Recently the Krannert Art Museum and the ATAM Program collaborated to X-ray a large ceramic horse from the Han Dynasty, a planned gift from Iver Nelson that is now on display in the Museum.
This project was a follow-up of an examination of the horse by the conservation department of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
The conservator's report indicated that the horse was fabricated in sections joined together with slip, with hand-tooling marks on the surface. The horse had clearly been restored at least once before, since it has obvious repair lines running over the belly and legs and had a broken left front hoof along an old glue join.
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Our goal was to clarify the technology of the object while investigating the extent of repairs on the belly, ears, lips, and the tail of the horse. |  |
The X-rays, taken by Richard Keen at the College of Veterinary Medicine, revealed the earlier repairs very clearly. The materials used to fill the belly cracks and to pack the hooves are not the same texture as the surrounding ceramic.
It is still not known whether the sections of the horse were press-molded or entirely fabricated by hand.
One of the hooves was sampled for thermoluminescence dating.