Virtual Shtetl has been reporting on the discovery, conservation and painstaking transfer of a Yiddish wall painting — apparently a shop advertisement or sign — in Lublin.
The sign was discovered in May at a house at 4 Cyrulicza St. in Lublin. It was decided to remove it and transfer it to the Grodzka Gate NN Theatre Center, where it will form part of the exhibition there.
Last week conservation officers began the process. They “removed the secondary layers of plaster and paint which had covered a large section of the advertisement,” revealing that the ad was for a spice shop.
The owner’s name so far remains unknown. In 1928, a “colonial store” offering food products imported from faraway countries was run by Chaim Keller and Daniel Bess at this address.
The transfer process of such painted signs is complex and delicate, Virtual Shtetl writes:
The ad removal and transfer is a very difficult task, which will take about 3 weeks. First, conservation experts headed by Małgorzata Podgórska-Makal will remove external paint and plaster layers from the inscription. Then, they will reinforce it with a fluid made of acrylic resin. A wall fragment containing the inscription will be protected with a special fabric and Japanese tissue paper. Next, the specialists will cut out the layer of plaster with the ad and glue it to sandwich panels.
A small number of such signs — or their faded traces — still also can be seen in Vilnius, L’viv , Warsaw and elsewhere. V.S. notes that “An advertisment of a Warsaw tailor from Brzeska St. is waiting to be rescued. Today, it remains totally unprotected.”
They signs are a but tiny relic of the thousands upon thousands that existed before the Holocaust and bear important witness to the thriving daily life of the Yiddish-speaking population, almost totally destroyed.
In December 2012 we posted about a new book about pre-war wall writings that one can still find in L’viv, Ukraine — Imia budynku ta inshi napysy (Building Name and Other Inscriptions). These inscriptions are visible in a number of places in L’viv, in a number of languages, including Yiddish and Polish, reflecting the pre-WW2 make up of the city’s population.
1 comment on “Lublin: Transfer of Yiddish wall painting to conserve it”
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