Tom,
Fantastic work. The debate between restoration or conservation can be a tricky one, especially when trying to come up with a display. This strikes a great balance.
We dug those heads up a couple of years ago in Richard Edlund's warehouse (yeah, it was as cool as it sounds). Nothing was labeled, so we didn't know what we were getting till we actually opened a box. Also, a lot of the stuff had just been thrown in a box after BOSS closed, so everything had repair issues.
The other head that Zed has still had all the cables and the controllers attached, but this is what it looked like -
I was kinda bummed that we couldn't find the eyeballs for this head since the other piece, which did have eyeballs, didn't have all the cables and controllers. The remains of his skin was crumbling, and since it was just the neck piece and nothing on the face, we just removed it. It took a while to get the cables all untangled and organized, but it was worth it. Couldn't resist trying it on -
....of course, I should have done that
AFTER I had cleaned it. I was picking that stuff out of my hair for a couple of days. (God knows what we inhaled in that place....)
Since we didn't know what was going to happen to these pieces, we decided to err on the conservation side, leaving the degree of restoration up to the new owner. For the heads and the Library Ghost, all we really did was clean them up and get rid of the spiders and junk like that.
Richard came over for lunch the other day and I brought up this thread. He thought the end result was wonderful.
Great job Tom. Congrats Zed.
Gene
The other head (which Zed has) had the cables attached