Inventory, study and conservation of a reliquaries collection of the Oporto's cathedral (Portugal)

The current case study focuses on a collection of various types of reliquaries and crucifixes that belong to the collections of the Oporto’s cathedral. The collection includes reliquaries, pendent reliquaries, jewel reliquaries, and crucifixes collected by Amândio Silva a well-Known Portuguese painter of the 20th century. The collection was in storage at the Conservation and Restoration Center of this Católica university and without being inventoried or studied, and needing a proper conservation approach. Thus it was proposed to the 1st year students of the Conservation and Restoration bachelor to carry out these works and the assets were integrated as part of the workshop classes of the curricular unit of Preservation and Conservation Techniques under the supervision of an interdisciplinary team of teachers. Among the greatest challenges of this work, we can highlight the lack of information about the origin of the assets, their chronological and cultural framework and variety of material supports (metal alloys, paper, tissues, beeswax et al). After the first stage of the photographic registration and fill of inventory sheets, the collection was separated according its condition towards to outline the treatments. XRF was carried out in selected pieces to identify metal alloys of some objects with applied decorative coatings. Cleaning (mechanical and chemical) was the most applied operation, and in some cases disassembly and reassembly was performed as well structural strength through bonding and punctual welding. This task assumed the conservation of circa of 155 assets. The last phase consisted in a temporary packing of the collection in order to program a permanent proper storage.