His wife set up the card table and typewriter to record his notes. Some of sculptures were unusual, such as a mortar and pestle marking the grave of a pharmacist, or an inscription on one piece, announcing this was the artist's first work. The odyssey ended when the muffler fell off the car and the weather got extremely hot. Launched by the National Museum of American Art, a part of the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property, the goal of SOS is to identify and protect outdoor sculpture in all 50 states. Craven says he feels his research on sculpture can be of particular value to SOS in one area.
Most sculptors apply a patina to their works.
To restore a piece to its original color requires some research, such as looking back to a sculptor's correspondence with a foundry. The corrosion process itself is of interest to John D. Meakin, an engineer whose area of expertise is metallurgy. When American sculptor Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson created the popular bronze statue, The Hiker, in 1902, she probably had no idea how valuable her tribute to Spanish-American War veterans would be to scientists in the 1980s and 90s. About 50 bronze castings of the statue, made between 1906 and 1965 by the Gorham Co. of Rhode Island, can be found at locations across the eastern half of the United States. A University of Delaware project uses these statues to study the effects on bronze of acid rain, as well as the dry deposition of gases and particulates cast into the air from cars, industry and other sources, The project was initiated in 1984 by David L. Ames, director of the University's Center for Historic Architecture and Engineering, Meakin has carried the project forward.