October ’21

Incense Burner

The object is a bronze, Han dynasty incense burner from the Oriental Museum collections. It was donated to the museum in 1992 by Sir Charles Hardinge. The main body is a chamber with an openwork hinged lid. It has three legs, a handle and a central hollow tube on the base to attach it to a stand. The lid is not originally part of this object, and dates to a later period. Its original purpose would have been as an oil lamp. The decoration on the base depicts two dragons and a possible phoenix. There also appears to be a design on the handle but it is indecipherable.

Condition

• There is a layer of dirt on the surface of the incense burner
• The surface of the incense burner shows signs of corrosion

Conservation

The interior of the incense burner was initially dry brushed to remove loose ’museum dirt’. Any other cleaning was avoided as there could be signs of use remaining. The exterior of the incense burner was cleaned using cotton wool swabs with an appropriate solvent solution in order to remove the dirt from the surface. As this only removed the loose dirt, mechanical cleaning methods were also employed in order to remove the stubborn concretions from the surface.

As the surface of the incense burner also showed signs of corrosion, further mechanical cleaning was required to remove it. A scalpel was used carefully to remove the more accessible areas of surface corrosion. For areas such as the edges of the openwork on the lid, an abrasive paste was made, and applied to the surface using cotton wool swabs. This successfully removed corrosion from the edges of the openwork without scratching the surface.

When treating the handle of the incense burner it became apparent that there was no coherent layer beneath the corrosion to clean down to and so the remainder of the surface was left untreated. The area which had been exposed through cleaning was coated with pigmented microcrystalline wax in order to blend with the original material.

The rest of the incense burner was coated with unpigmented microcrystalline wax in order to provide a protective layer and help to prevent deterioration in the future.

Stay tuned for next month’s Object!