beaker

The fills for this beaker were made with a very stable acrylic resin cast into a sheet and then textured with tiny bubbles in order to complement the weathered surface of the object. This new technique for filling losses in glass was developed in the Corning Museum of Glass conservation lab. Although we call the surface of this beaker “weathered,” it did not actually weather away. Weathering is surface deterioration common on ancient glass that has been buried for hundreds of years. The composition of the glass starts to change from the surface inward. This often results in hundreds of microscopic layers that can be relatively stable or come off in thin flakes or thicker layers. Weathering can make handling and treatment challenging because it makes the glass surface very fragile. Much of the weathered surface on this beaker is lost, leaving the remaining glass pitted and much thinner than it originally was. If an object was broken while it was buried, like this one was, then weathering can also occur on break edges, making them less likely to join properly. Our conservators have filled in the major losses of this thin beaker to provide extra structural support.