Support: The original support is a plain weave, 2 x 2, polished linen canvas, having approximately 30 warp and weft thread pairs per inch. Documentation suggests that conservator Caroline Keck likely executed the wax lining of this work on a secondary, 2 x 2 plain-weave canvas around 1958.

Ground or Support Preparation: The raw canvas appears to have been given a very dilute protein sizing and was primed by the artist with a dilute single coat of commercial white pigment in oil, consisting exclusively of Zn, Ca, and S. That may have been followed by a heavy, bright, lead-white overall coating over the recto, but excluding the tacking edges. It is also possible that the heavy lead white coating overall is part of the design layer. A selvedge edge of the canvas is visible on the top tacking edge of the painting, with the warps oriented horizontally.

Design Layers: Graphite underdrawing is occasionally visible under magnification in areas where the paints of adjacent forms do not overlap, indicating that the general forms were underdrawn. Paints are generally applied in single, thin layers, often smoothed with a palette knife in the white background regions, with the canvas weave surface texture often visible. Brush textures remain part of the painterly effect in the foreground, feather, and reflection forms. The margins of forms often display raised, elongated ridges of a defining brushstroke. Paint pigments were characterized using the Bruker III-V XRF spectrometer at full vacuum, with settings of 15 kV, 4 μA, and 40 kV, 29 μA, respectively. The bright whites in the background were characterized as Zn and Pb whites. Foreground greenish gray was characterized as viridian Cr green blended with Zn. While a dark brown or red is suspected in the paint mix, there were no signals of Fe, Cd, or Hg. The bright feather tip whites were characterized and Pb with some Fe yellow ochre, the red streaks were Fe ochre red and yellow with Zn, and the blacks were characterized as bone black with P, Ca with traces of Fe. The horseshoe browns were characterized as Fe umbers, Cr viridian green, and Pb and Zn white.

Surface Coating: The work appears to have a moderate, brush-applied synthetic varnish.

Framing, Backing, and Hanging Hardware: Frame is a 1960s era painted and plated, Peter Bayle L-profile rolled brass frame with brushed chrome or nickel plating, with reinforced secondary frame backing and Optium acrylic glazing.

The work has been historically lined with wax-resin to a 2 x 2 linen canvas, similar to the original in weight. This canvas is one known to have been previously used and recommended by Caroline Keck. The lined work appears to have been stretched onto the original, 1 ¾" wide, ¾" thick, double-bevel faced "American Style" commercial stretcher, with new blued-steel tacks located in the original tacking holes. The stretcher currently has no keys in the corners. Tension is presently maintained by the attachment of the new microclimate backing strainer.

The wax-resin lining appears to have slightly saturated and darkened the paints in thinly applied or slightly translucent regions in the white background passages. This translucency is also visible in the consolidated stretcher bar cracks above the inside edges of the stretcher bars in the white-painted background areas. Several vertically oriented weft threads and canvas slubs have been thrown slightly forward in relief as a result of the lining process. The design layers in those planar deformations appear stable. There is an old diagonal crack in the top center of the horseshoe form that appears to remain largely planar and well adhered.

There are edge abrasions and edge losses resulting from frame abrasions and turn-down edge strains. Pb carboxylate soap microprotrusions are very small and generalized throughout the work. However, the population of soap protrusions is far denser in the umber and red ochre and gray regions of the foreground and is more isolated in the thicker white background paints. An interlayer crack appears in the transmitted infrared image in the viewer's right, near the horseshoe. This crack has not yet migrated to the surface of the painting and is not yet visible on the surface in normal observation.