The series „Spurenlese“ allows insights into the work of professional restorers at ethnographic museum of Leipzig, Dresden and Herrnhut. The first volume, published in 2018, focuses on the restoration process of 45 ambrotypes and centrally deals with the technique, history of the collection and medialisation of these early photographic portraits of diverse Pacific islanders.
Released in 2019, the second volume places its main narrative around the history of Chinese porcelain repair work. The unique object, a completely recovered workshop of a porcelain mender, which is kept at GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde since 1912, serves as platform for stories on technique and materials as well as the Chinese craftmanship of mending broken porcelain as an up-to-date practice.
The third volume of Spurenlese which was released in March 2020, tells the hi/stories of a Japanese screen on display in the exhibition „Scenes of Life“ after having been restored.It displays theatre pleasures and day-to-day business on Shijō-Street in Kyoto at the beginning of the 17th century. It is put in relation to the artistic intervention „rhythm analysis“ by Timo Herbst, showing the throbbing life at the very same spot today. The screen has been brought to the museum by Leipzig collector Heinrich Botho Scheubefrom Japan in 1891 and is since kept there.
You can order the publication for 10€ (plus shipping) in the GRASSI shop: service(at)grassi-shop.de, ISBN: 987-3-00-065094-9.
