OK, well, welcome everyone, and thank you for coming. I'd like to welcome our speaker today, Poulin.
She is a final year Ph.D. student at the Conservation of Wool Painting Department at the coastal course.
All that you've got.
Her background is both in Buddhist studies, which she studied at the University of Hong Kong and in conservation, which she studied at the Courtauld.
She also has practical experience as a wall painting conservator in both Bhutan and India.
Her Ph.D. project, which she will be discussing today,
explores the 17th century Monastery of Tango in Bhutan and illustrates the wall painting technology,
the development of wall painting technology and Bhutan. So welcome, and please start sharing your screen.
So what I'm going to share with you today is about my research on Tango and
those paintings inside the central tower in what we called hotel its own term.
I started my research on Tango Walking Team from my M.A. dissertation, and it was attached to our wall painting conservation project at Koto.
Trouble was called out. The in the initial goal of the research was to reconstruct the making history of those artworks
to establish their significance and then use the fundings to help the conservation work.
So the technical analysis? We will be able to study, oh yes,
throw the technical analysis or be able to study the painting from a making
perspective by understanding what material was used and how the painting was made,
we will be able to recognise the technical changes and continue to then hopefully to reconstruct a timeline for their making history.
I will start with a brief introduction of the monastery.
So Tango as locates the former Can you see my mouth?
Yes, great. So Tango Monastery is located in the north of Tengku Valley.
It takes about 40 minutes drive and for 10 minutes hike to reach the main temple.
This is a depiction of tango landscape from one of the painted rooms and tango we see today, and they dated to early 20th century.
The view from the landscape from the painting here is quite similar to what we can see today.
This is the main temple here, as would.
And the here has a small stupa, this actually represents rock, which lived to be the emanation state higher grade both.
So I will spend a little time here to talk about the early history of tango,
all the illustrations I'm using today for the presentation are games, paintings from Tango War paintings.
Games are all from Tango Wall paintings, games. They might be from the different period, but as you can see as we go, all the paintings are.
All the figures are painted inside the walls.
So the earliest history of tango traced back to the 13th century when the Tibetan llama called bajo dragons people who travelled from Tibet to Bhutan,
he often crowded to ask the person who spread to argued to Bhutan.
The story was about him. Funding Tango was how he was meditating in a cave one day.
Then he heard the sound of higher river, the sound of a horse.
So he saw that was the insight that higher group I gave him.
So he decided to build a temple as the offering for higher grateful there from his, from the literatures that we have.
There was no clear description of tango size at his period, but from his biography,
we can see that he sings established hat culture for his secular affairs tango and later passed the the quarter to his son.
Thumper and Dumbo was the person who built a monastery, a tango, and later on the temple was inherited within their family line.
Thumper passed the tango to his son, Quinn's own daughter,
but later Queenslander daughter moved to Thatcham Pool and the love to Tango see me abandoned.
Since then, until the early 16th century?
Yeah, until early 16th century. Another Tibetan lama, the famous maps sent to back now who visited Tango, the site of Tango.
Those of you who are familiar with Bhutan probably will know him.
He was one of the most important figure who has being influential to Bhutanese culture.
Many of his legend has. Let's do a budget in Bhutan's culture now.
He visited Bhutan in early 16th century.
Seventy five. He didn't stay, but his descendants remind tango.
His son, Alan Thompson. We established a tango in 15 17 and established his own monastic community there.
And later. Since then, the ownership of Tango shifted from budget to kinship with family to tuberculous family lineage,
where both of them are related to the Chewbacca view of the.
Chewbacca lineage. The Realme Highjack lineage in Tibet.
So from Trabecular sung out. And then he also passed the CIT Tango to his son.
Mountains and sun, so on tension. And it was so intense then who offered tango to jungle on them ger when he first arrived in Bhutan.
Shapiro no longer was the person the founder of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
He arrived in Bhutan in early 70 and took tango as his residency since until the formation of the state.
But because of the disability of his own son, he passed.
He appointed. So on Tenzan son, as his official successor boasts in religion and the political prospect few.
Then it was his successor, Tenzin Rabkin, who became later became the fourth stassie of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
It was under him. During his region that he council commissioned the construction of tank boats in the building work can seen now.
And after he passed away, the sit continue pastor in his family to his daughter who passed away, who was the last person in their family lineage.
After that, the ownership shifted to tender up against reincarnation until now.
This is a view of tango. This is the central tower.
The shooter bolted on the door, turns out getting 60 88.
And this photo taken from if you remember the first landscape depictions of tango.
This picture taken from the Great Iraq.
So the U.S. is building with three floors, and we will see in detail later.
Likely intended or obvious biography, the construction work in 60 88 was carefully recorded and documented information,
including walking period and four painted rooms with sculptures and their artists also
provides iconography lives for those paintings and that was done during that period.
