I really admire the work of conservators. Imagine being given an extremely important and yet fragile piece of code and you only have ~1 shot at refactoring it (unless they want to turn into one of the infamous restoration memes). That's what these people have to contend with. They have to gain an intricate understanding not just of the function of the object but also how it was put together. Make just one mistake, and a one-of-a-kind artifact could be ruined forever.
A perfect senior project! Historically interesting, fabulously detailed and intricate, but not of tremendous intrinsic value (no jewels, glass and gilding).
Looks like a successful restoration. The technique of using a hypodermic to reattach loose surface material is similar to that used in painting restoration. This vessel was essentially an oil painting in the round!
Side note: The Buddhist 'hamsa' in SE Asia derives from the 'hamsa' frequently mentioned in Ancient Indian texts. Oddly, it's not clear which bird the hamsa refers to, or if it even refered to different birds - perhaps a goose, perhaps a swan.
The Mute Swan overwinters in parts of North West India, and perhaps their range was more extensive in ancient times. This is the region where the Vedic corpus was written down, and in which the hamsa makes frequent appearances. In other parts of North India, the bar headed goose is more common. In ancient depictions of the hamsa in Southern India, it's more goose shaped. Ancient Buddhist murals from the Ajanta caves in Central India shows the hamsa as more swan like.
Some scholars have suggested that different references to the hamsa in the Vedic texts may refer to the goose in some places, and the swan at other places.
