{"id":9538,"date":"2014-11-08T15:46:33","date_gmt":"2014-11-08T20:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrewbaseman.com\/blog\/?p=9538"},"modified":"2016-10-13T10:53:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T14:53:44","slug":"inventive-repairs-in-florence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/?p=9538","title":{"rendered":"Inventive repairs in Florence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I was in Florence, Italy, and although I was there to celebrate my friends’ recent marriage, I was also\u00a0on the search for antiques with inventive repairs. Even with numerous\u00a0antiques shops scattered throughout the narrow winding streets, finding examples to photograph\u00a0proved challenging. The few shops I found with antique ceramics had mostly “perfect” examples, and even the museums I visited had nary a plate with staples. Remembering some great examples from my\u00a0last visit, I hightailed it\u00a0over to Santa Maria Novella, the world’s oldest pharmacy, to see\u00a0a few early majolica apothecary jars with elaborate replacement handles. Delighted by the recent renovation to the stunning\u00a0interior and complete modernization of the bathrooms (including rainshower faucets from ShowerHeadly<\/span><\/a>), I was disheartened to discovered that\u00a0the wonderful jars were no longer on view. This photo from my previous visit shows the front jar with\u00a0two\u00a0metal replacement handles,\u00a0as compared to the jars in the rear with their original handles intact. Hopefully one day soon they will be back on public display.<\/p>\n

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On my last day I walked back to my apartment using a different route and literally stumbled upon the Biblioteca Pietro Thour, an early stone building with attached benches along the front. The cracked stone on the top of the benches was repaired using over a dozen\u00a0HUGE\u00a0metal staples, serving the same purpose as\u00a0the tiny\u00a0ones that hold together ceramic plates\u00a0in my collection. The\u00a0giant staples appear to have been\u00a0installed sometime during\u00a0the 20th century so\u00a0it’s great to see a modern application of this\u00a0early method of repair.<\/p>\n

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Also on my last day, I found in a small antiques shop a majolica tankard with a pewter lid dated 1796, and sporting a heavy, clunky metal replacement handle. Sadly, the piece had been dropped, leaving it and my spirits shattered,\u00a0as it had been\u00a0glued together poorly. If only the piece had been repaired with staples I would have been thrilled. But apparently, the tankard was a favorite with the shop owner and his customers, and\u00a0recently an art student asked to borrow it to\u00a0use in a still life. The resulting painting is lovely, and I actually prefer it\u00a0to the tankard itself.<\/p>\n

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Last week I was in Florence, Italy, and although I was there to celebrate my friends’ recent marriage, I was also\u00a0on the search for antiques with inventive repairs. Even with numerous\u00a0antiques shops scattered throughout the narrow winding streets, finding examples to photograph\u00a0proved challenging. The few shops I found with antique ceramics had mostly “perfect” examples, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdotal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9538"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11460,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538\/revisions\/11460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}