Hello and welcome to the Royal Oak Foundation conservation studio here at glorious Knole
on such a wonderful day. I'm here to show you what our conservation specialists are up to in the studio.
So please do come in and we'll take a look.
The great thing about working here at Knole is the range of specialists we have.
So we have people that specialise in paintings conservation, furniture conservation,
decorative surfaces , organics like leather, and social history and natural history.
And I think that just really gives us the opportunity to problem-solve,
because objects aren't always made out of one material. And I love the fact that people come
into the space and they are welcomed by our volunteers who we work with really closely.
And just to see people's interests in what we do grow during their visit which is really exciting to see.
I love volunteering here. To work in such a stunning building, learning about all the amazing
objects that come through here, and the work of the conservators.
And explaining that to the public who come is really interesting.
Since 2017 we've been conserving most of Knole house's contents
from very significant furniture to small ceramics and silverware.
We now support the whole of the National Trust in this collections.
So this year we've been granted three million pounds from the Royal Oak Foundation.
The Royal Oak Foundation are an American not-for-profit institution.
And they basically support the work of the National Trust, so thanks to them we're able to further
develop the conservation studio, and to really start to understand the collections that we have.
Another item I'd like to show you is a painting from Town End which features in a book called
'100 Paintings from the Collections of the National Trust', and here's Becca to tell you a little bit more about it.
What we have on the easel today is a painting by an artist called William Longmire,
and he's a rather special and local artist to the area.
There's a little crease in the support and we're going to be looking at securing paint that may be a little loose around that crease,
and trying to reduce the prominence of the crease which is a little bit raised.
We're going to be cleaning the old varnish away, removing discoloured overpaint, and then
we're going to be revarnishing the painting in a way that fits really nicely with the other
paintings by the same artist at Town End. The panel looks a little bit like it's maybe card or board.
The board is comprised of both jute and cotton. Jute was being imported from India,
and cotton of course was coming from North America. Cumbria had its own mills producing paper
so this support reflects local industry and also it reflects global trade as well.
These Sgabello chairs from Petworth House feature in the book called
'125 Treasures from the Collections of the National Trust'.
And Maria will tell you a little bit more. So this is one of the nine chairs
we have from Petworth. They are from the 1600s. So I'm going show you the construction,
how are they made. Once you remove the two wedges from the chair and the back of it,
it's a Sgabello chair. It comes from the Italian word of sgabello which means a stool.
So the treatment for this chair has been quite challenging. The paint was flaking and there was a risk of more losses
in the decorative surfaces. So eventually I've been very gently doing a surface cleaning
because we want to keep the aged look of them, because they are part of the history of the object.
So these are the white losses that we found all over the group of chairs.
So with water colours we are just toning down the losses so they disappear to the eye.
Lasers have been used in conservation for a while now and I've been using it in this
particular chair because it was very damaged, and the bronze paint on top was not able
to be removed without damaging it. Apparently this is a laser that commercially is used cosmetics
to remove tattoos, but for us it's been adapted as well so it's not as powerful as in normal use.
So things that I really value in conservation are uncovering the stories about objects.
How were they cared for in the past, how they've been maybe restored or re-presented, what stories do they really tell us.
This is the end of our tour. I hope you've enjoyed the glimpse behind the scenes
here at the Royal Oak Foundation conservation studio. Thank you for watching,
and thank you for your continued support that helps to keep places like this open.