Paper Conservation: Decisions & Compromises

Deconstructing the Reconstruction
Ewa Paul | Anna Grzechnik
The Warsaw Rising Museum, Warsaw, Poland
Introduction
Broadsides are single sheets printed on one side,
used as public announcements or advertisements.
These official notices of laws and regulations
or execution lists became the common
‘newscasts’ during the war. Such paper objects
were produced quickly and inexpensively to meet
the need of the moment. Due to their ephemeral
characteristics and poor thin paper, broadsides
often vanished as quickly as they were produced.
(Website source: ’Broadsides’) A poster is a type of
broadside, a composition of pictures and words,
or words alone but with a distinct graphic expression.
Similarly its main task is to spark interest
in a person passing by.
This poster highlights the conservation treatments
of two war-time broadsides, one a poster
‘Do Broni ‘ and the other a war-time Nazi announcement;
both are part of the Warsaw Rising
Museum (WRM) collection. The poster also describes
the reasons to reverse the poster’s previous
restoration, a selection of loss compensation
methods and how these methods complement
the historical value of the artifacts.
‘The urge to preserve is a result of the view
that the artwork is a valuable object (…). But
decisions regarding what to preserve (…) are
based on which of the artwork’s attributed values
are recognized as more important’(Schintzel
1999: 44).
At the core of this issue there is a conflict between
the artifacts’ historic and aesthetic values.
While it is important to take into consideration
the aesthetic aspect of the artifact, as it usually
guides any intervention, one must not forget its
historical value, both the moment at which it
was created and its passage through time. This is
a dilemma every conservator encounters and it is
as unavoidable as it is unresolvable because some
subjectivity will always influence the decision
making (Poulsson 2010); ‘ … it will be up to the
conservator to decide how far to take a conservation
treatment, whether that treatment involves
stabilisation only or is of more interventive character.
The objective must be to achieve the greatest
effect with the least amount of interference’
(Poulsson 2010:107).
Background
The Warsaw Rising Museum along with its
modern conservation studio opened its doors
to the public in the fall of 2004. To make sure
that all the artifacts were ready for the opening
day treatments of some were contracted out to
private conservation labs. The legendary Warsaw
Rising poster entitled, ‘Do Broni w Szeregach AK’
(translation: To Arms in the Ranks of the Home
Army), underwent a treatment in 1996.
In 1944 Mieczyslaw Jurgielewicz and Edmund
Burke created this 70 x100 cm chromolithograph.
Their assignment came from the 4th
Press and Publishing Division of the Home Army
Information and Propaganda Bureau. Just as the
Warsaw Rising was starting, copies of this poster
called on citizens of Warsaw to take up arms and
to join the Rising (Gola 2012:454).
The WRM archive owns a few photographs
documenting ‘Do Broni’ posters on the streets
of Warsaw in 1944. Historical institutions value
well-documented objects with interesting provenance
and this particular poster has an interesting
story. On August 1, 1944, the start of the Rising,
a Polish scout named Jadwiga Komatowska
posted it onto a building at 49 Nowy Swiat Street
in Warsaw. When the Home Army was retreating
from the area on September 13, Komatowska
took it down and hid it in a nearby trench in the
building’s courtyard. In January 1945 she dug it
up and stored it until it was later presented to
the WRM. The story of this artifact demonstrates
that sometimes losses and damage within an object
are important and ought to be treated as its
integral part.
Evaluation and treatment
After evaluating an extensive reconstructive restoration
which ‘Do Broni’ had undergone (Fig.
1), the WRM conservators, Anna Grzechnik and
Dorota Rakowska, found its results to be overbearing
and heavy-handed. This restoration treatment
was done without much consideration for
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