KEPTefah.org

Art and heritage across Europe, and the culture around it.

The register

Every entry in the publication, by section. Twenty-two in total.

This is the complete list. The front page carries an edit of it.

Collections — Paintings and objects, and where they are held.
EntryWhat it covers
The Mystic LambA polyptych in Ghent that has been stolen, split, hidden, faked and cleaned, and is now read partly through the panel that is still missing. What the object is, what happened to it, and what the recent cleaning changed about how it looks.
Panel and canvasPainting on wood and painting on cloth age in opposite directions. What each does over centuries and why it decides how a work can be moved.
The treasuryReliquaries, plate and metalwork kept together because of what they are made of rather than what they depict.
What a collection is missingHoldings are shaped by what was bought, looted, refused and thrown out. The gaps are as informative as the walls.
Fabric — Buildings still standing, and buildings put to new use.
EntryWhat it covers
The adapted buildingA mill becomes a gallery, a power station a hall. The decisions all sit at the join: whether new work announces itself, and whether it could be taken out again.
Legible as newThe conservation principle that repairs should be readable as repairs rather than faked to match — and the buildings where it was ignored.
The roof firstAlmost every ruin is a roof failure that was left. Why the sequence of repair is always roof, then water, then everything else.
Services in old wallsHeating, wiring and lighting in a building whose walls cannot be chased.
Hand — The trades that survived, and how they are taught.
EntryWhat it covers
The trades that survivedStone carving, lime plastering, stained glass, thatch, bell founding. They persist where there is enough repair work to keep somebody employed year-round.
Lime, not cementOld walls move and breathe; cement does neither. The single most common way a well-meant repair destroys the thing it was meant to save.
Apprentice to masterHow a trade with no textbook is transmitted, and what is lost when the chain breaks for a generation.
Tools that outlive tradesWorkshop tools survive in collections long after nobody can say what they were for.
Observance — Rites and processions that are themselves heritage.
EntryWhat it covers
The processionA route walked on the same day each year, the objects carried, and the fact that the route usually predates the reason given for it.
Costume as archiveGarments remade to the same pattern for generations, and what the remaking preserves.
The calendarWhy so much heritage is fixed to a date, and what happens to a custom when the date stops meaning anything.
Custody — Keeping and repair — conservation as daily work.
EntryWhat it covers
Conservation is maintenanceNot rescue but routine: monitoring, cleaning, environment, and doing as little as will do. The dramatic intervention is usually the failure case.
ReversibilityThe rule that anything done to an object should be undoable by whoever comes next.
Light, damp and pestsThe three things that actually destroy collections, in order of how much they cost.
The store, not the galleryMost of any collection is in a store room. What that room has to do.
Divergence — Where one country's practice parts from its neighbour's.
EntryWhat it covers
Who owns a monumentState, church, commune, trust or private family — the answer differs by country and decides everything about what may be done to a building.
Listing and its limitsProtection registers exist nearly everywhere and mean something different in each.
Restore or arrestSome traditions rebuild what was lost; others stabilise the ruin and stop. Both are defensible and they produce completely different countries.