Limestone Sculpture Preservation for Huntington Gallery Entry

San Marino, Los Angeles County, 
California, USA

The two limestone sculpted figures flanking the North entry to the Huntington Gallery had been unsympathetically restored by previous efforts, and the work we performed entailed reversing and hiding those previous attempts. Thus, these limestone sculpture restorations mainly involved removing all old repair materials, including old cementitious coatings, old cement patch areas, and exposure of old anchor holes.

This removal was necessary because the well-meaning but inappropriate repairs to fill in lost material were executed in grey Portland cement-based repair compounds, much harder than the host substrate stone. As the old cementitious coating degraded and failed, it exposed the original limestone, which accelerated this process of decay and failing. After removal, our restoration and color matching created a uniform surface appearance.

Wikipedia Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Huntington_Library