Approaches and Treatments of Three Bronze Monuments

Lucy Branch ACR, Director of Antique Bronze, discusses three bronze monuments with distinct conservation problems and how she went about their treatment.

In this on-demand thirty-minute tutorial, we discuss three bronze monuments with distinct conservation problems and how we went about their treatment. 

Bronze conservation case studies do assume a certain level of knowledge about bronze so if you are a beginner, you might be better with our tutorial, I Wish I Known That About Bronze, or our foundation-level course, Bronze Behaving Badly, which covers all the basic principles of bronze conservation and includes case studies too. 

If you are a custodian or manager of monument,  these bronze case studies will give you an insight into how a project might proceed.  With outdoor monuments, each site is different and this aspect often plays a key role in treatment decisions. There’s never a situation where one method suits all when it comes to external, bronze historic monuments.

If you are a conservator, there is some practical advice about treatments and examples of why we can’t make assumptions about what we are being presented with when it comes to bronze. 

These three bronze case studies are not theoretical. They are based on real projects we have worked on and we cover topics such as

  • cleaning
  • corrosion
  • protective coatings
  • delicate surfaces
  • decision-making 
  • repatination

This tutorial won’t overwhelm you with too much technical detail – it’s long enough to inform but short enough to squeeze into your day.