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Polar bear skin
Posted: January 26, 2021I was fortunate to be asked to conserve this polar bear skin rug which was looking very sorry for itself. It had been on the bathroom of a private house for many years and then the house opened to the public, and unfortunately the skin became badly damaged. The head was trodden on and the eyes had become loose, the ears were broken and the nose was completely split, showing historic repairs. There had also been expanding foam dripped on it from a previous repair of the eyes. It was very dirty and stained, but regardless I had become hugely enamoured with the task and wanted to reintroduce some of its former beauty and nobility once more. -
Family Christening Robe
Posted: January 22, 2021A project demonstrating the conservation of a family christening enabling it to be worn again now and by future generations -
Brighton Museum: A Magnetic Display of Botswanan Skins
Posted: January 22, 2021A project highlighting close working with museums, the breadth of materials experience (leather and hide) as well as innovative display capabilities using camouflaged magnets -
Couture costume conservation
Posted: January 22, 2021Resurrecting two very well worn Schiaparelli jackets for Manchester Art Galleries has been a recent couture hightlight for our studio -
Dubai Cultural Authority
Posted: January 22, 2021A project demonstrating our ability to deliver complex, high finish projects phased over a number of years to overseas institutions and clients -
Conservation of the Charlotte Smith Sketchbook, Tring Local History Museum
Posted: January 21, 2021The conservation and display of an early C19th sketchbook by Hertfordshire artist Charlotte Smith which had been damaged through water ingress, inherent material instability and use. -
Repair of damaged lepidopterans.
Posted: January 15, 2021Repair of c. 100 lepidopteran (butterfly and moth) specimens, many of which were crushed by the breaking of the glass lid during transit. The wings were repaired by underlaying them with torn slivers of 10 gsm Gampi tissue using neutral pH PVA adhesive. -
Conservation and preservation audits, and collection condition surveys
Posted: January 11, 2021It is now an accepted principle that any organisation with an archive, library or art collection should undertake a collection survey (also referred to as a conservation audit or preservation assessment). Not only will this provide an accurate guide to the current condition of a collection, but it will also provide an analysis of it’s conservation and preservation requirements. -
Insitu stain removal from bound volumes
Posted: January 11, 2021Over the last two decades I have been involved with a number of large flood recovery projects, involving the removal of water staining from historic volumes. To save on the unnecessary time and expense of disbinding the damaged volumes in order to work on the stained folios, I developed a method of removing the stains insitu - whilst the book remained bound. In this way I have removed and reduced the waterstains from many hundreds of bound volumes. -
Cleaning and flattening of parchment documents
Posted: January 11, 2021Over the last 30 years I have worked on hundreds of parchment and vellum documents, ranging from large property and title deeds and ennoblement documents to medieval manuscript illuminations, watercolours and drawings.
