THE RESTORER AND THE AUTHOR’S LAW

This article has been prepared by Jiri Novotny, Dr. iur. as one forming supplement to that written by J. Josefik and J. Sonka *>. Being an active lawyer the author already for many years is dealing with the Author’s Law, the related laws as well as their problems and protection. According to the author’s opinion the restoration forms a perplexed problem comprising a wide scope of works intended for preservation, recovery and reconstruction of works of art including objects of once purely utilitarian nature. From the viewpoint of law these latter are also to be regarded as the works of art. And it is just here that the question arises: what are the legal links between the original work and the restorer’s “production” contributing to the object’s preservation. The principle and the scope of the restorer’s activities consist in preservation of a work of art in its original form or in a form as closely nearing that original as possible. The time in which a given work has been originally produced, the variety of styles, forms and technical processes — all these factors are facing the restorer on the background of high requirements and responsibility. Thus he must be not only an artist and expert in the history of art, but also a man gifted with high manual abilities. Owing to the treatments applied the restorer recovers the original shape of the work of art and, in addition, preserves it for the future. It is this point namely at which the legal attitude of restorer arises to the work he restores, quite similarly to the author’s legal attitude toward the work he has created. It is Mr. Novotny’s opinion that though the restorer can not be considered to be the author of the restored work a proper place should be found within the Author’s Law for this kind of creative work. As an example he quotes the work of translator of a literary work whose translation forms a subject of Author’s Law, similarly as an original work written by the writer. With the activities of restorer is inseparably linked the task of preparing the report discussing his work at a given object. The above report like the work itself is also protected by the Author’s Law. At the end of his article the author cites certain terminological troubles in the field of restoration and conservation as at present a number of terms are being used in restoration and conservation which are borrowed from artistic handicraft in spite of the fact that restoration is regarded as the strictly artistic work. The problem of terminology is one very important as those unaware could easily depreciate the work of restorer, lowering him to the rank of an ordinary “repairman”. Thus the problems discussed need to be considered on a legal basis of the Author’s Law as the contributions the restorer is making into preservation of an original work are by far exceeding the scope of a normal, professionaly treated repair. *) J. Josefik and J. Sonka: Restoration as the art and sc ien tific work (in Czech language), Pamatkova pece, 1, 1971