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Reconditioning an Eighteenth-Century Ship Model
Photo: Sherry Moore
Valkenisse DJ.qxp
S EAWATCH B OOKS , LLC 19 Sea Watch Place, Florence, OR 97439 USA phone 541.997.4439 email seawatchbooks@gmail.com
fax 541.997.1282 web www.seawatchbooks.com
VALKENISSE
RETOURSCHIP OF 1717
SEAWATCH BOOKS LLC
Reconditioning an Eighteenth-Century Ship Model
VALKENISSE RETOURSCHIP OF 1717
VALKENISSE RETOURSCHIP OF 1717
T
he ship modeling world called to Rob Napier when he was a boy. He turned to it for a career when he was 27, and it has occupied him professionally since. He now focuses on building new models and on maintaining models for individuals and institutions. Rob’s original models are created on a groundwork of documentation found in the historical, photographic, and artistic records. His work has won awards at national and regional competitions, and he has judged numerous ship modeling events. Rob works closely with curators and conservators of institutional collections to repair and conserve models and to prepare them for exhibition. Rob shares his experiences and views by lecturing and by contributing frequently to publications that feature ship modeling and maritime history; he edited the Nautical Research Journal for five years during the mid-1990s. Rob served as a US Navy journalist during two late-1960s combat cruises to Southeast Asia. He has experience with small boat building and commercial fishing, and he is an avid sailor. Rob lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with his wife Sherry Moore.
Reconditioning an Eighteenth-Century Ship Model
Jacket photos: Rob Napier
ROB NAPIER
RECONDITIONING an
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SHIP MODEL
RECONDITIONING an
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SHIP MODEL
VALKENISSE RETOURSCHIP of 1717 by
Rob Napier
© 2008 by Rob Napier. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Published and distributed by SeaWatchBooks LLC 19 Sea Watch Place, Florence OR 97439, USA Telephone: (541)997 4439 Fax: (541)997 1282 E-mail: seawatchbooks@gmail.com Web: www. seawatchbooks.com ISBN 978-0-9820579-0-2 Manufactured in the United States of America First edition, first printing, 2008
CONTENTS FOREWORD BY AB HOVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii PREFACE BY GERALD W.R. WARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .XI Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii Part 1
OPPORTUNITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Part 2
PROVENANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Part 3
RESEARCH SOURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Part 4
THE RIDDLE OF THE SCALES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Part 5
PREPARING THE BERTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
Part 6
THE HULL BELOW THE MAIN RAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
Part 7
THE HULL, MAIN RAIL AND ABOVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
Part 8
GOING ABOARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101
Part 9
SPARRING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123
Part 10 RIGGING PREPARATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141 Part 11 STANDING RIGGING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161 Part 12 RUNNING RIGGING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176 Part 13 FINAL STEPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 APPENDIXES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199 GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225 SOURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .227 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233 FOLDING PLATES
Foreword Holland lies in Western Europe, in the estuary of the rivers Rhine, Muese, and Schelde, just opposite England across the North Sea. It is a small and rainy country, but it has an amazing history. Once its commercial empire reached to the outer ends of what was known of our world. There was not a wish for power or to find new places to settle its people. Rather, the only goal the Dutch had was trading and making money. Spices, china, tea, and other luxurious goods were brought to Europe where they were sold with high profits. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or United East India Company) was the co-operation of merchantmen from six Dutch cities: Amsterdam, Middelburg, Rotterdam, Delft, Enkhuizen, and Hoorn. In the two centuries of its existence, the company built thousands of ships. Many of them were to serve as transport vessels in Asian waters, but many formed a type, called the “retourschip,” which was developed to transport the Asian goods to Holland, and silver, gold, and people to Batavia (now Djakarta). The VOC retourschip was an easily recognized ship type with characteristics like standardized sizes, huge loading capacities, and relatively heavy ordnance. Some twenty contemporary models have survived. All of them are of high quality and show features that can only be appreciated in their original context. Thus the models are of great importance for our understanding of the retourschip type, the habits and technical qualities of its time, and of the VOC as a phenomenon. The models were originally used to decorate the houses and meeting rooms of the “Heeren XVII,” the managing directors of the company, and the models added to the distinguished character of the owners, the rooms, and the company itself. After the bankruptcy in 1795, the models were sold. Though it is slightly exaggerated to speak of a diaspora, the models can be found in several countries including Belgium, Norway, Denmark, and Scotland. