Is loose material inside bronze statue common?

Bronze statue - refinishing the bronze???

• I bought a bronze statue today at an auction, after closer inspection the bronze seems to have lost it finish in a few places, its not chipped the bronze away but it have a lighter colour, not the nice browny colour within the rest of the statue. Is there anyway to touch this in??? any help appreciated.

• Answer:

  It's probably just the patina rubbed off if it's at a place which may get touched a lot. You could patinate it, but it would most likely be rather difficult to match the colors perfectly. I would just let leave it, it should darken with time. If it really bothers you you could use some shoe polish of a similar color to darken it. At least that won't chemically bond to the statue so if necessary could be removed with a solvent. If you really want to fix it, it would probably be best to remove the patina of the entire piece (usually done by sandblasting) and then patina it again. Possibly the patina is "French Brown" a liver of sulfur patina with a ferric nitrate patina on top. It depends on the size of the bronze sculpture and its value if you should even think of attempting it. Particularly if it's large and cost some money ask an art foundry for an estimate to either fix it or re-patinate it. They usually have somebody who doesn't do anything else but applying patinas and therefore will get the best results. Though it will depend on the sculpture whether it's worth more with its original patina or not.