It was clear that the hotel we can see today was the result of continuing development over three hundred years.
However, the record I had them building history records in the 17th century became fragmentary, as you can see from the timeline.
There have been several renovations happened in the past, but most of the renovation records did not find any detail.
As you can see, there is the big gap.
Durant return from the 18th century to the 19th century that the no from the actually the meet 20th century does, parents loved knowing.
These are floor plans of the hotel. There are twenty five.
Start from the left, the ground floor, first floor and second floor.
All the rooms are named was no as the floor and the latter as the direction, so.
They are 24 rooms in total, 16 of them are painted was paintings are decorated with paintings.
Those wall paintings, including wall paintings, are some plaster and wall paintings,
wood and panel also moral flag as a type of walking things that you stick painted canvas to the wall.
If we take the top floor as an example, you can see the intensity of the painting on the two floors on this thing.
They're almost paintings everywhere. I think Tango as a unique demonstration to show the development of tango of
Bhutanese wall paintings from the period when the kingdom just funded until now.
As mentioned earlier, there were four rooms documented a tent in Rob Guest biography there.
Painted during the 16t at the beginning when the building was just constructed.
Three of them are located on the north side of the building.
And on each floor, the idea of those North tries was to create the through realm based on the tricky, trickier concept.
Unfortunate, and unfortunately, the paintings in the North try a ground floor was.
Covered by concrete wall wedge and later the concrete wall itself was covered by modern cameras printing more like a 1988 dose,
but from 10 throughout this biography, we knew the iconography painted in this room.
Well, we knew that this room and the ground floor, it was a depiction of the demonic of online some.
Then the sample got Kaiya overlooking Taffaro, also Holography as one of the combination of.
Overlooking tough fire also depicted in the sample backyard shrine,
then the top floor was a depiction of the Dharma K.R. room, which also makes two wears the.
Paradise of army tapas. So when the audience will care or visitors who come to tango building by.
Walking up from the ground floor to the top floor, you actually entered the paradise where the demarcation.
Step by step. And the other room, the force room, located on the second floor.
Last site, which is which was the private back chamber of tended rocket himself.
The entire room was fully depicted with Stupak Huggies lineage.
But unfortunately, I don't have the complete documentation, can you hear?
So. The aim all part of the aim of my research was to reconstruct the timeline of the building and its
artworks history and using the result from scientific analysis to supplement and fill in the gap,
as we can see from the previous timeline here.
From literature sources, we knew that poro and start date it to the 17th century and through iconography identification,
we identified or identified one wrong dated to 1891 to 94 following another Roman,
which in sequence after this room and those two rooms are dated by oral interviews with local people.
And we know, apart from those the resources available, like literature, resources, document photographs, dates and iconography dates.
There are still rooms left on the loan.
So what I'm going to talk about is how to use technical analysis results from technical analysis to supplement and to place them into the timeline.
Oh. Kyoto's involvement at Tango started in 2014.
The initial aim was to preserve those 17th century paintings by the time when we first arrived there.
A renovation project has already started. It was an agreement between the monastic body and the government.
This was what we seen when we first arrived.
All the wall paintings are some plaster are covered with lens tissue,
and on the wooden panel paintings are removed from the wall and are the moral flags are detached from the wall.
So this was the condition for most of the rooms.
The when we first arrived at bluetongue, at Tango and there we only got full access to two.
Something centuries rose this Two-Room, where were the locations that the wall painting conservation projects has happened?
I started my PhD in 2016 and.
Expanded the research scope to other painted rooms, apart from the 17th century of the two rooms that related to the conservation project and.
It expanded the scope to other paintings from the later period, but because of the condition and the autumn,
it was impossible to get full iconography survey on the painting war and also the technical study.
Well, limited by the accessibility as well.
Some pulling for scientific analysis was limited to those painting edges.
We're exposed outside of the fencing, and therefore it was impossible to collect complete data for the colour palette patron and
also it was impossible to carry out non-invasive analysis such as multispectral imaging,
or we can't even collect a complete photograph data for the iconography, even though we knew some of the figures have inscription written underneath.
But we can't really see. I would give you a quick introduction on the same we will see today.
So the same we will see today is samples taken from the painting and made into a
cross-section from the bottom as the plaster layer and goes the rate from bottom to top.
This is the painting layer where we actually see visually from the wall and autumn as the plaster layer and underneath is to support the structure.
So normally painting follow a sequence from primary support second to supported by second.
Through support, we mean the plaster it can be,
or where something more of the materials then goes silent ground on the drawings, where sometimes colour notations,
then paint layers to all the gilding glasses where compositional outline they're applied on top
of the paint layer and the sequence of them can be varies depending on the different technique.
