Wishing a warm welcome to all of our Materia readers! For issue 4, we have focused on another theme of critical interest to the fields of conservation, conservation science, and art history: interdisciplinary collaboration.
In selecting the topic for this issue, our editors wished to highlight the different contributions offered by individual scholars and research disciplines. For example, within the fields of conservation and conservation science, researchers are able to contribute detailed empirical data relating to artworks’ material compositions, often down to the microscopic level, revealing aspects such as artists’ individual pigment choices. In addition, imaging techniques such as multispectral photography can provide valuable information relating to an art object’s layer structure, including compositional changes made by the artist as well as later restoration interventions. Contrastingly, art history has more traditionally dealt with broader contextual questions and diverse topics ranging from philosophical aesthetics and questions of style to sociopolitical or religious affiliations, to contemporary practices of trade and commerce. That is not to say that the boundaries between the different fields are necessarily fixed. Indeed, conservators and conservation scientists have shown a sustained interest in contextual or historical questions, and art historians in an artwork’s materiality.
As editors at Materia, we also recognise that the task of finding balance within interdisciplinary research can be tricky, and the dance of teamwork is sometimes fraught with missteps that are complicated by institutional hierarchies and professional politics. Nevertheless, when true collaboration is achieved, there are significant benefits to be gained through this interdisciplinary approach, and fruitful research emerges. The articles included in this issue showcase the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary partnership in various ways, through conversations with conservators, conservation scientists, and art historians, as well as articles on Early Renaissance tarocchi cards, medieval seal bags, a painting by a nineteenth-century Belgian Symbolist, a twentieth-century dress from the costume collection at Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands, and finally an unusual type of twentieth-century photograph known as an orotone.
The first article, “Tarocchi Teamwork: An International, Multi-institutional Collaborative Research Project,” describes an interdisciplinary effort by a group of conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators from the United States and Italy: Francisco Trujillo (The Morgan Library & Museum, New York), Federica Pozzi (Centro per la Conservazione ed il Restauro dei Beni Culturali, Turin), Marie-France Lemay (Yale University Library, New Haven) and Richard Hark (Yale University). The article reflects on their experience jointly researching a set of fifteenth-century Italian tarocchi cards, known collectively as the Visconti-Sforza decks. Similar to the later tarot cards, more commonly associated with occultic practices such as divination, these earlier Italian prototypes would have served a broader function ranging from various trick-taking to gambling games. While these illuminated cards have been the focus of previous art historical studies, relatively little is known about their material composition and technique—a point of shared fascination that provided the impetus for this international team of researchers to come together and complement the existing art historical record by focusing on the objects’ materiality.
Maria Brunskog (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Tetsuo Miyakoshi (Meiji University, Japan) focus on a unique Japanese lacquerware collection compiled in the late eighteenth century by a Swedish naturalist, in “The Legacy of Carl Peter Thunberg Examined: Analyses of Unique Sources of Information on the Japanese Edo-Period Urushi Craft.” Currently housed at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, these everyday objects—referred to in Japanese as urushi (漆, meaning the anacard sap used to create this specific form of lacquerware)—reflect the materials and techniques used by Japanese lacquerware craftsmen during a narrow time frame (ca. 1775–76), during which Thunberg traveled to Japan, and within a limited geographical area, centered around the town of Nagasaki and along the feudal road between Kyoto and present-day Tokyo. Through their research, Brunskog and Miyakoshi offer a comparative analysis, juxtaposing written descriptions provided in Thunberg’s personal travel diaries against technical analysis of the objects themselves.
“Medieval Seal Bags Unravelled: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration,” was written by Jitske Jasperse (Instituto de Historia, CSIC, Madrid), Lucía Pereira-Pardo (Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio, INCIPIT, Santiago), Ana Cabrera Lafuente (Turespaña, Ministerio de Industria y Turismo), Paul Dryburgh (The National Archives, London), Elizabeth New (Department of History and Welsh History, Aberystwyth University, Wales), and Ina Vanden Berghe (The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, KIK-IRPA, Brussels). They focus on a notably understudied category of historical objects—medieval seal bags, textile or parchment wrappings designed to protect the wax seals that appended medieval charters. These bags have rarely been photographed or documented in collection records, making them difficult to study. The authors’ approach towards studying these coverings showcases an exchange of expertise and ideas between conservation scientists, archival records specialists, textile experts and art historians. Specifically, the authors present the technical findings from a study featuring two medieval charters belonging to the collection of the National Archives in the United Kingdom, including their respective wax seals and textile bags. Drawing upon the diverse background of each scholar, the article reflects on the contribution offered by each specialist area of knowledge, as well as some of the challenges and learning curves that they encountered along the way.
“Making Technical Art History Accessible: Stories from the Summer Teachers Institute in Technical Art History (STITAH)” presents an interview between the Materia editors and three professors who participated in Yale University’s 2022 Summer Teaching Institute in Technical Art History (STITAH), a program designed to introduce professors of primarily art history, science and studio arts to the technical study of objects. Hallie Meredith (Washington State University, Pullman), Robert Hamilton (Spelman College, Atlanta) and Andrew Herschberger (Bowling Green State University, Ohio), reflect on their experiences participating in the STITAH program and share how this opportunity has influenced their teaching.
