Orbis were commissioned to remove a bronze relief by Thomas Thornycroft that had been installed during the redevelopment of the building in the 1970s. Various people had tried to remove the piece without success, and there were no existing records of how the construction firm had installed the bronze.
After examining the object it was clear that the relief had been installed using chemically fixed pins that been threaded onto the reverse of the bronze. The only solution was to sacrifice the wall behind in order to break the fixing of the pins. The object was protected before cutting into the wall and then safely lifted off. It was then taken to our workshop in Greenwich where we cleaned and re-waxed the piece.
The next task was to design a more suitable and ‘re-useable’ mounting system for its new location. We were able to use the previous threaded holes to bolt on a stainless steel mount that now serves as a bracket for hanging with a split batten.
