The glass shades mounted in brass lamps are part of the furnishings of the De Albertis castle's Turkish salon.
The castle was built by Captain Enrico Alberto De Albertis (1846-1932) as his home, now the Museum of World Cultures, it houses a vast collection of artefacts, colonial relics, items from distant lands that the captain picked up during his explorations between the 19th and 20th century.
The orient-style salon evokes a nomadic middle-eastern world whose décor includes trophies, chinoiserie, African objects, Japanese vases and has a ceiling canopied with sails from which the glass and brass lamps hang that the 16 shades belong to.
A preliminary cleaning of the glass was carried out with pads soaked in 3A (a solution of water, acetone and alcohol).
The method used to assemble the fragments is a combines two different types of adhesive, the first for a provisional gluing and the second for the definitive bonding.
Initially the pieces were assembled using thin segments of adhesive tape, then they were fixed with a few drops of instant-setting cyanoacrylate glue after which the final adhesive was applied, an acrylic resin that thanks to its low viscosity was dropped into the fractures. Once the gluing had been completed, any excessive adhesive was removed with aid of scalpel and solvent.
The missing parts were reconstructed by putting resin with coloured pastes in it into a silicone mould that once set was refined, using small cutters and grindstones. Lastly they were polished with diamond polishing pastes.