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in the United States, owns one of them, the model of Valkenisse. Ship models are difficult objects to keep, and the owner has to expend great efforts to preserve or restore them in a way that reflects their historical significance. I knew Rob Napier and the quality of his work from an earlier contact about some Dutch models he was about to build, and I felt relieved that he was the one to restore the model of Valkenisse. When he informed me about the job, I discussed the news with my boss in those days, Bas Kist, and he immediately responded: “Bring him over here and show him everything he needs to know. This model is a part of our cultural inheritance, and we are responsible for the right treatment of the object.” So I invited Rob over to Holland and took him on a tour around the museums where similar models are kept. It was the basis for a close contact that lasted throughout the restoration of the model. I was impressed by the eye for detail Rob showed. He tends to work more “accurately” than a model of this quality requires (VOC models should not be confused with English Admiralty Board models, which ask for a far more precise treatment). So, during the process, I never stopped encouraging Rob to add some “well-planned carelessness,” which he performed to the best of his skills. In some cases, a restorer has to go down to the level of craftsman-
viii É FOREWORD ship his object was produced with, and Rob can go down quite a stretch because he is a true artisan. The restoration of Valkenisse is a complete success, and we in Holland are proud that one of the models of the ships that shaped our history is in Boston and is to be permanently exhibited. This book, the report of Rob’s effort, is an example not only for the restoration of VOC models, but for restoration of ship models in general. It shows great interest in the history and in the physical ins and outs of vessels. It also bears witness to the skills a restorer requires to undertake a heavy project like this, and it improves the image of ship model restoration all over the globe. AB HOVING Ship Model Restorer Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Preface The Valkenisse — one of the major jewels in the ship model collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — is an amazing work of art. It documents in miniature one of the most complex and beautiful material objects of its day, a retourschip, built in 1717, of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). These magnificent vessels were designed to sail from the Netherlands to the East Indies and return with a precious cargo of peppers, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The fullsize Valkenisse made this round-trip at least seven times during the first seventeen years of its life, before it was wrecked in 1740. Our model, however, survived. Used initially (it is thought) as decoration in the headquarters of the VOC in Middelburg, where the Valkenisse was built, it eventually became an “antique” and somehow escaped destruction. Its whereabouts after the demise of the VOC are unknown, but it may have traveled to England before surfacing in New York City in the twentieth century. The modern preservation and conservation of the Valkenisse is, as you will read, a story now nearly a century old that has involved the efforts of many people. The narrative starts with the collector Clarkson A. Collins, Jr., who spotted the model at a dealer’s gallery or in an auction house sometime just after the end of the First World War. Collins immediately fell in love with it, purchased it, and — according to his own testimony — somehow managed to take it home in a New York cab. After about a decade of ownership, however, Collins decided to part with the model in 1928. At that time, J. Templeman Coolidge of Boston and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was assembling a major maritime collection for display at the MFA. Coolidge stepped to the fore and added the Valkenisse to his holdings. He placed it on loan to the Museum, where it became part of the Ship Model Gallery in the then-new Decorative Arts Wing. In 1932, Coolidge converted his many loans into a gift. Decades passed. In the early 1970s, the ship model collection, formerly part of the Department of Decorative Arts of Europe and America, was assigned to the newly created Department of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture. In time, space constraints within the Museum as a whole forced the temporary closing of the gallery so that it could be used for storage. In 1990, Jonathan L. Fairbanks, the Katharine Lane Weems Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture (and now Curator Emeritus), enlisted the services of Rob Napier to examine and treat many models in the collection prior to a special exhibition and in anticipation of the reopening of the Ship Model Gallery. With the assistance of Maria Pulsone Woods and other staff members, the newly installed gallery, replete with educational materials, was opened to great acclaim in 1992. The Valkenisse, however, was not included in that display. Little, if any, attention had been paid to the physical condition of the large model since its acquisition in 1932, and much needed to be done. Rob Napier was the obvious choice to undertake the massive and daunting challenge presented by the Valkenisse. The initial part of the challenge, as always, was to find funding for the project. Fortunately, the late Frits Markus (a notable collector of European ceramics) offered a generous “challenge grant” that was quickly matched by the Bauervic Foundation, courtesy of Ms. Peggy L. Maitland, and thus by November 1993 the process could proceed.
