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Ornament hospital
Jan. 11th, 2014 12:18 pmI bought this cardinal a very long time ago -- twenty years, perhaps. It's a souvenir of one of our many trips along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It never became a favorite ornament, because I discovered it was far too heavy for the branches of a real tree and it doesn't look so great as a freestanding objet. It's made of some kind of composition, hollow, to look like rough-carved wood. It does well as partially-obscured color on the inner branches of the bogus tree, but I've often thought about deaccessioning it.
While packing my ornaments this year, I dropped it, tail first, on the concrete floor. Several pieces of its carapace shattered, and what was left of the tail reminded me of a lobster claw after the nutcracker had been at it. I couldn't find all the pieces and was about to dump it in the trash -- after all, I never really really liked it -- when I recalled that I had had a similar catastrophe on one of a pair of cardinals that I also bought along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I accidentally broke one guy's beak off and fabricated a new nose out of cardboard, Elmer's Glue and paint. Now I can't tell the original beak from the replacement beak. Could I do the same thing with this one?, I wondered. It was a challenge.
I brought it upstairs, glued back the bits I had and then filled in the missing bits by building up layer upon layer of Elmer's. Once I'd finished, I applied several coats of acrylic paint to the broken tail, followed by a very thin wash of metallic gold. (For an explanation of why I have all these paints just hanging around the house see granddaughter / crafts.) It doesn't quite match the rest of the piece -- you can see one of the seams on the tip of the tail, and the reflectivity of the repainted area is higher. With my 20/20 hindsight I'd give it another coat of red paint and smudge it while it was still tacky. But this is good enough:
And behold, the alchemy of repair. I feel as though the act of restoration was also an act of nurture and this is now more than a possession -- it just became a rescue. I find myself addressing it as "little buddy," which is a name I also occasionally give to The Scamp, as in "come on, little buddy, let's get you packed up for the year." I guess I'm stuck with it now.
While packing my ornaments this year, I dropped it, tail first, on the concrete floor. Several pieces of its carapace shattered, and what was left of the tail reminded me of a lobster claw after the nutcracker had been at it. I couldn't find all the pieces and was about to dump it in the trash -- after all, I never really really liked it -- when I recalled that I had had a similar catastrophe on one of a pair of cardinals that I also bought along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I accidentally broke one guy's beak off and fabricated a new nose out of cardboard, Elmer's Glue and paint. Now I can't tell the original beak from the replacement beak. Could I do the same thing with this one?, I wondered. It was a challenge.
I brought it upstairs, glued back the bits I had and then filled in the missing bits by building up layer upon layer of Elmer's. Once I'd finished, I applied several coats of acrylic paint to the broken tail, followed by a very thin wash of metallic gold. (For an explanation of why I have all these paints just hanging around the house see granddaughter / crafts.) It doesn't quite match the rest of the piece -- you can see one of the seams on the tip of the tail, and the reflectivity of the repainted area is higher. With my 20/20 hindsight I'd give it another coat of red paint and smudge it while it was still tacky. But this is good enough:
And behold, the alchemy of repair. I feel as though the act of restoration was also an act of nurture and this is now more than a possession -- it just became a rescue. I find myself addressing it as "little buddy," which is a name I also occasionally give to The Scamp, as in "come on, little buddy, let's get you packed up for the year." I guess I'm stuck with it now.
