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  • Home
    • About
    • Portfolio
    • Bronze Restoration Services
  • Advice
    • Condition Assessments
    • Condition Reports
  • Learn
    • Defining Bronze Patina FREE Resource
    • Online Bronze Conservation Course
    • How To Patinate Bronze Course
    • I Wish I’d Known That About Bronze
    • Bronze Conservation Case Studies
    • Stability and Bronze
  • Sculpture Restoration
    • Monument Restoration
    • Sculpture Conservation
    • Sculpture Repair
    • Bronze Monument Cleaning
    • Sculpture Services
    • Small Bronze Restoration
  • War Memorial Restoration
    • Bronze Plaque Restoration
    • Bronze Monument Cleaning
  • Bronze Restoration
    • Monument Restoration
    • Statue Repair
    • Bronze Plaque Restoration
    • Sculpture Conservation
    • Small Bronze Restoration
  • Bronze Maintenance
    • Facade Cleaning
    • Bronze Monument Cleaning
  • Blog
    • Oliver Tambo Sculpture Conservation
    • The Sculpture Vulture Podcast
    • Cleaning Bronze Statues
    • DOFF Cleaning In Bronze Conservation
    • Bronze Cleaning
    • The Vandalism of the Bomber Command War Memorial
    • Talking About Statue Restoration with Freud
    • The Aldersgate Flame
    • Bronze Sculpture Restoration: The Challenging Restoration of Field Marshall Smuts, Parliament Square
    • Galvanic Corrosion
    • A Man of Many Talents
    • How To Care For Bronze Statues in Your Home
    • How to Clean a Bronze Sculpture
    • Restoration Comedy
  • Sculpture Podcast
  • Contact Us
Statue Restoration
The Aldersgate Flame
  • June 29, 2018/
  • Posted By : lbantiqueb/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Bronze Sculptures, Sculptural Conservation, statue restoration, Uncategorized
Aldersgate Flame Disfigured by Corrosion

The Aldersgate Flame whose legibility and purpose had been lost

The Antique Bronze team recently undertook monument restoration work on The Aldersgate Flame.  This is a special bronze located outside the entrance to the Museum of London. It is reputed to be the approximate location of John Wesley’s evangelical conversion in 1738. The English cleric and theologian went on to be one of the founding fathers of Methodism. He inspired its followers to right wrongs of the day, particularly with regard to social issues, such as prison reform and the abolition of slavery.

The mighty sculptural scroll features text from Wesley’s journal describing his conversion experience. Over time, the environment had done its worst and the monument’s surface had corroded quite comprehensively. Only small patches of patina were left intact.

In a situation like this monument restoration is the only way to proceed.

Aldersgate Flame Disfigured by Corrosion

Text was disfigured by corrosion

As the design of the sculpture centres around its text, visitors looked confused when guided there. They could no longer understand the statement that was intended to engage the public or appreciate its value because of the poor legibility and disfiguration of the surface.   This is where champion of the monument, Alison Gowman, came to its rescue. She found funds to restore the monument.

Monument Restoration and Conservation Ethics

When a bronze surface is highly disfigured, a conservator has very few options open to them. Repatination involves the recolouring of a bronze’s surface by hand. The method employs almost identical methods to how a foundry would have finished the bronze when it was first made. This was a method that in previous eras was used so often that it was barely questioned.  Today,  we try to avoid treatments that do away with the passage of time in order to balance the original finish with acknowledgement of the object’s history.

Repatination, though, should make conservators pause. It goes against several principles that we try to uphold such as the desirability of techniques to be reversible and minimal intervention whenever possible.

Though technology has stormed ahead in the last decade, the repertoire of restoration technique suitable for large bronzes remains in the dark ages. Monuments which are hammered with rain, baked in the full sun and blown about by fierce urban winds often need repatination work in order to restore them to usefulness.  So in this particular case, legibility trumps reversibility.

We were fortunate to have some segments of patina that were not ruined. This meant we were able to coax the new colour into existence and blend it with the segments that were already intact.

The Aldersgate Flame after repatination

Text on the scroll after some repatination work

All Is Well Now

All is well now for The Aldersgate Flame and it is being enjoyed again by its visitors.  Recently, Wesley Day was celebrated and the monument received a great deal of praise. Repatination should not necessarily be a technique conservators are fearful of using.  Considered carefully and used sparingly, it continues to be a necessary technique in the preservation of outdoor sculpture.

The Aldersgate Flame after Restoration

The Aldersgate Flame after Restoration


Sculpture Conservation
Sculpture Conservation on the BBC World Service
  • October 18, 2015/
  • Posted By : tillypagedesigns/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Antique Bronze, Lucy Branch, Sculptural Conservation

Sculpture conservationListen to Lucy Branch talking about sculpture conservation at Canary Wharf with Dan Damon on The BBC World Service’s Friday Feature and how it inspired her art-thriller fiction.


Bronze Behaving Badly, Principles of Bronze Conservation

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