x É PREFACE
Over the next few years, Jonathan and I would travel occasionally to Rob’s studio to see how the work was coming and to try to answer his many thorny, perceptive questions about the conservation treatment. As you will read in this book, Rob is a meticulous historian, who scoured the written and pictorial record for evidence to guide his work. His frequent partner in research was Albert Hoving, curator of ship models at the Rijksmuseum. It is a pleasure here to recognize the generous and unselfish cooperation offered by Mr. Hoving and his institution; their efforts were essential to the successful completion of this project. As you will also discover here, Rob is a consummate craftsman with extraordinary bench skills, who was able to translate his discoveries and conclusions drawn from the documentary evidence into three-dimensional results on the model itself. Each step of the Valkenisse project, from “the riddle of the scales” to the enormous complexities of rigging, required careful thought and analysis. Innumerable decisions had to be made along the way not only about major issues, but also concerning the most minute details. Rob handled those decisions intelligently and deftly, always searching for and relying upon the best available evidence to support a given conclusion. Thanks to Rob’s decade-long effort, the Valkenisse will soon take pride of place in another reincarnation of the Museum’s Ship Model and Maritime Arts Gallery (now named in honor of George Putnam in recognition of his financial support) in our new American Wing. There, it will fulfill J. Templeman Coolidge’s belief “that the models from which . . . old ships were built are, in beauty of design and of craftsmanship, indeed works of art.” Meticulously conserved and fully rigged for the first time in many years, it will educate and entrance our visitors for generations to come, GERALD W.R. WARD The Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Introduction The vessel named Valkenisse was built in 1717 and operated by the Dutch East India Company. The model that is the subject of this book almost certainly dates from the same time. When it was over two centuries old in the 1930s, the model found its way into the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In the 1990s, I was commissioned by the museum to rerig the model using components that had evidently accompanied it for a long but uncertain length of time. The project quickly evolved into more than a rerigging job. We do not know who originally constructed the model or who cared for it during its first two hundred years, but investigation revealed that the creative effort of the model's builder had not been respected by intermediate custodians as much as we might have hoped. In addition to the spars and rigging, other systems required considerable attention. Many of these tasks had been started by the model's penultimate private owner in the early twentieth century. Unfortunately, his work remained incomplete for reasons we can only surmise. The work of each person who works on a ship model can be identified by his characteristic workmanship, or “hand.” The hand is analogous, say, to a particular artist’s brushwork on a canvas. As on a painting, the hand of a person repairing a model may be legible in brushwork or slight color variations that differ from the original model builder’s. The repair person’s hand may also be seen in his different ways of choosing wood for new fittings, of smoothing surfaces, of making joints, of applying glue, of tying knots, and so forth. A major goal of the Valkenisse project was to identify the distinct hands who left their marks on the model. I strove to reconstruct their sequence and to understand how each impacted the model’s integrity. The result of this inquiry is the story of the model. In today’s ship modeling world, “restoration” has come to mean any loose range of processes that might be applied to an old model to clean it, repair it, refinish it, or put it in what might be interpreted naively as better condition. It is often the case, though, that amateur, semi-professional, and even untrained professional ship modelers are not too careful about the effects that modern paints, glues, and other chemicals can have on old objects. Worse, some thoughtless modelers feel entitled to take license with an original builder’s intentions. They make so-called corrections to his work or even build and install systems that may not have been a part of the original model at all. Such practices do not necessarily fit a more restricted definition of restoration that trained art curators and object conservators might advance. To these professionals, restoration means specifically that any work done to an object will help return it to a known previous condition, and that the evidence for the previous condition will be dictated by the object itself. The challenges I faced with Valkenisse lay somewhere between the two practices. For instance, I knew from evidence found on the model what sort of line the original modeler used for rigging. But there was no specific evidence he had used that kind of line to make the main topgallant braces, or, for that matter, that he had rigged main topgallant braces at all. Should I install them? The answer lay in the observation that all other models similar in type and age to Valkenisse were fitted with the braces, so I made and installed them on Valkenisse. Does this decision fall within the modern modeler’s loose meaning
xii É INTRODUCTION for restoration or the conservator’s more restricted meaning? The lack of a clear answer steered me away from using restoration to define the sort of work I performed on Valkenisse. I looked for another word and settled on “reconditioning.” It may not be a perfect choice, but it will not be confused with other terms currently in use. My education does not yet include academic courses in art conservation. However, I kept my eyes and ears open during the happy occasions when I worked closely with several skilled and conscientious conservators. The model of Valkenisse presented some situations for which I did not know or understand the established approaches of formal conservation. If I could not obtain specific advice from a professional, I chose the best solution I could, and I made a particular effort to document the work as precisely as possible. I hope my record will help future conservators understand how the model arrived at its present state. A key discussion in the conservation world revolves around how much a technician should make new work blend with the original fabric of an object. One side maintains that new work should blend as perfectly as possible so the object looks whole and original. The second stance is more prevalent and maintains that new work should