Between 1905 and 1908 Hector Guimard's masterpiece, the Salle Humbert des Romans in Paris, was destroyed with the loss of most of the interior elements. Recently, it was discovered that 40 of its seats were in use in a small movie theater in the South of France. The cast iron remained intact, but the embossed moleskin was found to be worn, torn, and overpainted two successive times in thick oil-based paint, completely obscuring the design beneath. Strong solvent mixtures and emulsions tested on the overpaint proved difficult to control due to the absorbency of all of the paint layers. Weaker mixtures were ineffective, and mechanical removal with a scalpel required an hour and a half per square inch of surface which projects to an economically unfeasible prospect of several thousand hours of labor for divestment. A new technique involving xenon photocopy lamps was developed which successfully accomplished the overpaint divestment much more rapidly (one month for ten seat sets). The procedure involved irradiating 72 square inches of surface with each 2kJ pulse from a pair of 18 inch linear flashlamps. Then, the decomposed overpaint was readily removed with a relatively mild solvent mixture.