This white clay teapot with blue decorative under-glazing was excavated at Sitka National Historical Park, Alaska.

 

While some ceramic conservation aims to structurally compensate all areas of lost material, this object treatment wanted to preserve the teapot's archaeological history. As such, most of the lost areas were left as is, and selective fills were created to stabilize the existing loose fragments. 

​

The old adhesive used to join the pieces was degraded and yellow. Treatment began by reversing all the adhered joins and proceeded to clean each piece and rebuild the object. Select areas of loss around vulnerable edges were filled and refined to complement the ceramic's surface sheen and texture.