Conservation and restoration of wooden marionettes from the play The Strike Brigade

kalan-posterAuthor: Zala Kalan
Mentor: Miladi Makuc Semion, Associate Profesor; Ana Motnikar, Higher Professional Associate 

University of Ljubljana, Academy of Fine Arts and Design (Slovenia)
Conservation and restoration of works of art (MA) 

Summary
We have performed the conservation and restoration work on the marionettes from the puppet play The Strike Brigade. It’s premiere, which was also the inaugural performance of the newly established puppet theatre in Ljubljana (present Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana). The conservation and restoration of marionettes was tackled integrally, bearing in mind that they would become museum exhibits and would no longer carry out their original function - performing on stage. The questions that were raised during the work were: To what extent should we interfere with the marionettes? How much of patina should we remove? Should we fill the gaps or conserve and restore them exclusively according to their existing condition, maintaining any damage as a historical document of a period of time? We decided to intervene in the marionettes only so far as to slow their further decay and stabilise the damage, restoring only their most obtrusive parts.

 

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Short biography
ZALA KALAN  was born in Kranj, August 30th 1986. After graduating from the Art Grammar School at the Secondary School for Design and Photography, she enrolled in the Department of Restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. In 2013, she graduated with a thesis Conservation and Restoration of the Wooden Marionettes from the play The Strike Brigade (Udarna Brigada).