Category
Funded by NWO
Seedmoney project
Start
2016
Status
Completed
Acronym
DelftGlaze
The research project is focusing on glaze appearance and elemental composition of Delftware ceramics and the relationship between the two. It tackles three inter-connected conservation issues of blue-and-white Delftware ceramic glazes and in so doing combines conservation and technical art history research. Conservators’ pigment retouching combinations often match the original glaze only in certain lighting conditions, while in others there can be a discordant mismatch in colour. This phenomenon is called metamerism. The research will validate a computer-match-pigment-selection program with a specially-prepared database of pigment reflectance spectra to overcome metamerism for Delftware glaze. Since differences in the colour of Delftware are due to variations in glaze composition, the project will also analyse elemental compositions of a range of hues from items in the Rijksmuseum and other collections in an approach pioneered by the project researchers using concentration maps of 54 specific elements. This will enable the total glaze composition to be related to the colour measured for the same glazes. Finally, using Delftware from Dutch collections, the differences in glaze compositions will be compared for different periods and locations of manufacture.