This issue also includes three articles presenting focused case studies on a variety of objects. “Materiality of a Vision: Unveiling the Complex Material Makeup of an Early Symbolist Work with Friable Media by Alfred-Napoléon Delaunois (Belgian, 1875-1941),” by Marie-Noëlle Grison, Robert Erdmann, Hendrik Hameeuw, David Lainé and Lieve Watteeuw (all at M Leuven), discusses Delaunois’s Vision de Moine (A Monk’s Vision) of 1897. This mixed-media painting is currently in the collection of M Leuven, the municipal museum in the artist’s hometown of Leuven, Belgium. Using a variety of noninvasive imaging techniques and instrumental analytical methods, the authors explore the complex materiality of the work, while also explaining some of its degradation patterns. This article also represents one of the few published technical studies on Delaunois’s oeuvre, as well as on nineteenth-century Belgian Symbolists in general, making it an important contribution to expanding our technical knowledge of artists from this period and geographical region.
In “The Influence of Liberty & Co. in the Dress Reform Movement: The Research and Conservation Treatment of a Rational Dress,” César Rodríguez Salinas, Madelief Hohé (both Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Netherlands), and Dr. Livio Ferrazza (Institut Valencià de Conservació, Restauració i Investigación, Spain) focus on the conservation of an early twentieth-century Dutch dress belonging to the fashion and costume collection at Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The dress, first designed in 1902–3, bears few traces of its original shape, as it was later modified, in 1908, to accommodate the pregnancy of the original wearer, documented as Anne Beatrix Hoogesteger. The authors discuss the material history of the dress, how it was transformed to fit the changing shape and needs of the mother, as well as how the details of its production have contributed to its degradation over the years. These results are further contextualised in relation to the late Victorian “dress reform,” an activist movement that took place adjacent to the contemporary women’s suffrage movement, and whose focus was on creating practical and comfortable feminine fashion. One of the promoters of this trend was the London-based fashion and textile house Liberty & Co., whose comfortable and beautifully embroidered designs served as inspiration for contemporary dressmakers throughout Europe, including the Netherlands but also its colonies in Indonesia.
The final technical case study for this issue, “The Identification of Materials and Processes Used in the Manufacture of Orotone, Hand-Colored Orotone, and Silvertone Photographs,” features collaborative research conducted by the Pacific Northwest Conservation Science Consortium and the University of Washington Libraries by Vanessa Johnson, Ivanny Jácome-Valladares, Claire Kenny and Tami Lasseter Clare, who examine the materials of the early photographic process known as orotone. Characterized by its particular shimmering, golden appearance, orotone photography—as well as its associated silvertone process—is underrepresented in scientific literature on photographic techniques. The results presented by the authors offer a first glimpse at the complex layered components used to produce these photographs, pigments present in a selection of hand-colored orotones, and insight into the degradation of the photographs over time.
Finally, in our series Voices from the Field, we present an interview with three experienced and eminent researchers: Erich Uffelman (Professor of Chemistry, Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Virginia), Erma Hermens (Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge) and Sabrina Norlander Eliasson (Professor of Art History, Stockholm University and Swedish Institute for Classical Studies in Rome). The interview questions are varied in scope, focusing on topics including how the various interviewees came to focus on technical art history as part of their career paths, as well as some of the challenges that they have faced in terms of interdisciplinary collaboration. We were keen to know how their various backgrounds and expertise complement technical research in a collaborative setting. What can their viewpoints offer that others cannot? How can we encourage interdisciplinary teamwork and a meeting of perspectives? These questions remain highly relevant as the field of technical art history continues to expand and evolve, and Materia’s editors aim to continue these discussions while also building connections between researchers in related disciplines.
As always, the Materia team has many people whom we would like to thank for their help in making this publication possible. First and foremost, we are grateful to our peer reviewers for their efforts, which are critical to ensuring the quality of the research we publish. Our tech team would also like to express their continued gratitude to the Getty’s Quire team for their incredible open-source publication platform and their ongoing help in troubleshooting (special shout-out to Erin Dunigan). Thank you to our copy editor, Mary Cason; your expertise and insight are always appreciated, as is your conscientiousness and professionalism. Thank you so much to Juliana Ly and Sophie Church for spearheading Materia’s social media campaigns to help us spread the word about the journal and other technical art history endeavours in our field. Finally, a huge thank you to Joyce Hill Stoner for her recent donation in support of Materia’s community-building and sustainability efforts.
Finally, we express our gratitude to our readers for your continued support and interest in our journal. It is your enthusiasm that consistently confirms the need for this publication and the research that it makes more widely available.
Thank you and happy reading
The Materia team
Anouk Jonker
Bianca Garcia
Courtney Books
Cynthia Prieur
Douglas MacLennon
Emma Jansson
Julie Ribits
LaStarsha McGarity
Lucia Bay
Morgan Wylder
Roxane Sperber
Sami Norling