WHITE OR COLORED?

[Carlton Bach]

Much as I like garish display (and this kind of barbarian splendour feels a lot 'righter' for a culture like Rome than the clinical whiteness of Neoclassicism), I prefer my originals as close to 'as found' as is consistent with conservation.

But are they "as found"? It's my understanding that the plain metal suits of armour we see in museums are like that because Victorian curators cleaned them up vigorously, making them look like what they should look like to the more modern eye. There are heaps of such armours that were supposedly painted originally.

True, a lot of the stuff in our museums has been through the hands of earlier generations of conservators (I recently read a find report of some provincial Roman jewelry from the 19th century that apparently had to be 'vigorously scrubbed to clean it of the decaying mass of fabric adhering to the metal'. We almost cried). But I still think that, though we have to clearly say that, trying today to put it 'vback into its original state is courting disaster. Not only are we liable to be wrong, we'd be dicking around with originals. Once gone, whatever we inadvertently destroy stays gone.

And I like painted armour. I alredy offered to paint the helmets of all our SCA fighters in heraldic colours if they let me, but they prefer the shiny image.