For those of you who own a thangka, a few suggestions may help you in preserving it. You can care for your thangka as a museum cares for its thangkas.Resist the temptation to clean your thangka. The traditional offerings of butter lamps and incense smoke form an insoluble mixture that deeply penetrates and darkens the painting. Since this is not just on the surface, attempts at cleaning will cause thangka paintings to have a stripped look. Too often these days, the fine, elegant details on faces, brocades, and landscapes too often get stripped away permanently by cleaning. 
*Over-cleaned PaintingFrom a scientific, museum standards point of view, frequent rolling and unrolling of your thangka is the singularly most harmful thing you can do. Although thangkas traditionally are rolled and unrolled, these actions compress the delicate paint layers and the layer of chalk/hide glue they rest on. The paint layers can crack and flake off. The textile mountings that the painted cloth is sewn onto and the cover of the thangka rub up against and abrade the paint layers during rolling and while rolled up. Rolling also creases the cotton or silk cloth onto which the thangka was originally painted, and the cloth itself can crease and split, causing further paint loss. Rolling and unrolling causes the traditional textile mountings to tear as well. Older mountings are often made of a blue silk with characteristically weak warp threads.
*Painting Damaged from Rolling and Unrolling.You can transport your thangka as a museum does. Thangkas can be transported and stored lying flat on an archival-quality supporting board, available at most art supply stores. It is best to hang your thangka up and then not move or handle it after that. Do not pull on your thangka to try to adjust its shape. Some dimensional changes are expected. Cotton and silk swell and contract with changes in temperature and relative humidity. The cloth it is painted on and the textile mounting will expand and contract at different rates, causing some unevenness in the fit. This will happen, but if you pull on it to flatten it, you can tear the thangka and cause paint loss.Hang the thangka out of direct sunlight, and not over a heating or air conditioning element. Even a bright spotlight on it can direct heat towards it in a harmful way. In addition to the heat of many light sources, both the intensity of the light and the ultraviolet content of the light cause irreparable damage to thangkas. This is true whether your thangka has its traditional silk mounting, or is framed in a Western-style frame behind glass.If you have questions or concerns about caring for your thangka, we will be glad to help you!
*Over-cleaned PaintingFrom a scientific, museum standards point of view, frequent rolling and unrolling of your thangka is the singularly most harmful thing you can do. Although thangkas traditionally are rolled and unrolled, these actions compress the delicate paint layers and the layer of chalk/hide glue they rest on. The paint layers can crack and flake off. The textile mountings that the painted cloth is sewn onto and the cover of the thangka rub up against and abrade the paint layers during rolling and while rolled up. Rolling also creases the cotton or silk cloth onto which the thangka was originally painted, and the cloth itself can crease and split, causing further paint loss. Rolling and unrolling causes the traditional textile mountings to tear as well. Older mountings are often made of a blue silk with characteristically weak warp threads.
*Painting Damaged from Rolling and Unrolling.You can transport your thangka as a museum does. Thangkas can be transported and stored lying flat on an archival-quality supporting board, available at most art supply stores. It is best to hang your thangka up and then not move or handle it after that. Do not pull on your thangka to try to adjust its shape. Some dimensional changes are expected. Cotton and silk swell and contract with changes in temperature and relative humidity. The cloth it is painted on and the textile mounting will expand and contract at different rates, causing some unevenness in the fit. This will happen, but if you pull on it to flatten it, you can tear the thangka and cause paint loss.Hang the thangka out of direct sunlight, and not over a heating or air conditioning element. Even a bright spotlight on it can direct heat towards it in a harmful way. In addition to the heat of many light sources, both the intensity of the light and the ultraviolet content of the light cause irreparable damage to thangkas. This is true whether your thangka has its traditional silk mounting, or is framed in a Western-style frame behind glass.If you have questions or concerns about caring for your thangka, we will be glad to help you!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment