Areas
On July 21, 2013, a diverse group of aspiring conservators―graduate students hailing from Montana, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Italy, and China―arrived in Helena, ready to embark on a new kind of summer residency at the Archie Bray Foundation. Swapping ribs and glaze for trowels and mortar, the students and faculty of HSPV 750, “Heritage Conservation Praxis,” left the Bray four weeks later, trailing brick dust in their wake. Together, they had brought Kiln No. 7, one of five surviving downdraft kilns once fired by the Western Clay Manufacturing Company, to a state of near-complete stabilization.
The work was hard. Inch by inch, the students freed the kiln’s iron bands from expansive corrosion, hauling bucketloads of debris dutifully away. They poulticed and desalinated the kiln’s walls, grouting voids among the brick and repointing the open joints between them. They sullied their work clothes, swatted mosquitoes, and braved a mountain hailstorm. And in the end, their Blackfoot beer was well-deserved. Not only had the students honed their own conservation skills―they'd repaired for the Bray a piece of its history once thought irreparable. Charmed by the place themselves, they secured, no doubt, an element of that charm for years to come.
This report is, in part, an effort to chronicle the progress made in conserving features of the Western Clay site during the 2013 field season. Arriving as it does at the conclusion of the third year of work, however, this report affords an extra opportunity for reflection on what has been a remarkably pleasant and productive collaboration between the Archie Bray Foundation (ABF), the Montana Preservation Alliance (MPA), and the Architectural Conservation Laboratory (ACL) of the University of Pennsylvania.
Read the full report here.