That museum replica in Rome made me rethink how I clean stone artifacts

I spent 12 years scrubbing pottery shards with a stiff brush until a conservator at the Capitoline Museums told me I was basically sanding off the patina, and now I want to apologize to every artifact I touched before that day, has anyone else had that come-to-Jesus moment with their own methods?

1 comments

1 Comment

bell.emma23d ago

Oh man, YES. I had almost the exact same wake-up call a few years back. I was cleaning some old stone tiles for a restoration project and went at them with a wire brush like I was scrubbing a grill. A guy walked by and just winced, then gently explained I was stripping years of history off the surface. I felt like such a fool. Now I barely touch anything without testing on a hidden spot first, and I use way softer tools. It's humbling to realize you've been doing more harm than good for that long.