It’s The Infill – and not the paper repair kind

What year is it again?

You’re probably sick to death of us banging on about the UNESCO International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies, but we get such a huge kick-back from UNESCO we simply can’t help it. No, no, of course we’re joking. The Gathering is absolutely, 100% not for sale.^* Last month, we shared with you some beautiful 650nm-sized wavelengths, and we’ll start there again with an enlightening audio report on conservation, chemistry and cochineal (don’t be put off by the 52-minute track length – the bit you’re interested in is only 17). We then move down the spectrum, stopping first at around 570nm, which is apparently where lies the intersection between art supplies and loveable animated characters. ‘The world’s first character-branded colour!!!’ exclaim the marketing geniuses at Pantone (although perhaps they did it without so much punctuation). Cynical as we are, we’re frankly surprised it took until 2015 for this to happen. Hastening on to 475nm or so… ahhh, now this is the kind of colour innovation we like to see, one that has staying power we just can’t quite foresee with Minion Yellow: ‘A Revolution of the Palette: The First Synthetic Blues and their Impact on French Artists‘. Like us, you may not be able to make it to California to see the exhibition, but the compact summary of the history of Prussian blue, cobalt blue and ultramarine is worth a read. So having covered the primary colours, we’ll jump off of this ray of light for now; but don’t worry – we’ll surely have more for you later. After all, IYLLBT has five more months to go. Hooray!

^*When it comes to ethics, that is. We love our website, but everyone’s got a price!

A cornucopia of conservation

There have been quite a few interesting conservation projects in the news lately, some completed, some in progress and some desperately seeking funding, including:

• Pablo Picasso’s studio: yes, the article is in French, but that’s what Google Translate is for

• Neil Armstrong’s space suit: in which he ‘went to the moon’ 50 years ago – yeah, and we ‘holidayed on Pluto‘ just the other week^*

• the Royal Navy’s only ship to return from Gallipoli: she may still not have a proper name, but she sure looks pretty

• the live restoration of a bronze sculpture: no pressure there!

• Nespekashuti the mummy and his ancient Egyptian coffin: be sure to click on the ‘quite a jumble’ link – they weren’t joking!

• a 19th-century US flag given as a ‘token of peace’ to a tribe of Native Peoples from New York. Is that ‘peace’ as in, ‘Take this flag and now please peacefully remove yourselves to a reservation hundreds of miles away from your ancestral lands’? Just askin’.

• the British Library’s ‘crumbling to dust’ audio recording collection: this one needs your support!

• a fabulous art deco mural at the Chicago Motor Club: good article, but we’re not sure how we feel about the assertion that ‘contrary to popular perception, fine art conservators are not all alchemists working in seclusion in their studios’. Really? That’s what people think of us? It just makes us sound, well, kind of weird.

• a Northern European Renaissance painting in Manchester: we’re sad when a masterpiece is ‘essentially totally misunderstood and overlooked’ 😦 , but happy when it gets a bit of love and a conservation grant 🙂

• a 1660 Charles Le Brun family portrait: Varnish off. Varnish on. We love watching the transformations.

^*The Infill in no way encourages the reckless dissemination of conspiracy theories. That goes for rumour, innuendo, malicious gossip and misinformation too. The only things we like to spread are joy and the smell of freshly baked brownies from the Gathering HQ’s luxuriously appointed kitchen.

A drove of discoveries

It’s been a veritable new Age of Discovery, all conveniently packed into one handy month:

• an Alexander the Great mosaic in Israel: complete with the sweetest little tessellated elephant you’ve ever seen

• a Sigmar Polke painting in Texas: a $90 thrift-store purchase possibly worth $7M? That’s an astronomical 7,777,677.8% return on investment!

• Roman frescos in France: a pint of lager shandy says you don’t know what toichographology is

• Medieval leather shoes in Oxford: we can just picture the young dandy now, strutting down the muddy track in these babies, lookin’ migh-ty fiiiine

• an 8th-century Japanese temple flower painting: so pretty, just like HMS M.33! OK, maybe not exactly like HMS M.33.

• the wreckage of a 13th-century Mongolian warship off the Nagasaki coast: sometimes the destructive forces of nature can be a good thing, especially when they save you from invasion by the Mongol hordes

Your video treat:

is just downright fascinating. We admit the murrine demonstration videos are long ones, but at least take a look at the sliced glass paintings produced by this technique. We stand in awe of this gentleman’s talent.

The final word…

… goes to you. Or, to be more precise, the final question goes to you: do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that the bearded chap in this photo is actually Vincent Van Gogh? We don’t. We’re not even convinced Gauguin is there. And whoever they are, we definitely don’t think they look particularly drunk.

Thanks for reading. Now if you could just cajole ten of your friends into signing up for The Gathering, we’d be ever so appreciative. They don’t even have to be close friends. They could be casual acquaintances, individuals you merely tolerate or people like the slightly disdainful bloke who works at the off-licence round the corner. Just get us to 500! (By the way, did we mention you look particularly fetching today? That colour really works on you. And have you just had your hair cut? It really brings out your cheekbones.)

Sycophantically yours, The Infill

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