We're about to publish the catalogue raisonné of Chinese and Japanese works of art.
The aim is to make a survey of that particular part of the collection to ensure that it's
in good condition, to photograph it, to describe it accurately
to explain it to people who are interested.
The collection of Chinese and Japanese works of art comprises of little over two-thousand
objects, and includes porcelains, lacquers, jades, silk hangings, Cloisonne enamels and
even musical instruments.
Principally, it's down to William the Third and Mary the Second in the end of the seventeenth
century, collecting mainly blue and white porcelain which was of course, extremely fashionable.
And also George the Fourth, he was obsessed with Chinese works of art and built up a very
large collection, and also Queen Mary who in the beginning of the twentieth century,
bought a great deal of jades and also porcelains.
In order to prepare these objects for the catalogue, the author makes a selection, and
then they're brought into the workshop and for a light clean, which in many examples
was all that was necessary, but certain objects required more in-depth conservation.
In this film, we're going to be looking at four objects prepared for the catalogue,
we're looking at one of the small pagodas, there are three sizes of pagodas, a lacquer box and a
Chinese enamel Cloisonne vase and a Chinese nodding head figure.
The lacquer boxes were made for George, Prince of Wales, late George the Fourth at the beginning
of the nineteenth century.
The gold face table just had some surface dirt so I've cleaned that along with cleaning
the object in a whole and taken a conservation approach, just very minimal retouching with
the gold just for photography purposes, just using gold powders.
We use paint because, or acrylic paint I should say because it's reversible.
In the Orient they would use Urushi lacquer, again to replace
but we won't be doing that here because anything we do needs to be reversible.
It's probably taken about two months really just to take
it all apart, lifting areas, consolidation, cleaning and making sure each layer was taken
apart and cleaned and then put back together.
The aims of conservation for any object in the Royal Collection really is firstly to
ensure that it is stable, it's safe. Secondly, most of these objects live in palaces, therefore
they need to appear appropriate to their palace setting.
The Cloisonne vase is made with tiny fragments of glass which are set into a brass frame
and the glass is then baked to a very high temperature and this melts and fuses with the brass
frame and this is what provides the decoration.
The vase was given in eighteen ninety-six to Queen Victoria.
You can see here, very clearly the difference between the vase which has been cleaned and
one that hasn't and the rather fuzzy surface to the decoration is caused by tarnish building
up around the brass wires, which has migrated into the edges of the glass surface.
Now the conservation really involves cleaning back this surface and the brass, removing the tarnish
to reveal the surface in it's original state.
The nodding head figures were almost certainly acquired by the Prince of Wales, later George the Fourth.
So far on the back of this figure, I have cut back the old repairs and I applied
more material where necessary just to bring up the right level. Before that, I did consolidate
the clay just to protect it and also to act as a barrier layer so if I'm adding any more
material, then it's easier to remove it without damaging the clay.
I'm smoothing down the fills further just to bring the level down a tiny bit
to prepare it for the paint application.
And the other thing I am doing today is painting in the fills and applying a very minimal amount
of paint, just feathering it in to this whole area to bring the whole colour together so
it doesn't look so patchy, it just looks like one yellow.
Pagodas in porcelain generally only made for export to the west, very much inspired by
the famous pagoda at Nanjing which was known in printed form in the seventeenth century.
The pagodas are constructed in separable form so you have about seven or eight individual
tiers so each balcony rests upon the one below it and then you have the roof that sits on top.
The pagoda was bought in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
You can see here that there are two main sections that have been missing, this upper section
of fretwork which has been replaced and repaired by taking a mold of another section and using
that mold to create an impression around which to form this replacement section.
I'm going to use a cold glaze, retouching medium and powder pigments based around these three
colours, this terracotta red, a yellow oaker and a slightly brighter red lead.
Everything has been replaced and retouched and really it looks as good as probably the day that it was made.
This collection very much embodies that view of the east seen from the west, from Britain
in particular and similarly the view and relations through objects from China and Japan of Britain.
You can see these objects in Windsor Castle, in the State Apartments there, in Buckingham
Palace during the summer opening in the State Apartments, Hampton Court, Kensington Palace
and also the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.