Welcome to the Organics Conservation Studio here at the British Museum.
I'm Monique and I'm a senior textile conservator. And over the next 11 weeks
my colleague, Hannah and I will be working on the conservation of an
eighth-century Chinese Buddhist silk embroidery.
My name is Hannah. I'm a newly qualified textile conservator and I'm
really pleased to be able to join the team and Monique on this project to
conserve the Vulture Peak embroidery.
I've already done a little bit of preliminary research about the textile
and its history, especially to learn more about its condition and how that's
changed over time. We're quite lucky that we have records of the textile as it
came into the Museum and what happened.
The embroidery is part of the Museum's
Stein collection and this is a large group of mainly paintings on scrolls and
banners but also artefacts including textiles and these were all brought to
the British Museum in 1908 by Sir Aurel Stein following his second expedition
exploring the sites along the ancient Silk Road in north-west China. And you can
see that it depicts the figure of the Sakyamuni Buddha in the middle and he's
flanked to either side by two Bodhisattva figures and two other figures
which are now largely missing. You've got smaller groups of figures at the bottom
and also at the top and a canopy over the head of the Buddha. The embroidery is
made from silk embroidery threads which have been worked onto a very lightweight
silk ground fabric. This ground is now almost entirely missing. There's just
a few fragments of it remaining, and then underneath that is a hemp lining so the
embroidery was worked through both the silk and the hemp to give a bit more body.
What's immediately remarkable about the textile is its size it's over two-and-a -half
metres long by over one-and-a-half metres wide. So for something this size to have
survived since the eighth century is really quite incredible. I mean it is quite
fragmentary and has been previously restored but even so it's survival is
incredible.
Between about 1908 and 1912 it was restored and we know that because Stein
recorded that in a book called 'Ruins of Desert Cathay' in 1912. And he describes the
state of embroidery as 'having remarkable freshness and shimmer' but he also
described the state of the areas of loss as 'being in a state of sad havoc', which I
think is quite lovely. He then went on to unusually describe in a bit of detail
the restoration that happened in order to make it safe for display in the
Museum. It was restored by a lady called Miss E A Winters from the Royal School of
Needlework. It took her over two months to do the restoration, so to stitch it
onto a new backing. It was really fascinating to read this because it's
also a nice insight for our predecessors and the precursors to textile
conservation. This previous restoration is what we see today. That restoration is
beginning to fail and no wonder because it has been over a hundred years now.
We're actually looking to assess the condition of that and look into how we can make it
safe for display again.
The embroidery is now being prepared to go on loan to Japan next year in a
temporary exhibition at the Nara National Museum.
I've already carried out a very initial conservation assessment and I did find
several areas of concern which have highlighted the need for a fairly
extensive conservation, so we really need to make it strong enough to withstand
the rigours of all the transportation as well as the display.