Conservators have been brought in to rewax the Barbara Hepworth "The Family of Man" sculptures at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Yorkshire Post photographer, Tony Johnson chats with Lowri Morris about the processes involved in preserving the iconic pieces to protect them from wear and tear.
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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
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