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THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, May 17, 2012 Call THE ROCK HOG
Historical Society Trustee and event host, Boone Porter, helps with the unveiling of Niobe.
NIOBE from 20
the stone pediment. Over the years, seeping water had rotted the wooden block, with unfortunate results. Luckily, the owners of the
If you need it, just call. . . . .
statue collected all of the broken pieces and saved them. The whereabouts of those pieces was forgotten with the passage of time. When the Porter family acquired Adams Hall in 2004, the purchase con- tract specified that the statue of Niobe, if it could be found, was to be sold with the property. Months later, the lost pieces were discovered under a manure pile in a horse barn behind the old Isaac Adam’s es- tate in Sandwich. Putting the pieces back together,
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In Greek legend, Niobe was the daughter of wealthy King Tantalus. Niobe married Amphion, and they were the first king and queen of the city of Thebes in central Greece. Niobe had fourteen children, seven sons and seven daughters. Niobe was punished by the gods for her hubris, which she disastrously displayed on the feast day of the goddess Leto. Niobe mocked Leto and refused to participate in the religious ceremonies honoring the goddess. Niobe justified her haughtiness because the goddess was neither richer nor more powerful than she (or so Niobe thought). Furthermore, Niobe claimed to be seven times more blessed than Leto because Niobe had fourteen children compared to Leto’s two. Leto found Niobe’s behavior intolerable. To avenge their mother’s honor, Leto’s twin children, the sun god Apollo and the moon goddess Diana, rained down arrows, slaughtering all of Niobe’s children before her very eyes. Hearing Niobe’s wailing, Amphion rushed to the scene, and apprehending that his wife had deeply offended divine authority, fell on his sword. The gods, however, were not satisfied that the complete destruction of Niobe’s family was sufficient punishment for her sin. As an additional measure, they transformed Niobe into stone and commanded that she weep perpetual tears.
however, seemed out of the question due to the exten- sive damage. In 2011, Adam Nudd
Homeyer, a metal artisan who resides in Sandwich, developed a plan to restore Niobe. Consulting with Car- ol Grissom at the Smithso- nian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute, Mr. Nudd Homeyer tested and proved the efficacy of a va- riety of techniques to com- plete the restoration. The beautifully restored statue is a testament to Mr. Nudd Homeyer’s skill. The restoration was a dif-
ficult task. The metal pieces had to be put together like so many jumbled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In many cases, the pieces were se- verely distorted and very brittle. Mr. Nudd Homeyer had to reshape them to their original form with
great care to avoid caus- ing further damage, and to fashion new pieces to fill voids. Mr. Nudd Hom- eyer also needed to correct structural defects from the original casting. As noted, Isaac Adams
also purchased Geiss’ cast- ings of Diana and Apollo. The plaster cast of the statue of Diana was taken from Praxiteles’ original 5th century, B.C. mas- terpiece on display at the Louvre in Paris, France. Diana stood on the south side of Isaac Adam’s estate, where her pedestal still re- mains. She was sold at an estate auction in 2010, and her current whereabouts are unknown. Nothing is known of the statue of Apollo. There are no known depictions of it nor is there a record of its ultimate dis- position.
Sandwich, NH, metal artisan, Adam Nudd-Homeyer, who developed the plan to restore Niobe, waits with his children for the signal to pull the rope that will unveil Niobe once again.
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