My name is Rachael Smith and I am Drawings Conservator at Royal Collection Trust
I work in the Paper Conservation Studio which is based in Windsor Castle
For the last 18 months I have been conserving a whole range of Indian artworks
for our upcoming exhibition.
They are quite a wide range from about 400 years of history
from all across the subcontinent.
I always check all the objects that go into exhibitions to make sure that they're
strong enough and stable enough.
Inevitably with exhibitions there's a lot of handling and photography and transport.
These objects are particularly fragile.
Paper supports from India suffer from all the usual wear and tear that European
paper supports do: losses from handling, insect damage
so I'm working to stabilise those areas.
The really important first step in conservation is always to examine
the artworks as carefully as possible
so that we can formulate an appropriate conservation treatment for them.
We can look at the paintings under ultra-violet light, and that gives us
some information about which pigments were used.
Another method of examination is using infra-red radiation.
The infra-red is able to see through some of the other paint layers so it allows us
to see through to what's underneath, and in this case we found that there is a
really interesting under-drawing.
We've actually uncovered a whole host of little demon figures,
that didn't make it to the final painting.
This tells us that the artists were making changes as they went along
so they were still working out their ideas on this very sheet of paper.
This painting is one from a series, its a Hindu text, the 'Gita Govinda'.
So, a lot of the damage to the paint layer is on a tiny, tiny scale
and we don't necessarily see it with the naked eye.
I always check the surfaces through the microscope,
and I use a very strong raking light across the surface that really highlights
any lifting or buckling of the paint.
Where I see flakes which are loose, then I go in with a tiny amount of adhesive
and I'm just applying tiny amounts around the edges of lifting flakes
and then that gets sucked underneath where its needed between the paint and the
paper support, so that with any handling, or with the vibration of the transport,
that paint is securely attached, and it won't become loose.
This is a page from an album, known as a 'Muraqqa' which translates as scrapbook,
but this is a scrapbook taken to a very high artform.
These pages are 400 years old, and they show signs of their age.
There's a little bit of water damage, are small tears from handling.
My work is to infill those.
The first stage, I choose my repair paper. I then tone it with water-colour
to a colour sympathetic to the original.
I trace the area of damage with tracing paper, and I then place my repair
paper on top, and with a sharp scalpel, cut it out.
The final step then is to paste the repair.
I use an adhesive which I know will be reversible, if somebody in 50 years'
time, or 100 years' time, decides that they're not appropriate,
or that they have the technology to do it better,
I want them to be able to remove what I have done.
So I use a fairly weak adhesive, I paste it out,
and then very carefully position the repair into the area of loss.
I want my repairs to be very discreet from a distance,
so that you can appreciate the whole object, but if you look very
closely, its important that they are obvious that they are modern repairs.
I'm treating individual pages from a manuscript, its called the
'Khamsa of Nava'i'.
The manuscript was disbound for conservation because it was
no longer safe for handling, and the main problem with it was that the
copper pigment had been painted as a decorative frame on every single page.
The copper pigment eats into the page, and makes it much weaker,
so, with handling the manuscript, with turning of the pages,
we actually started to get fracturing along that ruling line, on every single page
This type of repair is quite difficult, because the chemical process,
where the pigment eats through the paper, is actually catalysed by any water
so if I apply a wet repair paper, that will actually make the damage accelarate
over time, so I design my repairs so that I introduce the most minimal
amount of moisture possible.
So, I choose my repair paper, I tone it with watercolour
to make it as discrete as possible
and then I apply a layer of adhesive and allow that to dry.
I then simply cut a narrow strip off, and reactivate the adhesive,
using a small amount of water mixed with alcohol,
and then I can lay the repair paper down onto the copper ruling.
I find conservation work incredibly satisfying, at the end of the day
I can see what I've done, how I've improved the object
and these objects are now safe to go on exhibition.
They are also looking their best so that the public can enjoy them as the
works of incredible art that they are
but also, they are conserved for the future
so they will be stable now, for researchers to come in and study them,
to be handled, and to be enjoyed, for generations to come.