NTB Reconstruction

>The National Theatre’s renovation began with the reconditioning of the tapestries in the Great Hall’s foyer. It is an ambitious project if we take into account the impressive size of the three tapestries that make up the entire set. They survived the great fire of 1978, which broke out in the Great Hall of the National Theatre. Also, one of them is considered the largest tapestry in the world.

>The person in charge of bringing to life the original colors of the fabrics is Mrs. Aurica Pomponiu, who holds a degree in the aesthetics of textile restoration and who is a certified expert and lecturer on the subject of Fashion at the Bucharest Academy of Fine Arts. She attended the meeting between the theatre’s management and the creators of the tapestries and on May 20, 2010 she began the reconditioning process. Working alongside her with great love and dedication are several young graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts, who specialize in restoring textiles.

The three tapestries are:

-         The Theatre of the World:: 740 X 2250 cm (291 X 885 in)

-         Ode to the Motherland: 1145 X 880 cm (450 X 346 in)

-         War and Peace: 1100 X 900 cm (433 X 354 in)

 

We talked to Mrs. Pomponiu about the whole process of conserving and restoring the tapestries and she told us the following:

After the 1978 fire, two of the tapestries were cleaned, but the third had a more delicate problem: a third of Ode to the Motherland was destroyed and the artists had to redo that part of the tapestry. We have at our disposal a large area that allows us to simultaneously work on all three tapestries. Ode to the Motherland is almost finished, we began cleaning War and Peace, too, and The Theatre of the World is just in its vacuuming stage. The most complicated step is that of maneuvering them. It took real engineering until we learned how to maneuver, move and unroll them. That is why we intentionally left the largest of the three for last.

After the research I did during the summer, when I got to talk to specialists from the National Museum of Art, the History Museum and the Village Museum (some of which had taken part in the cleaning of the tapestries after the fire), I decided which substances to use when cleaning them this time. They had used simple solvents, but we improved their technique. There will be several stages consisting of multiple procedures. We will use solvents with different degrees of concentration and mild detergents that do not require rinsing. But I realized that after this process, the fibers lost some of their elasticity. The last stage involves the softening of the textile, to be more precise, hot soaking it with glycerin in order to freshen up and enliven the fabric. The glycerin will be combined with acetic acid and distilled water in different degrees of concentration. Hot soaking helps the glycerin penetrate the fibers where it is most needed, instead of only staying on the surface.

Before handing them over, the tapestries will be soaked with K600, a very efficient spray against moths.

Adventures while reconditioning

When we first vacuumed, we noticed that our throats and eyes were hurting and our hands and clothes would turn black. Everything around us, the floor and the plastic sheet were turning black. Black soot was spreading everywhere. I had the opportunity to restore 300 year old tapestries and I never encountered such a thing. The vacuuming was done with the aid of special stainless steel nets and low-power water-based vacuum cleaners, in order to dilute the smoke. We repeated the process several times and then we used a high-power vacuum cleaner. The final test was done by one of the girls, who was wearing white socks and walked over a portion of the tapestry. The socks turned black, so we vacuumed one more time. All of this was done just for the surface, because the soot between the fibers was later removed with special carpet detergents.

 

Both friend and foe

The smoke turned out to be both friend and foe of the tapestries. I would even say more friend than foe. The layer of smoke protected the colors very well. The smoke from the fire could not be completely removed, but after the tapestries will be cleaned all the original colors used by the artists will once again be visible.

The smoke proved to be a very good friend in relation to the greatest textile pest: moths. The moths were not able to get in, either in the front or in the back. There were some around the corners, in the area of the fasteners. We found them between these hemp and wool straps, but they did not damage much of the fabric.

We will finish cleaning the three tapestries by the end of this year, but in order to display them again, their lining must be redone. This will be accomplished manually and will be decided on at a later time. We will consider our options and try to update the lining material with something more efficient. But the fastening and securing method will remain the same.

