The silver plated Bacchus statuette found in Liebenow/Lubanowo, Western Pomerania, PL

Abstract

The statuette of 32.9 cm in height is fragmentarily preserved; left arm, left leg and skullcap are lost. In course of a restoration carried out before the statuette was acquired by the Prussian Royal Museums in 1877, off-standing silver foil edges and the right arm were fixed to the brass statuette with huge amounts of a lead-tin solder. Further on, the silver surface was completely covered by black silver sulphide. The conservation was carried out to display the statuette in the exhibition of Roman art from Germanic regions in the Neues Museum/New Museum on the so-called Berlin Museum Island opened in October 2009. Silver sulphide was electrochemically reduced using zinc powder and acetone; old soft solder was removed mechanically. Off-standing edges of silver foil were fixed using cellulose nitrate adhesive. The right arm was mounted in a socket built up from polyvinylbutyral strengthened with micro balloons. Paper patterns of the seven remained silver foils were taken to reconstruct the silvering technique. The foils must have been extensively worked by hammering to fit as close as possible to the brass body of the statuette where they have probably finally been fixed by an organic adhesive. For comparison, a single bronze arm with foil silvering was also studied. Here, the silver foil was applied using a lead-tin alloy soft solder. On other technically comparable statuettes no in- vestigations on the silver foil application techniques were hitherto carried out.