Control centre Appearance panel crashes while rendering thumbnails

When I open the Appearance panel in the GNOME Control Centre, it begins loading thumbnails for candidate background images, but after a few screenfuls (several seconds) it crashes.

This used to be a problem (probably somewhere about 10.X and 11.X, but I can't quite remember) but then somewhere along the way I *think* it stopped happening. But I don't try to change the background image at all frequently... well, now I've tried and it's either still happening or happening once again.

The backtrace I see when running gnome-control-center from the command line suggests it's crashing in font rendering while producing a thumbnail of an SVG file. I'm quite willing to assist further if desired.

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu Raring Ringtail (development branch)
Release: 13.04

$ apt-cache policy gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-unity
gnome-control-center:
  Installed: 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu18
  Candidate: 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu18
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu18 0
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
gnome-control-center-unity:
  Installed: 1.2daily13.04.01-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.2daily13.04.01-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.2daily13.04.01-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu18
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-15.25-generic 3.8.4
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-15-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CrashCounter: 1
Date: Tue Apr 2 08:40:33 2013
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-control-center
InstallationDate: Installed on 2010-01-06 (1181 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcCmdline: gnome-control-center
Signal: 6
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
StacktraceTop:
 raise () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
 abort () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
 ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
 __fortify_fail () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
 ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
Title: gnome-control-center crashed with SIGABRT in raise()
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-03-30 (2 days ago)
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout fuse lpadmin plugdev sambashare vboxusers
usr_lib_gnome-control-center:
 activity-log-manager-control-center 0.9.4-0ubuntu6.1
 deja-dup 26.0-0ubuntu1
 gnome-control-center-signon 0.1.5-0ubuntu1
 gnome-control-center-unity 1.2daily13.04.01-0ubuntu1
 indicator-datetime 12.10.3daily13.03.26-0ubuntu1