Candelabrum Repair
I’m a big fan of the BBC TV programme ‘The Repair Shop’ that restores to their former glory people’s precious family heirlooms that have fallen into disrepair. I prefer it to ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ which tends to focus on the monetary value of heirlooms. In contrast, The Repair Shop is concerned with the emotional value of the objects and the connection they provide to lost loved ones. So last year when I was given the opportunity to restore something belonging to my University of Dundee family, I was excited and nervous in equal measure. The University of Dundee Museum Services has the responsibility of looking after the University’s silver collection and Matthew Jarron, Museum Collections Curator, approached me to ask if a piece could be repaired. The piece that had become broken was a candelabrum, described in the catalogue as a ‘branched candelabra with five candle sockets in bowl’ (sic) made in 1957. The dimensions of the candelabrum are 32.5 x 24x 35.5cm so it’s a sizeable work – the biggest I’ve ever had to work on. In researching this blog post I also discovered that the candelabrum is one of two belonging to the University.
The candelabrum had been designed and made by English silversmith Leslie Durbin (1913 – 2005) who trained under Omar Ramsden. During a period of the growth of universities his business did well from a number of commissions for ceremonial silverware. Durbin is perhaps best known for his work on the ‘Sword of Stalingrad’. The sword was presented to Joseph Stalin in 1943 by Winston Churchill as a homage from the British people to the Soviet defenders of the city in the Battle of Stalingrad. We know the candelabrum is by Durbin because of the hallmarks on the silver. Hallmarking has been around for over 700 years and determines the quality of the metal, the maker’s mark and the year the work was made.
In this case the stem of the candelabrum had fallen through the base – cutting straight through - perhaps from the weight of the candle sockets themselves or more likely from a weight being placed on top of the stem. There were also several dents in the base that needed to be hammered out.
Hammering out the dents in the base of the work was tricky as I had to find a steel stake roughly the same curve as the base. I have a series of radius gauges that that I learned how to make and use in silversmith Adrian Hope’s workshop. These are differently angled curves, so I could place one of these over the curve of the base and then use it to try and find the same curve in a corresponding stake. A profile gauge also performs the same function. Gentle tapping with a planishing hammer slowly removed the worst of the dents. The real challenge was to determine how best to reconnect the stem to the base. I could just hard solder the two pieces back together again – however I was unsure if this would create the secure connection that I was looking for. I decided to add a silver disc between the two sections. The bottom of the stem was soldered to the disc and the disc was attached to the base effectively creating a shoulder for the stem and strengthening this central area.
You can learn a great deal from studying the work of another silversmith. For example, I was surprised at the thickness of the silver sheet that he was working with - over 1mm thick in places - making this candelabrum a robust and sturdy item for the table. The wire soldered around the outside edge was something that was very fashionable around the time it was made but is not something that we teach now, partly because this skill has been lost. Rod Kelly is a Scottish silversmith based in Shetland who has recently documented on Instagram the process for attaching a wire to a large plate. This is a process that takes hours of painstaking work, attaching and then hammering out the warping created from the work being heated. Another challenge encountered in this repair was trying to polish the hammer marks made from taking out the dents. The polishing machine in our workshop was not quite big enough, and we do not have a pickling pot big enough to take the work!
I hope that the repair I have made is an elegant solution, as the disc also echoes the wire soldered around the outside edge of the base. The disc is also an addition to the work, a little piece of me. This is akin to the Japanese art of repairing objects – Kintsugi - that treats the repair as part of the history of the object and doesn’t try to disguise it. Now that the candelabrum is repaired it has returned to being used at the table for University dinners and ceremonial occasions and will hopefully continue to serve for at least another 60 years.