Blog

The MDMB 36 clock is one of the largest and most impressive instruments in the Museu de la Música de Barcelona collection. The process of cleaning and restoration (non-musical) of this great instrument has required many hours and patience, and a multidisciplinary team of conservation, restoration, photography and recording to extract the maximum amount of information from this instrument. The authorship, surely the first question we ask ourselves when documenting a piece, is, in this case, an enigma. Two signatures have been found, one in the central scene of the clock face, "M. DILGER", and the other on the perimeter of the frame of this same painting and which is difficult to decipher, "Olsum" (?). It runs on a cam-weighted, cam-reading engine, with a barrel organ with eight programmed parts. We found no less than one hundred and fifteen wooden organ pipes with bevel, bellows and a crank for the barrel, with a register change. 

Standing over two and a half meters high, it is mounted on a two-body wooden cabinet, and the musical instrument itself is on top. The woodwork is remarkable throughout the instrument, with marquetry and gilded metal. There is also an interesting interior decoration, with four polychrome paintings on metal plate with mythological scenes such as the abduction of Europa, Athena and Zeus or the scene of the nereid Galatea and the cyclops Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant who is defeated by Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey. Apart from the mythological scenes, we find eight wooden figures representing a band of musicians with oscillating movement, accompanied by three couples in period costume dancing in a circular motion.

 

Organoleptic examination

The first phase was an exhaustive organoleptic examination. Most of the piece of furniture is made of mahogany veneer, with decorative elements in ebonized wood and gilded metal and marquetry in wood and metal. We observed that it presented superficial and accumulated dirt, especially in the interior of the furniture, with signs of xylophagous attacks and several cracks. As for the metal, it presented a natural aging patina that darkens the surface. The metal of the marquetry was not so darkened. The nails holding the fabric were rusted and the fabric of the doors had wear and small holes.

As for the clock, it was generally in a good state of preservation, with accumulated and adhered black surface dirt, occasional detachment of the structure and frame, and breakage. Some of the automaton figures showed losses of support or fragmentations. The polychromies were generally in good condition, both the pictorial layer of the clock face and the decorative paintings with mythological representations. On the other hand, the polychromy of the automaton figures was in a poor state of conservation, with losses, lack of cohesion with the support and visible repainting, apart from superficial dirt. The mechanism in bronze, brass and iron alloys presented adhered superficial dirt, and oxidation punctually in the iron alloys (rods, barrel pins, barrel bar, small nails, wire), but the general condition was good.

Conservation and restoration intervention

The most important intervention, and the first, has been a thorough cleaning with different actions on the parts of the object:

• Furniture: dry mechanical cleaning has been performed with vacuum cleaner and brush, to remove accumulated surface dirt. A cleaner made with oils and solvents has been applied mechanically on the surface of the furniture to moisturize and repair, and varnish remover for leaching stains. The metal cleaning has been done with White Spirit.

• Clock: mechanical cleaning has been done with vacuum cleaner and brush to remove surface dirt from all interiors and between the tubes. Chemical cleaning has also been done with ethanol for the removal of adhered dirt, and gluing in a socket of the structure at the top with cold fish glue. The tubes have been disassembled and combined dry mechanical cleaning with Staedtler Mars eraser, plastic and ethanol.

• Paintings frames: mechanical dry cleaning with vacuum cleaner and brush to remove surface dirt. The large painting frame was unglued in one of the corners, and has been glued with animal glue and cold fish glue. The remains of glue have been removed with distilled water.
• Mirror: cleaning with distilled water and 5% neutral soap to remove adhering surface dirt.
• Pictorial layer: cleaning tests have been carried out on the pictorial layer of the paintings on metal, in two phases:
  • Cleaning with triethanolamine gel to remove part of the varnish and adhering surface dirt. It is applied with a brush for a few seconds or a minute, depending on the thickness, removed and rinsed.
  • Cleaning with a mixture of ethanol + isopropanol (90:10), to remove the rest of the varnish and leave the pictorial layer visible.
  • Aplicación con paletina de nueva capa de protección en las pinturas con barniz Regalrez 1094 al 15% en White Spirit.
  • Automaton figures: cleaning has been carried out with distilled water to remove surface dirt and repainting.

Thanks to this intervention, which lasted 10 days, the musical clock has greatly improved its physical appearance, its state of conservation and also its documentation, since this whole process has generated very extensive and diverse information that we have incorporated into the identification card. In addition, photographic sessions have been carried out to renew the identification images, so that now it can be seen, although it is not exposed, in all its splendor.