April ’22

Leather Bucket

The object is a painted leather fire bucket from the collections at Beamish museum. The bucket consists of numerous sections of leather that have been joined together and reinforced with the use of metal rivets. The separate leather sections consist of the base, the main body, the rim, and the handle along with the two loops that secured it to the body of the bucket. The joining loops and the handle are connected by two black painted iron rings.

Full fire buckets would be placed outside houses when a fire was spotted, and bucket lines would be organised to transport the full buckets to the fire where they would be used to put the fire out. With the advent of the first water pumps the buckets were instead used to ferry water to the pumps which would then direct the flow of water onto the fire. The endeavour was usually coordinated by the local parish groups or insurance groups. Fire buckets became widely distributed by newly established fire insurance companies during the 17th century due to large fires in urban centres like the great fire of London.

Condition

• The object as a whole was covered in dirt and dust from storage
• There were a number of unidentifiable stains on the exterior and interior
• Bird excrement was visible on the interior of the bucket
• The paint layers on the bucket were cracked and flaking
• The top of the bucket and the handle were severely misshapen
• There were signs of corrosion on the iron rings.

Conservation

The leather of the strap was initially dry cleaned with a cosmetic sponge and a soft bristle brush to remove surface dirt and dust. This was done carefully in an attempt to not remove or damage the leather surface.

In order to reshape the leather, it was decided to use sympatex, a semi-permeable membrane, rather than a humidification chamber, as this would allow greater control in ensuring that the areas of the   object not being reshaped did not experience an adverse rise in RH. This treatment was partially successful as the leather handle was able to reshaped to an extent, but not to the shape it would have been originally.

The dirt, paint flakes, feathers, etc. that had collected in the interior of the bucket were removed with the use of a vacuum. The head of the vacuum was covered with a fine mesh cloth to ensure that no paint fragments were lost, instead they were put aside for testing or for returning to Beamish with the bucket after treatment.

The painted surface of the bucket was dry cleaned using a cosmetic sponge and a soft bristle brush though this was found to be mostly ineffective at removing dirt. As a result solvents were tested in order to determine their effectiveness at removing dirt while not damaging the paint layers. A suitable solvent was found and applied using cotton wool swabs to remove the dirt and dust from the surface.

A non-polar solvent was applied with cotton swabs to the areas of bird excrement on the leather and paint as it wouldn’t damage either surface. This removed the bird excrement; however, there was a light stain on the leather following treatment, which was possibly a result of the way the bird excrement interacted with the leather surface.

The areas of loose and bulky corrosion on the iron rings were removed using mechanical methods. However, mechanical treatments weren’t continued past this due to the fact it was difficult to remove the corrosion mechanically while not damaging the attached leather. As such, the iron rings were treated chemically in order to convert the active, harmful corrosion products into stable, inactive products.

Stay tuned for next month’s object!