stand out, or at least not blend perfectly, so viewers can see easily what is old and what is new. Generally, I side with the second point of view when the objects are relatively familiar to a large general audience. But broad audiences are unfamiliar with historically significant ship models, so I see the issue slightly differently when it is applied to them. The differences of the hands that address a ship model are usually legible enough that an artisan’s best efforts to conceal new work will seldom be sufficient to render it invisible. Informed observers, such as ship model professionals and object conservators, will nearly always be able to read the story written by each hand. Meanwhile, an audience of general viewers will probably not be able to distinguish the different hands easily. I think this is desirable. Ship modeling needs the largest audience it can attract; we do not want to scare off potential viewers or practitioners. Thus, I feel it is best for ship model professionals to blend their work as well as possible because their hands will remain legible to informed observers but will not confuse or discourage general audiences. This book is as much about thinking as it is about doing. Ship modelers frequently say that they spend as much time pondering a model project as they do making things at the workbench. During the Valkenisse project, the vast majority of my time was spent reading, studying photographs of old models, pouring data into tables, and drawing. This extended labor established the foundation for making informed decisions that directed the physical work. Once I got to it, the three-dimensional work went fairly quickly. It resembled and utilized regular ship model building processes that are described liberally elsewhere in the ship-modeling literature. I focus on them in this text only when I needed to document artifact-specific information for my client, or when I felt I had found a new approach to an old problem. This volume was initially constructed to be a report to the MFA on my research and reconditioning of the model. Thus, most of the text was adapted from my log of daily work. The first entries were logged in November 1993,
INTRODUCTION É xiii during my first trip to the Netherlands, and final entries were made a decade later in November 2003. Much of this study is based on deep observation of photographs, but photographs do not reveal everything. I am sure I have made interpretive errors that others who are geographically closer to the contemporary models in the photos will discover. I only hope the story told by my decisions is plausible and close to correct. I photographed many of the model’s components on a ruled background. In most cases, the ruling is at 1-centimeter intervals; the few exceptions are at 10centimeter intervals. Many images are reproduced here with inconsistent colors and backgrounds. This unfortunate situation, for which I am responsible and apologize, is the result of employing inconsistent photo formats, films, and lighting schemes. Citations are listed as endnotes at the conclusion of each part.
Acknowledgments The Valkenisse project would not have gotten far had it depended on me alone. Recognition must go back a long way, centuries in fact, to the souls who preserved the model until it found its way to Boston. To Jonathan L. Fairbanks, The Katharine Lane Weems Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture (Curator Emeritus since 1999), of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I offer my warmest thanks for trusting me in the first place with this project’s development and execution. Gerald W.R. Ward, The Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, succeeded Jonathan at the MFA and saw the project to completion. Both Jonathan and Gerry were in every way tolerant of the project’s everbroadening scope, and neither pressured me at all. Ab Hoving’s unflagging energy as a modeling mentor was crucial, even from his distant ship model studio in Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. I would never have understood how to manage Valkenisse’s intrinsic Dutch qualities, not to mention her historical accuracy, without his nearly instant e-mail replies to my incessant queries. He arranged Dutch hospitality and supplied me with Dutch books I could have found nowhere else. Jeanine Falino and Maria Pulsone Woods from the MFA; Eugene L. Larson of Alexandria, Virginia; Jules van Beylen of Antwerp; Alan Lemmers from Rijksmuseum; Roel H. Rozendaal of Rotterdam; and Grant Walker from the United States Naval Academy Museum each supplied a vital piece or two without which the puzzle could not have been solved. Really. Hints and ideas arose with serendipity but were always sparked by someone. For many such lights, I thank Nancy Alcorn, H. James Caulkins, Clarkson A. Collins, IV, Karen Dardinsky, J.W.C. de Groot, Stephanie Gottwald, Richard Melillo, Ernie Pettit, and Sidney I. Siegel. I extend thanks for guidance on technical matters in fields about which I knew less than I should to Muffie Austin,
xiv É INTRODUCTION Scott Bower, Lars Bruzelius, Cor Hardonk, John Harland, Meredith Montague, Els van Eyk van Eslinga, Vicki at Pro Chemical, and Andy Willemsen. Sean Farren, Charles Griffin, Peter Hickey, Christopher Morrison, and James P. Philip thoughtfully contributed their time, equipment, and expertise to the project’s optical aspects including film and digital photography and endoscopy. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, graciously granted permission to use all the images of the model of Valkenisse that appear here. For assistance and courtesy in providing photographs of other models, or for granting permission to photograph them myself, or for permission to publish images, I thank members of the staffs at the Danish Maritime Museum, Elsinore; the Maritiem Museum Rotterdam; the National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam; the National Maritime Museum, Antwerp; the National Maritime Museum, London; the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Simon van Gijn – Museum at Home, Dordrecht; and the Zuiderzeemuseum, Enkhuizen. I have credited the sources of all images that I did not produce myself. Cathy Dupont, David Antscherl, Bob Craig, and Eric Smith plowed through all or portions of the draft for this book; each provided important feedback. David Fullam was always ready when I needed another perspective and a hand when my two were not enough. Finally, my wife Sherry Moore has my unending gratitude for her patience and support beyond all reason during the years Valkenisse was occupying my studio and mind. There are not enough words of appreciation in our language: I can only say thank you. ROB NAPIER
RECONDITIONING an
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SHIP MODEL