Captain Cook's cottage in the conservation lab after treatment
Image: Marion Parker
Source: Museum Victoria
If you haven’t seen the sweetest exhibit in the Melbourne Gallery yet – a 75-year-old replica of Captain Cook’s cottage made of sugar – your chance is coming to an end.
The scale model – comprising a wooden frame covered in icing sugar modelling paste – was created by cake decorator Cyril Noisette in 1934 as a souvenir of the Centenary of Melbourne. It went on display in March 2009 but will return to storage on 10 September 2009 due to its fragile nature.
“We don’t know how accurate the colours are and we don’t know how they’re going to age,” explained Dr Charlotte Smith, Senior Curator, Public Life & Institutions. “We intended it to be on display only for six months because of the lack of knowledge about how the food colourings will fade in the light.”
Red dye, which is used substantially in the cottage, is known to be susceptible to fading. One side of the model was a brighter red than the other when it was donated to the museum in 2008, and care has been taken to display it under subdued lighting.
Stabilising such an unusual object presented some distinct challenges for conservators Marion Parker and Elizabeth McCartney. “It’s not exactly common to have icing sugar objects in museums,” said Marion. “There’s not a lot written about it.”
Cyril kept notes of all his recipes, but didn’t indicate which specific one he used for the house. Marion and Elizabeth tested conservation techniques on a modern modelling paste similar to that used for the cottage.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about how we were going to treat it and then took the treatments slowly,” Marion said. “It was challenging because it was so fragile and the normal conservation options weren’t available.”
They had to find an adhesive that wouldn’t dissolve the sugar or impact the dye, and brought in special magnifying lamps that wouldn’t generate heat and melt the sugar.
Detailed repairs – to a hole in the wall, cracked grass, fallen vines and knocked-over bushes – were made using dental tools, tweezers and magnifying glasses. Working only centimetres away from the brittle material also meant no sneezing or laughing so as not to blow anything away.
“We have slowed the deterioration as much as we can,” said Elizabeth. “Environmental conditions here are more stable but you have to accept its nature.”
Marion and Elizabeth are now keen to research the stability of food dyes. “There’s very little in the conservation literature about food dyes because they’re not intended to be used in the long-term,” said Elizabeth. “Dye compositions were changing rapidly in the 20th century and ingredients in the 1930s were very different to what is used today.”
Cyril’s cottage is not the only object made from food in the museum’s collection: there are two slices of fruit cake, also from the 1934 Centennial celebrations (the cake was 50 foot high with a circumference of 300 feet and weighed 10 tonnes); and gingerbread tram cookies from the launch of the Melbourne Story exhibition at Melbourne Museum in 2008.