The artists behind SAM's art: Plexiglas supports priceless porcelain

They are artisans who toil in anonymity, molding and sanding in a basement five floors below Seattle Art Museum's priceless display of Ming dynasty plates and European porcelains.

They work under fluorescent lamps, day after day, building intricate contraptions that hopefully no one will see.

They help museum curators sleep better at night.

Their profession rarely gets mentioned — unless something catastrophic happens, as when Tullio Lombardo's 15th-century Adam sculpture toppled off its pedestal at the Metropolitan Museum of Art five years ago.

That's when the public usually hears about mount-makers.

Dexterity, stress

Amid all the new artworks and renovations that will be unveiled when SAM reopens on May 5, one untold story is the painstaking effort that lies behind the museum's lavish display of 1,008 European and Asian teapots, saucers and statuettes.

Artisans custom designed mounts to secure each object, a tedious task that required the dexterity of watchmakers and took eight frantic months to complete.

"Eventually, you get tight from the stress" of dealing with all the figurines and miniature teacups, SAM mount-making supervisor Jack Mackey said, pointing to his neck and shoulders.

If you break a 17th-century Japanese teapot, "it's not like you can go out and buy another one."

Their job is to secure the artworks, and make sure they can withstand the occasional small tremble, like when a child butts his head against the display case.

Or the occasional big one, like an earthquake.

Obscure craft

Seattle mount-makers Rebecca Raven, 32, and Christopher Keenan, 37, have been at it since last July.

They secure each ancient ware to their work tables. They scrutinize each body part, like a hobbyist preparing to paint miniature toy soldiers.

Then they begin to shape, file and buffer Plexiglas into a shape that hugs the back or underside of the object, or acts as a bracket. They have done this thousands of times, molding mounts to the contours of oval teapots, angular vases and oddly shaped statuettes.

Wax bonds the Plexiglas to the porcelain. The Plexiglas is screwed to the wall or a riser.

The work goes on for hours, sometimes taking two days to complete a single bracket that will appear invisible to the public's eye.

One project was a partial Plexiglas silhouette of a curvaceous woman's backside that was applied to the statuette and screwed to the wall. From the public view, the porcelain figure prances seductively in all her glory — without any hint of their handiwork.

It's an odd career to explain, Raven and Keenan say — not a field in which you can get certified or earn a degree.

Some veteran art handlers at SAM learned the trade at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, a pioneer in the mount-making field. The museum, which sits in an earthquake zone, test-mounted objects on "shake tables" to simulate an earthquake before displaying them.

In 1987, SAM sent workers to learn from Getty's mount-makers, a decision that proved prescient after the Nisqually earthquake six years ago. The tremble left the museum unscathed, in part due to expert mounting.

SAM "consulted with [head conservator of antiquities conservation Jerry Podany] and really learned what they needed to do in terms of [seismic mitigation] techniques," said BJ Farrar, a former SAM mount-maker who now works at the Getty museum.

The best mount-makers, Getty conservators say, are usually artists and sculptors, handlers who have an intuitive feel for the shape and texture of art pieces.

Art background is what SAM administrators seek. Last summer, SAM trained Raven, an artist and an experienced art framer, and Keenan, a pencil and watercolor artist with a welding and woodworking background.

Where laymen might find the work tedious, Raven and Keenan approach it like artists. They sense a soul in each piece of porcelain. They want to know the backstories. Did the emperor's guests sip from this tea set? Who was the muse for that design?

Like scholars, they touch and inspect, up close, the flower pot owned by the mistress of Louis XV and the dragon designed plate handcrafted during the reign of Chinese Emperor Wanli.

Fragile tyrants

"You don't get into an assembly-line mentality. You appreciate the different grades of porcelains. You appreciate where it came from and when it was made," said Keenan. "I know each piece intimately. I know where every bubble is on the glaze ... of every teacup, plate and teapot."

"Sometimes I have to stop because it was perfect," said Raven. "You could feel it. The shape of it. The texture of it. ... It demands that you pay attention to it."

Of course, some ancient wares are as fragile as an egg. Which brings up an inevitable question, one you hardly dare to ask.

Have Raven and Keenan ever — you know — broken a piece?

"I like to think that is something that happens to other people," quipped Raven. "I have been lucky so far. So don't jinx me!"

Keenan wasn't as fortunate. Last summer, he lifted a lid by its flower shaped knob and his jaws dropped when the knob came off. The knob had previously been broken but had been poorly glued back on, Keenan explained. "So, technically, I never broke anything."

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com