Intervention for the conservation and restauration of a Japanese domestic altar

The conservation and restoration intervention carried out in a Japanese domestic altar, dating from the 19th century, belonging to the Fundação Oriente - Museu do Oriente, in Lisbon, had as its main objectives the restoration of its functional utility, stabilize and repair physical and structural problems, and the restitution of its colour unit. In response to these problems, there was a need to address the issue that the preservation of lacquered oriental objects has been showing, not only in relation to oriental criteria but, above all, in relation to conservative issues adopted in the West. In this sense, the weighting of the intervention criteria passed by treatments oriented according to the minimum intervention and the safeguarding of the removal and compatibility of the materials and techniques used, favouring long-known materials and that had the least impact of the intervention on the good, and in its natural aging process.