A brief history

The huge tapestry The Theatre of the World is a joint work by artists Şerban Gabrea and Florin Ciubotaru, created over a period of ten years (1969-1979). Their work was initially a project awarded with the Grand Prize at the contest held by the National Theatre, in the attempt to provide the new institution with tapestries. It is an ambitious effort to incorporate a textile representation of ideas and symbols in the historical scale of the art of the theatre. This work is structured, in fact, by the explosion of light: the light seen as the spirit’s impetus and victory, as a primordial, cosmic energy.

In the center of the work, the artists depicted the main aspects of the characters in theatrical plays. There is a total of forty-five, inspired by different theatrical events, shows, great tragedies and even civilizations that have had an impact on the ages. Characters - ages, as the author calls them. Among the depicted scenes we can find Shakespeare – the man who wonders, the Card character – the one with two faces and two moods, or the Warrior Character. We also encounter the Byzantine Civilization, which according to the artist, holds “great significance” and the scene of the Labyrinth, depicting the battle between Theseus and the Minotaur, between Good and Evil, each represented by a character. The scene that I was particularly drawn to was the one in the middle, inspired by a book that Ciubotaru describes as follows: “During a storm, the boat catches fire”.

The so-called Dodecahedron, which is the last part, the third one, on the right, stands for the Pendant, the making of the show or the spiritual state of the making. In the sphere’s frame everything has a basis – matter. The volute coils around the hand symbol and its divinity, on which the energy signs are depicted, signifying Ying and Yang. The frame is surrounded by various torture implements, representing the basis of human conflict, inspired by medieval books.

The second tapestry, Ode to the Motherland, was created by Gheorghe Iacob and Ion Almăşan. The composition is displayed vertically and symbolizes our ties with our historical past. Life is illustrated in the center of the work, through several characters with different postures, laid-out vertically. Around the central composition there are medallions depicting illustrious figures of Romania’s historical past, which are surrounded by vegetation-inspired elements, emblems and symbols, emphasized by colors and contrasts. The entire tapestry is suffused with vegetation-inspired elements, represented by clusters of leaves. From a chromatic perspective, Ode to the Motherland consists mostly of warm and cold hues of white, interspersed with grays and intense shades of red, blue, yellow and brown.

War and Peace was created by Ion Nicodim and Ariana Nicodim. The tapestry presents itself as an allegorical whole, built around the central character - Man. Fascinated by the myth of man, by his terrestrial and cosmic destiny, the artist keeps coming back to this theme, unraveling an entire mythology of the human condition. The human figure is framed by the signs of the zodiac. Nicodim’s figurative art is truly visionary, hoping to evoke the spiritual horizons of the contemporary universe and, at the same time, to weld together the traditions of the opposing Eastern and Western civilizations, which have often interacted in the middle ground represented by Romania. The tapestry sets itself apart through its perfect symmetry and multiple rows of frames, underlining the core of the composition; man is depicted as the measure of all things. The artist has chosen to represent the human body in the style of Leonardo’s emblematic drawing.

Describing the work method

The original work methods are the ones that have been used for hundreds of years in the Dutch and French manufactories and are called haute lisse and basse lisse, depending on their specific technological details. Originally, the large-scale or small-scale tapestries produced with these methods were made entirely from wool, silk and gold or silver thread.

But the modern tapestries, like the ones of the National Theatre, are produced with different technological means: through a white cotton warp with a density of five threads/cm, the weaver draws the weft made of fine wool, with a density of 18//2, dyed manually with acid dyes for domestic wool, specific to a certain time.

 

Bibliography        

1. Specialized documents: The preservation of the large-scale tapestries displayed in the foyers of the National Theatre of Bucharest

2. Cerul şi pământul nostru by Deniţa Ilieva – The tapestries decorating the National Theatre

 

Translated by: Diana Maftei 
MTTLC, Bucharest University