Preventive Care for 蔭馀堂 YIN-YU-TANG : A CHINESE HOME

Supervisor: Angie Lowther and Anne Bevan, collection managers, Peabody Essex Museum

YIN-YU-TANG was built two hundred and sixty years ago, as the Huang Family’s house. This Chinese House, was directly moved from Huang County, Anhui Province, southern China, and reconstructed about 20 years ago. Online Tour here.

I helped with the regular maintenance for the house on every Monday in the summer.

The house really shocked me at very first sight. It’s so familiar to me emotionally but also strange to me. I didn’t know how southern Chinese people spent the Chinese new year, how they got married, and how this house was built and rebuilt until I watched the documentaries, from a different context.

Speaking of Chinese vernacular house, the core is the void, we call it sky well. The architecture is organized by the skywell, and opens to this inner court yard. It’s a connection between sky, water, air, space, nature and people. Therefore, it’s connected with rats, bats, spiders as well. Exposed directly to the climate and environment without control, the house was display just as what it is in its hometown. The only difference is the building is not the container for people’s life any longer, which is the best care. So it is dusty, degrading. The only way for preservation is regularly maintenance, preventive care, and collections’ rotation.

I was helping to preserve the family house to its original situation when people are still living in the house.



Dust Cleaning and Collections/objects Rotation

Vacuuming and wiping off the dust, spider webs, and excretions from birds and bats.

Helping with collections/objects rotation, slowing down deterioration.

Paint Consolidation Experiment for the Panels in the Wedding Room

The paint probably consists of pigment in tung oil, varnish, and ground layer. It covers the interior of the room, and is heavily flaking, causing fair amount of losses.

Using Lascaux 4176 through facing tissue paper on the surface. Supervised by Christine Thomson.