This giraffe is an unusual material for us – cement. The form is delightful, and since its repair the owner has taken it inside, so it will stay as pretty as it is in the “after” photograph.
When we received it, there was extensive cracking – the ears, neck, and all the way down the body. A wire armature kept the ears, even though cement was missing from both.
The first stage of our restoration was to conserve – sealing the long cracks with our non-yellowing epoxy, and some cleaning of the algae that was growing on the skin. Then we filled missing areas with an epoxy putty – this was used because the neck and ears are slender and need all the strength they can get. After that the challenge was to recreate the texture of the cement surface, and its color. We used sand and small pebbles, similar to the original cement. We were able to press them directly into the soft epoxy. Then we colored the repair with natural earth pigments in the museum acrylic B-72.
