PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Task of conservation. Case studies
After all the panels had been washed and dried, it became
apparent that the pieces stored in the attic were much darker
that the rest. To combine them with lighter panels, they needed
to be bleached. The method of bleaching has been described in
the chapter on the methods of conservation.
Since the wallpapers had been attached to the wall with
the aid of wooden frames, a similar system needed to be used
for remounting. The old method of applying wallpaper on canvas
had proven to be generally stable, but the tension caused
by shrinking and expanding of the frames had led to tears and
losses in the paper. To avoid similar damage, it was decided to
use the Japanese shoji system (discussed in detail in the chapter
on methods of conservation), which is suitable for rooms where
big shifts in temperature and relative humidity are expected.
(Fig. 145, Fig. 146) Before the wallpapers were applied to the
shoji frames, a new sketch was made to show the appearance of
the walls. As mentioned above, the panels had been combined
from different halls of the Esterházy Palace and no evidence
was available of the original wall schemes, so a new solution
following contemporary analogues needed to be developed. The
only problem faced by the conservators was the size of the wall.
The surface of the wall was smaller than the space needed to
exhibit all the panels in full length. To create a visual and material
unity, it was decided to combine the well-preserved panels
with more damaged pieces, which were cut in half to fill the
missing areas. The decision was based on the idea of functional
conservation, in which conservation should not only consider
the artistic and historical values of a heritage object, but also its
more mundane functions, 433 such as economic, social and cultural
aspects. 434 Breaking the unity of the wallpaper panels in
order to form a new whole served the economic interests of the
client, who wanted to attract new guests with a finely papered
historic room. Conservation increases some of an object’s possible
functions or values, very often at the cost of decreasing
433
Muñoz Viñas, Contemporary Theory of Conservation, 177.
434
Ibid., 177–178.
262