Look at the vase below before anything else. The glass is two layers: a deep blue-black body, and over it a skin of white. The figures were not painted on, they were cut down into — the carver removed white until the blue came up behind a shoulder, a thigh, the underside of an arm. Where the white is thinnest it goes faintly grey, and the dark reads through it like weather. A seated figure with something slender in one hand, a bearded head beneath the handle, a column and its architrave, someone standing. Roman work, made around two thousand years ago by a hand we cannot name.

In February 1845 it was broken in the British Museum into hundreds of pieces. On this day in 1845, John Doubleday finished putting it back. Seven months at a bench: tweezers, adhesive, and an engraving of the vase's outline to tell him where each sliver belonged. He was the museum's restorer, perhaps the first person anywhere to hold that post, and he also spent his days identifying forgeries and standing up in court as a witness.

When he was done, a small number of chips remained unplaced. He set them aside rather than force them. Later restorers, working with better glues, found homes for most. I like that he left the problem legible for whoever came next.