See like layer, it appears invisible under the ambient light, but it's fluorescence under the U.V.,
which is organic binder applied over the plaster layer to mould to find the.
Porosity and it doesn't happen to all the paintings.
It's an optional ground layer.
Also, it can be selectively applied in different places.
They depend on the painting technique.
It's basically a layer to modify the optical properties and also the property to prepare the surface for a painting.
As we said earlier, it was impossible to collect complete data for the colour palette.
Also, it was questionable to only focus on material identification because of time, money and Asako considerations.
It was useful to identify the materials, but more importantly, also it was.
The strategy for my research is to understand how the material was used and their application message.
Here is this example I will show you what I meant about an application that said all those samples are also right there in the same materials.
But as you can see, they were used in a different way like this one sec.
Same answer, right? But greens use was different grading size and applying one over another,
and these two you mixed as a right was different, another type of materials to create a new colour.
And if you see those three.
They're also right, grounded in different particle size, which watch of Previte or created different final appearance in terms of their colour.
Here are cross-sections from each room, so organised floor by floor you can see they follow.
And while they relatively follow the painting sequence, plaster ceilings apply to the plaster, then following the ground layer,
then the pink layer, but their varieties for testing them can see that a major difference happens to the ground layer.
Some of them has only one layer, but some of them have chewed and.
As for the colour yellow, it was common ping tan based on the samples we wear, yet the samples that we collected in Bhutan.
But it was not common elsewhere, like Ladakh or Tibet.
When more often see a white ground layer.
I will go into detail now, so if we look at the as we talk to the single yellow ground layer, so we noticed the drones.
They appears to have similar technique on that.
Physical evidence from the structure also suggests a similar iconography than we realise.
There's two rooms or so they located both on the north side of their room, and half of the figures being were.
Half of the figure are hidden by this floor, which suggested this wall was later edition.
The dividing wall was added later to divide the whole space in this room.
So this room and this room, they used to be the single one.
My chronology also continues from here all the way to here.
So if we reorganise the STEM posts by.
Yellow Ground. And we realise they can be divided into two.
Single yellow ground layer and doubled ground layers.
You can. So now we can see a rough sequence of how they're making process.
They're making history. Double layer.
It means those rooms are first painted in yellow impel yellow and later grey, decorated with fig tree figurative paintings.
Here is a sample from to see the Blue Room show to how those painting will look like us or out there early.
Here it is. And for this one and zero and it was the Black Chamber for Protective Paintings.
A actually from the visual observation, we noticed that this room also carried two grout layers, but which are not.
A visible under the eye in the cross section.
But we knew then this painting. The paintings in this room were added later.
It's similar structural evidence will direct will direct to the dating to similar periods like this term.
They both those pictures are taken from the north east side of the room that we can't see after
the panel painting removed the wall dividing when this structural wall or on top of the painting.
So we knew that this painting are painted before the war was installed.
But however, by comparing the samples, we notice that room one adds house to layer one yellow and one white,
but to us only have one yellow, which suggested we were almost to confirm that they were not from the same period.
Even they carried the similar structural history.
So we'll further weigh an eye analysis to one, as the room was two layers one yellow,
one white compared with another room, which also has two grant layer yellow and white light analysis the white layer.
We noticed that the materials used to aid the white ground was different, which means even they used the same painting technique on the ground layer.
But those two paintings are from different period analysts from five different workshop.
And further comparison where analysis happened in those two Two-Room that way identifying some materials barium containing white,
zinc, white and ultramarine on the most are the materials are sensor tech development in.
By the Western powers in early 19th century, which means all those paintings.
Are done after that. We don't know the exact the.
The. Your time, but the earliest date of this tour rooms can be posted to late 19th century.
Also, speaking of similar structural evidence to E and the one E they showed similar.
Painting similar similar features in terms of their paintings, though,
they're they used to be canvas drapes attached to the wall to prepare the surface for a painting,
as we can see in both the room that the painting scheme continues from the erson plaster to the camp.
So we knew that the canvas was that the painting was done on site after the application of the canvas straight up.
Meanwhile, iconography identification, we noticed that from two E does the.
What? Luckily, this was the only pictures we have.
Well, we can see a clear inscription here of this person who was identified as king let guards hold the force reincarnation of Tenzin rubJeot.
He was appointed as digicam bu in 1891 to nineteen, therefore.
And we also found that much literature referenced with first this room as king ligatures bedroom.
Therefore, we will be able to state this room to 1981 to 94.
And interestingly, as we mentioned before, the entire tango carried actual work history under the lineage since the.
Gaming, but uniquely, this figure here is wearing a Nygma conditioned hat.
Different from all the other fingers, similar figure wearing the name I had to also appeared in a canvas from one e,
which orange nail are located here but detached.
