What is the best way to preserve a pair of football boots that once belonged to one of the greatest players in history? Clue: it is not to drill through the studs and screw them to a chopping board.
That is one of the lessons offered by experts at the Conservation and Museums Advisory Service (CMAS) in Wiltshire, after they were asked to restore a pair boots worn by George Best that had suffered that indignity.
Some time later, the laboratory received a pair of Pelé’s former boots that were in an equally poor state of repair – but to which, tantalisingly, a single blade of grass still clung.
In a recently published academic paper, the conservators detailed how the two pairs of boots were stabilised, shedding light on the meticulous work done by experts to protect items that, while ephemeral, can have great cultural significance.
It also highlights an issue that they say is becoming ever more pressing for museums – namely handling valuable items that are made not of precious metals or delicate ceramics but rapidly degrading plastic.
Kayleigh Spring, the report’s co-author who worked on the boots worn by Pelé, whose real name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, said she was not much of a football fan but added: “I have to try and avoid being starstruck by these objects, because it could be very overwhelming.”
As an object curator at the CMAS, which offers advice and treatments to museums and collectors, Spring works on a bewilderingly broad range of artefacts – recent projects range from a wasps’ nest and historic prosthetic limb to a Saxon sword and a tiger pelt. Boots worn by perhaps the greatest footballer of all time? Just another day in the office.
The debate over who was the better player may for some be unresolved – although Pelé’s remark that Best was the “greatest player in the world” was cherished by the Northern Irishman. That aside, both players’ boots were in such a terrible state when they arrived at CMAS that they could not even be turned over in case the soles fell to pieces.
As well as their unfortunate encounter with a kitchen object – predating the current owner – the soles of Best’s boots had been coated with a black glue that had itself cracked while a thick layer of bloom had developed on the surface caused by the plastic degrading. With the help of Adidas historians, the boots were identified as dating from 1976 – their green stripes indicating they had probably been part of Best’s Northern Ireland international kit.
The date of Pelé’s boots – owned by the same collector – is less certain, but here, too, parts of the plastic soles were missing. The plastic had a similar white bloom. Plastic is often assumed to last for ever, said Spring, but the highly complex material frequently degrades, dependent on how it has been manufactured.
But which substances had been used? When documentary research in both cases drew a blank, samples were sent to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for analysis. The results fed into a process of experimentation by Spring and her co-author Gabrielle Flexer to find materials for repair that would have the right mix of stiffness and flexibility.
How far to restore any item is always a matter of judgment, said Spring: museums often try to intervene only minimally, but with private clients, “it can be a lot trickier, because some do have an expectation that things might end up looking brand new, which is not what we do in conservation”.
In this case, the owner and conservators settled on treating and infilling areas of the soles, then moulding specially mixed blends of wax resin so both pairs of boots could stand without additional support. In total, Spring spent 57 hours on Pelé’s boots over a six-month period; the cost of the conservation was not disclosed.
She hopes the academic paper will help colleagues working on future plastics conservation – which is likely only to increase, said Spring. “There’s a lot more research than there used to be, but it’s still a developing field. All of these plastics in our collections are getting older, and we’re starting to see issues with them, so it’s almost having to learn as we go along.”
After their conservation, Best’s boots were loaned to the National Football Museum in Manchester, where they are in storage, a spokesperson confirmed.
On the sole of those worn by Pelé, however, one area has been left unrestored, which is where the blade of grass – which was carefully protected throughout the conservation process – remains delicately stuck.
“Not only does that tell us those boots were actually used, they went out on to a stretch of grass,” said Spring. “That could have been a really important match. That tells you about that object and about that person. And so that very much has to be preserved.”
