October ’20
Glass Lantern Slides
October’s ‘Object of the Month’ are a set of glass lantern slides from Beamish Museum.
Object
The objects are a selection of glass lantern slides from Beamish Museum. These slides likely date to the late 19th Century, when there was a boom for the trade of magic lantern slides for professional and home use. This altered the way the slides were made, no longer being hand painted but printed in order to be mass produced. Often these slides came in a pack of ten or twelve, with an accompanying magic lantern.
These particular slides have the initials T.v.K and GBN printed on them, which identifies them as being illustrated by Theodor von Kramer and manufactured by Gebrüder Bing Nürnberg.
Gebrüder Bing was a famous toy company from Bavaria, Germany, which specialised in metal toys such as toy lanterns that would have been used with slides like these. This particular set of slides has been identified as being called, ’German Comic Verses’. Each individual slide has it’s own title, some of which were able to be found from comparative images of how the slides originally looked.
Condition
- Signs of paint loss
- Evidence of lifting / flaking paint
- Several slides have been broken
Conservation
The main concern facing the glass slides was then flaking and loss of the painted decoration. Therefore the main treatment aim for the set of lantern slides was to consolidate them to help relax the flaking paint, and to prevent further paint loss.
Before a consolidant could be chosen, it needed to be determined whether the paint was sensitive to any solvents as this would determine which types of consolidants could be considered. Small samples of various solvents were carefully applied to discrete areas on the slides in order to examine the reaction of the paints. None of the solvents dissolved the painted decoration, which meant risk of further loss was minimised.
The glass lantern slides were treated by placing them in a sealed chamber with an appropriate solvent / consolidant rich atmosphere. This both relaxed the flaking paint and adhered the paint securely back onto the glass.
Several of the glass lantern slides had been broken at some point in their past, and as there was a possibility they would be used at beamish Museum, they were required to be adhered back together. As such, the adhesive used would need to be strong enough that the slides could endure frequent handling. Ideally the adhesive would also have a similar refractive index to the glass to minimise visual distortion.
After testing an appropriate glass adhesive with a similar refractive index was chosen and applied by capillary action. This allowed for easier application and any excess could be easily and safely removed before the adhesive cured. The decision was made to leave the areas with missing paint / decoration, as although some reference images had been found for how the slides would have looked originally, the decoration was so intricate that there was no guarantee the inpainting would match perfectly. The reference images were instead included with the slides so visitors could see how they would have originally looked.
Stay tuned for next month’s object!