So it's reasonable to assume that this was a depiction of.
In the UN, where the figure was placed that he was so he's.
You move. He moved from as a student to the central figure, which indicated that one in must be later than to eat.
So we find out the order of those two rooms.
And. This is the example that.
We can see from the sample. Well, let's say a colour.
Are the pink, they looks like the same similar colour appearance, but the making of those.
Some materials are quite different. Some of them are mixed.
Most of them are used again in tolerance, but also appears to have materials was only made.
It was only mineral pigment.
Mineral pigments made pink, white only noticed a room two hours and chewy, which suggested those two paint painted those two rooms shared.
To be called evil, but there must be some link between the workshop where the painting transformations.
Doing so would seem to artist. One and two.
So if we're located tomorrow, plug all the embossed paintings in sequence, we notice two e one e, they think the way,
how they use the canvas and just a small piece of canvas stick to the wall to prepare the surface,
but still as part of form, part of the paintings on the plaster.
Then it changed to a room that was fully covered with canvas, which is one W then.
The technical moral flag became more and more popular,
and one of the technique we will see now mostly done in the modern period as we knew that two C and one C were from the nineteen ninety seven,
so we can ensure the sequence after making history as like lifetime.
I will take gilding as one of the examples to show you how the technique was developed to over the period so gilding.
Is. Well, good building technique here refers to the employment of natural materials not only limited to gold,
but also gold silver mixtures on it applies to the technique.
So gilding are lavishly used almost everywhere for juries, ornament decoration, buda skins,
depiction and fabric decoration also inscriptions, landscape and even gilding.
Even in place. This cement translucent parents layer also made with gold.
There were four types of clothing catalogued in my sources based on their final appearance where that exact phrase the clothing,
decorative clothing, flat clothing and birth matchstick clothing.
I will take race, the gelding has six example to show the development, so race to go, think this is the aptly the making master of race to gelding?
So after you apply to the ground and marked out the under drawing where you will have a where you were,
make the race gilding, then you extrude the same materials.
Was the Yellow Ground the same material as in Yellow Ground, but in sinker paste to create a bulking pattern.
On top of that, you apply another layer with the same material to smooth out the shape.
Then you applied more than layer two, which is the adhesive layer to attach in order to attach the gold.
As we can see in sequence, these are samples from the 17th century schema.
And then the same application sequence we use in two as.
Which suggested that two US shared similar painting technique was just that those 17th century paintings and then.
We can see from the sample that the for the more than lay there has shifted from a pure blind thing,
meaning they are buying their meat with pure organic finder to a layer that makes the West reach binder but makes with pigments.
Also, the foil on that, the foil, but the matter itself changed from gold to pure gold to appeal,
so to pure silver, and then also happened in the mordant layer.
The modern changed into a layer that contains major pigment.
What does this do mix to a spider? But you see the reason that the making of the modern changed from the 17th
century to the 20th century as we dated that one e to the early 20th century
and the use of different metal foil as not necessarily related to the changes of the technique sometimes also influence mystified that money issue.
So but as we see what was more influential in terms of the coding technique was that.
Type. Not the type, but the form of the metal, whether it's a foil warrant's powder,
which will directly influence the on the plate on their application, we're making process here from ACM on Elmont.
At some point gilding sample, we can clearly see the folders of those building, which if you used foil, which means you would need a modern layer.
But however, if you use powder, you can mixed the powder was binding.
Need that directly, then the absence from the absence of modern layer would directly indicate the use of powder.
Therefore, and the samples from zero, and even if it's not raised gilding.
But as we see the modern layer, also the shape of the foil,
and it's clear that the zero and used gold foil rather than go powder to paint flat painting.
Therefore, we can fix 0C to the timeline, since it shared similar gilding technique was to handed to us.
So as a result, we can place those paintings was on.
No one was no literature records where all the references to end to the timeline.
The similarity is shared between two paintings from 17th century and two us suggested there's a painting must be not.
Too far away from the 17th century and also based on the gilding technique we can place there and each to.
A sequence that's not far from 17th century and to us and then for one ounce and zero w are those paintings was double layer one yellow, one white.
A similar some from John Tong in Boomtowns Central Bhutan also used a similar
technique on a white yellow ground that site dated to early 20th century,
which also set to our dating.
Of those two rooms, the contents of two rooms are dated based on the synthetic materials that we
identified from the painting and for the canvas paintings that the Mara flag,
as we discussed before they were made a sequence from two e was only canvas frames,
two entire painted canvas paint room and two of the modern canvas painting room.
So therefore we'll be able to construct a timeline Alice towards rough periods for each room.
Yes, that's it. So yes, thank you.
Thank you so much. That was very rich, and I'm sure there are a lot of opportunities for.