Brown mould from poor framing, clean and remount
Lim Tze Peng River Scene
A river scene by the Singapore artist Lim Tze Peng, a Cultural Medallion recipient, spotted with brown mould caused by its original framing, cleaned and remounted into the same frame.
On arrival
Condition
Brown mould spots were spread across the sheet, heaviest through the open water and sky where there is nothing for them to hide behind. The boats and the calligraphic line of the composition were unaffected in themselves, but the ground they sit on had gone blotchy.
The likely cause is the framing rather than the room. Where spotting of this kind appears evenly across a mounted sheet, tap water in the original mounting paste is the usual explanation: the minerals in it feed exactly this. It is a slow fault, and it shows up years after the framer has been paid.
What we did
Treatment
The work was removed from the frame and the mould spots reduced through controlled cleaning, worked evenly across the sheet so the ground lightened as a whole rather than in patches around each spot.
It was then remounted and returned to its original frame, which the owner wanted kept.
In detail
Before and after
Detail 02
Detail 03
Further detail
More of the work
These were photographed in one state only, so they sit on their own rather than beside a counterpart. Each is labelled with the state it shows.
The finished work
Outcome
The spotting is gone and the paper has come back to a clean ground, so the colour in the boats reads properly again instead of competing with the marks around it.
Works by a Cultural Medallion recipient are worth having looked at before the damage advances. This one was caught while the paper itself was still sound.
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