CONSERVATION TREATMENT AND REMOUNTING COMPLETED AT THE NISHIO CONSERVATION STUDIO,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

This hanging scroll is one of the oldest paintings in the Ackland’s collection. It is painted in gold and mineral pigments on silk. The silk is dark and brittle with age.

The old mount had become very worn and creased, putting the painting at risk every time it was rolled or unrolled. In order to repair the damages and make the painting secure, all of the mounting materials needed to be removed and replaced.

Unidentified artist, Japanese, Kamakura period (1185 – 1333 CE)Jizō Bosatsu, late 13th to early 14th century CEhanging scroll: ink, mineral pigments, and gold on silkAckland Fund, 82.9.1

Numerous horizontal creases, visible here from the back, had caused breaks and losses in the silk.

Detail before treatment

These close-ups of the head and halo show losses and lifting areas of silk.

The old silk brocade borders were removed, and then the entire painting was floated on a bath of purified water to soften the old layers of paste and wash out acidic degradation products.

The damp painting was laid face down. The paper linings were removed, one layer at a time.

The whole painting was kept face down and moist while old mending strips were removed from the reverse. The layer of lining paper closest to the painting had been dyed black to harmonize with the dark silk.

Pigments and gold were discovered on the reverse of the silk in the area of the figure. Because removing the final black paper lining would have removed some of these pigments, the decision was made to leave that part of the lining in place.

Shown from the reverse, this is what was left of the original silk after removal of those old linings that could be safely extracted.

Losses were filled with tiny inserts cut from new silk. Nishio Conservation Studio has a wide selection of traditionally woven silks that have been artificially “aged” with ultraviolet light to make them as flexible as the centuries-old original silk.

New silk was chosen to closely match the weave of the old silk and dyed to harmonize with the old silk in color.

The fills were cut to fit exactly, so that none of the original was covered up, all areas were even in thickness, and old and new threads aligned as closely as possible.

For the first layer of the new lining, hand-made Japanese paper was dyed dark brown to harmonize with the darkened silk. The linings were attached with a very dilute starch paste. Thin strips of Japanese paper are then pasted to the back of the first lining to strengthen all the areas where the old silk had broken.

The painting was lined with three more layers of paper, minus the one layer in the area of the figure that retained the old lining. The lined painting was

pasted along its edges to a drying board and left for several weeks.

Lyn Koehnline and Kyoichi Itoh study the lined painting.

The lining process has secured all the areas of broken and lifting silk. The new fills and linings are slightly lighter than the original silk, whereas the old lining is significantly darker. There has no been retouching of losses in the pigment or gold.

before treatment after treatment

The last stage of treatment is to mount the painting with silk brocades to form the scroll. Style, color, and proportions of the mount are dictated by tradition, depending on period, style, and subject matter, with some flexibility for personal preference.

The Nishio Conservation Studio has a collection many hundreds of specially woven brocades imported from Japan.

Yoshi Nishio described the range of brocades appropriate for a Buddhist devotional scroll of the Kamakura period; then, with colleague Kyoichi Itoh and Ackland conservator Lyn Koehnline, he considered which would be most harmonious with the Ackland’s painting.

Dozens of combinations were considered by laying them next to the painting. By tradition the brocade closest to the painting should be especially precious and include gold thread. The outer brocade should have a more subtle pattern.

For the inner brocade, we choose a silk that has a little blue in it to bring out the subtle colors in the painting.

old mount

Here you can compare the old brocades to the new.

The new mount is more restrained and less contrasting than the old, to let the newly-restored painting itself shine.

new mount

The Ackland Art Museum thanks the many sponsors of the conservation of our Asian paintings:

The Sumitomo Foundation

The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation

Shirley Drechsel and Wayne Vaughn

Office of the Provost of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Docents of the Ackland Art Museum

If you would like to sponsor future conservation projects, please contact Ackland conservator Lyn Koehnline at

koehnlin@email.unc.edu