil on canvas painting It was important to remove the old varnish from this painting because, it was very thickly applied almost every other year of its lifetime and had darkened to an extent that the actual colors of the painting were not visible. For the first two days after initial assessment about the solubility … Continue reading Solvent gel cleaning, consolidation and in-painting

A painting that came to our lab some five springs back makes a very good study for the students who have just started learning the practice of conservation. It was a portrait of great-grandfather of Maharaja of Kapurthala. Ignorance of the staff responsible for the upkeep of the palace had led to multiple problems. Not just the flaking paint layer, it had portions of edges … Continue reading A Case study of an oil on canvas painting