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One of the many passions of my late mentor Bruno Pouliot was expanding on the knowledge and practice of the stain reduction of ceramics. Working with scientists at Winterthur and WUDPAC, he (and then we) contributed practical research backed by chemical cleaning theory and years of putting research into practice to develop sound protocols for ceramic stain reduction treatments.
Bruno had developed a well-rounded practical seminar on this topic for second-year objects majors, a platform that perfectly enabled experimentation and technique advancement. Soon, colleagues in other institutions began requesting that we hold this seminar for their labs, and so we "took it on the road," so to speak. |
Lead-glazed earthenware (pearlware) sugar bowl with blue underglaze decoration, and staining caused by the breakdown of sugars having entered the body through the crazed lead glaze. WUDPAC study collection
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To date, we have now given this seminar to conservators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2012), the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (2013), the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Lunder Conservation Center in Washington, DC (2014), and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015). In 2016, Bruno and Richard Wolbers delivered the seminar to the Straus Conservation Center at Harvard University Art Museums in Boston, and in 2021, I delivered an online lecture as part of the UK's Institute for Conservation (Icon) professional programming. In August 2022, I gave this seminar in person to participants at the University College London as an Icon workshop. Planning is currently underway for workshops in the UK at West Dean College and in Belgium at La Cambre.
From left: Meg Craft, Terry Drayman-Weisser, and Bruno Pouliot, at the 2013 seminar, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD
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Lauren lecturing during the 2014 seminar, Lunder Conservation Center, Washington, DC
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Images from 2022 Icon Ceramics and Glass Group stain reduction workshop at UCL, London
talks and publications
Fair, Lauren. 2021. "Stain Reduction of Ceramics." Virtual lecture, Icon Ceramics and Glass Group, November 22, 2021.
Pouliot, Bruno, Lauren Fair, and Richard Wolbers. 2013. "Re-thinking the Approach: Techniques explored at Winterthur for the stain reduction of ceramics." In Recent Advances in Glass, Stained-Glass, and Ceramics Conservation 2013. Preprints of the ICOM-CC Glass and Ceramics Working Group Interim Meeting and the Forum of the International Scientific Committee for the Conservation of Stained Glass, Amsterdam, NL, 7–10 October 2013, edited by Hannelore Roemich and Kate van Lookeren Campagne, 211-223. ICOM Committee for Conservation.
Pouliot, Bruno, Lauren Fair, and Richard Wolbers. 2013. "Re-thinking the Approach: Techniques explored at Winterthur for the stain reduction of ceramics." In Recent Advances in Glass, Stained-Glass, and Ceramics Conservation 2013. Preprints of the ICOM-CC Glass and Ceramics Working Group Interim Meeting and the Forum of the International Scientific Committee for the Conservation of Stained Glass, Amsterdam, NL, 7–10 October 2013, edited by Hannelore Roemich and Kate van Lookeren Campagne, 211-223. ICOM Committee for Conservation.