Vatican Museums

The interdisciplinary project ‘Knowing Conserving Sharing’, which in this fourth issue carries accounts of recent restorations carried out by the Ethnological Materials Restoration Laboratory on objects coming from the Ethnological Collections of the Vatican Museums, continues in this volume, available in Italian and English, its commitment to the recovery, conservation and transmission of the extraordinary testimony of ‘other’ cultures.

Evaluation of indigenous cultural heritage is the Leitmotiv of the experiences of restoration collected together here, pari passu with the objective of sharing new methods of work.
Analysed here are an oval ceramic plate attributed to Bernard Palissy, four Molon shields from Papua New Guinea, a 16^th century Peruvian quipu and some 19^th century Chinese female robes.

A short bibliography for reference and the results of the diagnostic investigations, which include radiography, infrared photography and microscopic analysis, conclude each section.