00:00 I'm Lowri Morris and I'm a sculpture conservator and I'm freelance so I work
00:09 at Yorkshire Sculpture Park but also all over Britain and today I'm maintaining
00:15 the family of man for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Hepworth Estate
00:19 and they get annual maintenance, well bi-annual maintenance every two years to
00:25 replenish the wax protective coating and give them a good clean and also do a
00:31 general condition check to check they're being kept as well as we can.
00:36 It's a collection of nine sculptures, it's the biggest kind of Hepworth series there
00:42 are only three versions of this in the entire world so it's really
00:47 special that one's in Yorkshire as well where she grew up where she had lots of
00:52 inspiration for the work. We need to be really careful about not over waxing
00:58 the sculptures because then they just attract loads of dirt and it
01:01 really obscures the natural pattern of colour so the dark sections of patina
01:08 that's a liver of sulphur patina it would have been applied by the
01:11 foundry after it was made and then the turquoise areas it's a cold
01:17 patina application again it's a chemical reaction with the surface
01:21 that's deliberately applied and we restored these surfaces in 2016 so they
01:26 do need to be kept up to date you can't just leave them and the wax is really
01:31 important because it protects them and arrests them in that state but they do
01:34 change over time and it's a difficult one to get sometimes grasp because
01:39 patina is also you know a worn appearance so that's something that
01:43 develops over time but the deliberately applied ones are very similar we just do
01:48 it really carefully so I'm using a blowtorch to heat the surface of the
01:53 dark areas and we need them hot because we need to dry by moisture really
01:58 carefully but then put a thin layer of wax and it does get sucked into the
02:04 surface almost like a put a like some porosity it's not porous bronze but it's
02:09 hot so it melts nicely and then saturates the surface and then once
02:15 that's dried we highly polish and buff that surface so it gives it a real
02:20 glimmer like it just brings out all the natural warmth of the bronze and if you
02:24 look closely once it's waxed you see so many different layers of colors that the
02:30 foundry would have deliberately applied so we're really enhancing the original
02:34 appearance and what Hepworth would have overseen happening but it's a foundry
02:39 application so it is a specialist process and it's more one that you learn
02:44 the more that you work with it and the more you read about her and the
02:48 different recipes that are recorded at Tate Britain in the archive.
02:53 Hepworth is recorded as wanting them to be touched that's part of the law of the
02:58 surface and they've got the different sections you've got areas that are matte
03:01 and lumpy and you've got the shiny parts and the really smooth areas and
03:08 that's really is to you know put the people's touch and she did want that
03:13 the problem is once you multiply a few hundred people a year by hundreds of
03:18 thousands of people a year it's really too erosive you know you can just
03:23 imagine it's like seeing steps going up a stone staircase too many people and
03:29 they erode away and whilst it's beautiful it does change the appearance
03:33 too much and that's where we come in we like to get a balance between too much
03:38 change and just keeping them looking as she would have intended. We normally
03:43 spread it over about a week and a half to two weeks because we are outside so
03:47 we have to work when it's not raining if it's raining and you're waxing you're
03:51 just trapping moisture into the surface so we allow a few extra days for some
03:56 contingency and then we do get wet when we're scrubbing that's fine but waxing
04:00 it's not suitable so this is that and this is the last sort of week of the
04:04 year we can really wax outside it's much easier in summer it's really warm but
04:09 this is a good time of year so we've still got a bit of sun
04:13 you
04:15 you
04:17 you
04:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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