Gorilla Glue

When one lives in an old house or owns old stuff, finding products that work is worth sharing. For several years I have been using Gorilla Glue to repair a variety of goods. This past week, in addition to making two yukata and working on my quilt blocks, I have been repairing some old Noh masks that arrived in yet another box. When I first met my soon-to-be husband, his family still lived in DC where his father edited a magazine for the state department. They had an interesting fireplace with openings on both sides, one into the living room and the other into the dining room. Over the dining room hung several Noh masks.

When my mother-in-law moved to Hawaii to live with my husband's older brother and his wife, she took all the house contents including the masks as I have described in other posts. I don't know if she ever hung the masks in Hawaii. I do know that they didn't like the humidity because when they arrived here, several were in pretty rough shape. Some of the masks are carved wood, but several are some kind of plaster covered with lacquer. These in particular suffered, growing mold on the unfinished insides and crumbling. So slowly, slowly, I glued the fragile pieces together. None could be glued all in one day as there were too many breaks and no good way to brace them while they set. I finally finished the last one on Friday and then devised a way to replace a missing staple that held the jaw strap on. The Gorilla Glue works on the plaster, on the wood, attached a metal circle to the back of a plaster piece--you get the idea.

Now we have to decide how to display these. We are thinking of covering a rectangle of foam core with one of the obi and then hanging the masks from that over the wide door opening between our living room and dining room, so an echo of the old display from my in-law's previous house.