Zig-Zag chair restoration, with laser technology.
The Hungarian avant-garde photographer, Eva Besnyö, photographed the interior of a mansion that the Dutch Hillebrand family had built in The Hague, based on a design by Gerrit Rietveld.
A photo of the living room shows a stage on which house concerts could be conducted. At the request of Ms. Hillebrand Gerrit Rietveld made white-painted Zig-Zag chairs especially for the musicians on this stage.
Unfortunately, the heirs decided to have the chairs repainted in different colors in the 1980’s. A repainted green copy was donated by the family to the Centraal Museum in Utrecht in 2001. We were able to acquire a red repainted copy for our sales collection.
Because it is well documented that the chairs originaly were painted white, we decided to do everything we could to undo the repainting.
When removing the red overpaint mechanically or chemically, there was a high risk that the white underlayer would also be affected. That is why we tried to find an alternative that would spare the white paint layer as much as possible.
In the laboratory of laser specialist SLCR Lasertechnik in Germany, we conducted tests with a laser cleaning device. The laser beam and its energy intensity can be adjusted very accurately.
The intention was to investigate whether the beam could be adjusted in such a way that the red layer would loosn from the white underlayer without affecting it.
In a test session, various areas spread across the chair were treated with the laser. The result was so positive that we decided to have the chair treated in its entirety.
The entire toplayer of red paint was then lasered off, slowly bringing back the white Zig-Zag chair captured by Eva Besnyö in her photo in 1935.
SLCR recorded the treatment on a small video that can be viewed on YouTube >
