​So I have been around old stuff all my life.  Not just museums, but I come from a family of antique dealers and was in the business for myself for a while.  And one thing you always dread seeing is a terrible restoration. And there are a lot of them around.  In the antiques world, it's rare 18th c. furniture that somebody decided to 'chabby chic' with a can of white spray paint, or an original oil painting cut down to fit a (usually cheap and gaudy) frame etc.  In the museum world, it's more frequently the case that the 'restoration' was done by someone who was supposed to know what they were doing.  And did not.

At one of the museums I did some research at, the curator brought the fabric fragments I had requested out in a big stack of cardstock.  She was apologizing as she put them down...."I know, I know, the preservation is awful and if we try to reverse it they will be ruined."

I took a closer look.  Is that glue?  No.  Is that...deep breath...velcro?

Yup.  Somebody many years ago got the bright idea to mount the rough side of velcro to a piece of cardstock and just stick the very old and fragile textiles onto it.  Meaning that all the little 'hooks' in the velcro are now embedded in the textile. I'm not actually going to say which museum, because they are pretty embarrassed about it.

When I visited Istanbul and went to the room of Muslim relics, each 'sword of some companion of the Prophet' was an old sword blade fitted with a fancy scabbard and a fancy new handle with an jewels the size of an egg. There may have been some genuine relics, but they are all so covered in gilt, velvet and pearls that you can't tell.  Lord deliver me from Turkish Rococo.  I hate it so much.

 When you can see past the chandelier, take a look at the bannisters. They are made of Baccarat crystal.  Turkish Rococo is what happens when 18th c Late Baroque French meets 18th c Late Ottoman Empire.  I hate it so much.

​There is a similar problem with one of the cloud collars at the Hermitage, but I'll show you that in the next post.

The reason I'm writing about ill-conceived conservation and restoration methods is that I've been editing the massive number of photos I took in Europe and I found one I had forgotten about.  

I really love museums that put the objects in their collections into context for their patrons.  It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.  So when I finished with my appointments in the textile study room at the Ashmolean at Oxford, I took some time to see the rest of their really wonderful collection. They had a display about conservation issues and how best practices change over time and are mostly carried out by people who love the objects and are trying to do the right thing. And they used items in their collection that had been improperly conserved.

And when I saw this next item, I kinda lost it.  Just stood there and giggled for...awhile.  I blame the six hours or so I had just spent counting threads and measuring stitch length in some truly fabulous garments.

So I saw it.  And I did a double take.  And then I read the placard and that's what set me off.

Such typically British understatement.

"Syrian ceramic jar 1200 to 1250"...okaaaay....

 "poorly restored in the 1970s"

 ​Yeah.

Anyway, finding the photo got me thinking about other ways that objects have ended their lifespan in forms that the makers clearly never intended. Which brings me to the cloud collar. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

So, more good stuff from Valerie Hansen's The Silk Road: a new history.

So I mentioned how incredibly dry the Taklamakan region is, right?  The average precipitation in one of the oasises is less than one inch per year.  Less than an inch.  In the oasis.

This incredible aridity means that lots of things enter the archaeological record here that wouldn't  anywhere else.

One of the finds that makes me particularly giddy is the food offerings from a tomb that have dried naturally and been preserved for 1500 years. Four wontons and a dumpling, you guys.  Chinese dumplings that look like what you can order in restaurants all over the world.  The  archaeologists at the site noted that one of the wontons was broken open and they are pretty sure it was stuffed with pork and scallion. (The way I imagine this conversation playing out at the dig site is kinda hilarious.)

​And in the same grave?  Naan.  Seriously, Indian naan flatbread.  How cool is that?

Where did the naan come from?  It came with immigrants from the Gandhara region in India (including the modern cities of Bamiyan, Gilgit, Peshawar, Taxila, and Kabul in modern Pakistan and Afghanistan).  Take a glance at a map, that's a pretty long and terrifying journey.  From the city of Kashmir to the Kroraina kingdom in the Taklamakan Desert is almost a thousand miles and includes some of the highest mountain passes on the planet.  Hansen calls this series of mountain ranges, known to geologists as the Pamir Knot,  "a spiral galaxy of massive peaks radiating clockwise into the Karakorum, Hindu Kush, Pamir, Kunlun, and Himalayan mountain ranges."

Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-British explorer and archaeologist, retraced this journey in the late 19th c.  He was using the same technology and transportation used by the Ghandaran immigrants almost 2000 years earlier. 

​Hansen says, "Stein used a new route through the town of Gilgit that the British had opened only ten years earlier. He timed his crossing of the Tragbal Pass (11,950 feet, or 3,642 m) and Burzil Pass (13,650 feet, or 4,161 m) to occur in the summer after the snow had melted... He used human porters, as no pack animal could negotiate these tortuous trails. After crossing into China at the Mintaka Pass (15,187 feet, or 4,629 m), they proceeded north to Kashgar and from there to Khotan and then Niya. On some sections of the Gilgit Road, one can still see drawings and inscriptions left behind by ancient travelers on the rock walls. Travelers often had to halt for several months before they could proceed; like Stein, they had to wait for the snow to melt in the summer and could take desert routes only in cooler winter weather. During these lulls, they used sharp tools or stones to rub off metallic accretions and etch extremely short messages or simple sketches directly on the surface of the rock." 

​She also mentions that for some sections of passes the people walked along the sheer side of mountains using wooden pegs hammered into the stone cliffs as steps.  Carrying full packs.  Over sheer drops.  I am the tiniest bit terrified of heights (I'm better now, ask me about circus school sometime...) and I cannot imagine trying to do that.  Well, actually I can and I don't like it. 

 K​
I love digging up the details for the different legs of the trip, it makes it feel real.  There's a lot more awesome stuff in this book.  Here's the link if you want your own copy.

​One of the other things that caught my attention was descriptions of Kongque River, that is, the Peacock River.  It's a river with naturally occurring metal deposits dissolved in the water, turning it into shades of brilliant peacock blue and green.

Here are some pictures of the river as it looks today.  

​Can you imagine coming down out of those impossibly high mountains, or from the dunes of the Taklamakan and seeing this?

For those of you who've known me for more than 5 minutes, the following will not come as a surprise:

I am a museum junkie.  

The trouble with loving museums as much as I do is that whenever I travel, there is always some special exhibit that is over before I can get there or arrives after I leave.

So this made me a little whimpery:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/scythians.aspx

The two short videos on the webpage are definitely worth watching.  Quite a few of the objects in the second video are things I'm familiar with from books, including the gorgeous felted wool swan.

(This exhibit looks pretty interesting too: http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/living_with_gods.aspx)

I was in London in April, so I didn't get to see this and I am a tiny bit obsessed with Scythians and I'll be talking about them in the book.

Also, I want to hug the curator and feed him cookies.  
​http://blog.britishmuseum.org/how-we-brought-the-scythians-to-london/