Читать книгу A Manual of Mending and Repairing; With Diagrams онлайн

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Terra-cotta is not difficult to mend. I can best illustrate this by an example. A friend once gave me a terra-cotta vase from the Pyramid of Cholula, in Mexico. These are supposed to be of very great antiquity. This contained a fragment of pottery, probably a sacred relic of ruder style, and I suppose of far earlier times. The vase, however, had been broken to fragments, and the owner was about to throw it away as worthless. I begged it of him. Firstly, I put the principal pieces together, using, to make them adhere, glue with nitric acid. For finer work I should have used Turkish cement or the best gum-mastic dissolved in spirit or fish glue. Piece by piece with care I reconstructed the whole.

There was wanting, however, one piece about three inches square. I pasted with great care a piece of paper inside the vase for a back, and then poured on it plaster of Paris liquefied with water. To make this set hard, the plaster or gesso should be made with burnt alum-water and dissolved gum-arabic. This exactly supplied the missing piece.