While I've argued a few times that there is an inherent value in an original versus a copy, I haven't ever taken into account the fact that some of those “originals” are in fact, by some definitions, copies. Okay, I mentioned it in passing regarding Ford’s Theater, but only to support the idea that the contagion of that location was the key to the rebuilt theater not being terribly grotesque. And honestly, I would classify a theater rebuilt on the same site much differently than a ship rebuilt plank by plank. I think that it's important in this discussion that we differentiate between "replicas" and "restoration". Frankly, it's something I should have done much earlier in this discussion.
For my purposes, I'm considering a "replica" to be something that is built or created from scratch from new materials to closely resemble an object, either because the original is too fragile, rare, expensive, or otherwise unfeasible (is that a word?) to display. A replica may be made with period tools or with period materials, but it is a modern creation. For me, Ford's Theater as it stands now is a replica - it is built to mimic the original interior of the same building, but it's made with modern materials. The same thing stands for replica skeletons and hands-on models that mimic actual artifacts.
A restoration, on the other hand, is what I would consider the USS Constitution - new materials and tools (or new materials and old tools, old materials and new tools, etc) are used to repair an existing historic artifact. Now, this does get a bit tricky, as Howard Manfield touches on in that chapter excerpt, because at some point in a long restoration, the original materials used to create the object will be wholly replaced by the newer elements meant to maintain it. So does an item that has been repeatedly restored like that remain a restored item? Or does the act of constant replacement turn an original artifact into a replica of itself?
I'm sure that Manfield will discuss this at greater length in The Same Ax, Twice, and since the copy I put on hold just arrived at my local library I will look forward to getting his thoughts and reasoning. For my part, I would argue that an original artifact, no matter how repaired or replaced can never become a replica (and that's exactly why I added the key phrase "from scratch" in my definition above). A heavily repaired object is certainly different than one in pristine* condition, but the repairs don't change it's inherent being. In fact, based on my thoughts from last week, I'm inclined to say that the repairs and restorations simply add to the story of the object. (Which ties back to my pet contagion theory in a way - do the restorations add value, in the sense that the object now tells a deeper story about several different eras, or do they remove value in the sense that the object has been altered? I suspect the answer is different for different objects.)
I'm off to spend the weekend reading about restorations (okay, and maybe also about teenaged necromancers, because I read Lish McBride's first book to see if my nephew would like it and now I really need to know what happens next), and I look forward to digger even deeper into this topic next week.
*I vividly remember the day (January 23, 2007, btw) that I learned that the actual for-real definition of "pristine" is "belonging to the earliest state or period, original." I had always thought it meant "clean", but that's the second variation of the second definition! The first definition makes pristine a work much more applicable to museums and artifacts than the second.
[Why yes, I was an English major, why do you ask?]
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