This week we spent a most interesting morning learning about moving and handling objects in a stately home. The local stately home is called West Wycombe Park, owned and very much lived in by the Dashwood family. It's three miles outside of High Wycombe, and was built between 1740 and 1800. "It was conceived as a pleasure palace for the 18th century libertine and dilettante Sir Francis Dashwood."
Our prep for this visit involved a lecture on handling objects. Some of it is very obvious, but we quickly found out that obvious things can be easily forgotten. For instance, before you move an object like a chair, one person is in charge of directing the movements of both people, and you need to figure out where the chair is going, if the path is clear to the new location, before you pick it up. But the first thing I noticed is that one's instinct is to pick up the chair and then say, "Where are we putting this?". It really does require training one's mind to think through all the movements required, before doing anything at all.
As for clothing, no jewelry of any kind, particularly rings that can get caught on the edge of a piece of furniture; no belt buckles; wear sensible shoes, since you may be on ladders (later we will be getting a tutorial on ladders); two people carry any object larger than a broom handle; take pictures of the object before you even touch it, to record any missing bits or flaws (so you can prove you didn't damage it!); there is always a director for moving, so there are no conflicting directions or suggestions; white gloves are worn for everything except stone; fingerprints on metal, though invisible at the time, will actually etch the metal if left there for several years; if you are walking backwards while carrying something, you have to have another person walking ahead of you with a hand on your shoulder, directing you through doorways and over rugs; rugs can only be rolled in one direction, and around a long tube to prevent creasing; small objects are carried in a box with padding; and so on.
Then when we got to the stately home, we were given another tutorial by the "housekeeper", who in fact runs the place like a curator. It is all rather awe- inspiring.
The house itself is a mid-eighteenth century structure, very much inspired by Greek temples, as you can see. (I don't have a good picture of the house because there is scaffolding all over the front at the moment, but you can see it on the web if you want to) The entire interior is painted, ceilings and walls, with faux marble and trompe l'oeil. It took a team of painters twenty years to complete the job. When you see it all, you wonder, how could they have done it so fast? I don't know why they used so much decorative painting because it cost more than using real materials, but that's what they did. Every square inch was fascinating to look at, and then of course there are the stunning pieces of furniture, statuary, artwork, tapestries, marquetry.... Photographs are totally inadequate.
The things we were asked to move were a set of nine pieces of furniture, Chippendale as I recall, some of which were reproductions so perfect that it was almost impossible to spot them. Two of the originals are worth a quarter of a million pounds (see picture of chair).
The other things we had to move were four marble busts on pedestals. Two of the busts had been out in the garden, "painted" with boot black; when they were taken to be cleaned, they found out that they were not replicas but actual Greek busts dating from 2,500 years ago! What a thrilling little discovery. So, anyway, we had to move them, and they were unbelievably heavy, and were resting on some rather tottery plinths, which was kind of scary. And it was funny to see that the "marble" columns were in fact wood, in sections that didn't rest flatly and we had to put little shims in to keep the bust from toppling to the floor and smashing millions of £'s of stuff all around it!
So it was a fascinating morning, and I hope we can go back to help with cleaning this or that. Ellie
Our prep for this visit involved a lecture on handling objects. Some of it is very obvious, but we quickly found out that obvious things can be easily forgotten. For instance, before you move an object like a chair, one person is in charge of directing the movements of both people, and you need to figure out where the chair is going, if the path is clear to the new location, before you pick it up. But the first thing I noticed is that one's instinct is to pick up the chair and then say, "Where are we putting this?". It really does require training one's mind to think through all the movements required, before doing anything at all.
As for clothing, no jewelry of any kind, particularly rings that can get caught on the edge of a piece of furniture; no belt buckles; wear sensible shoes, since you may be on ladders (later we will be getting a tutorial on ladders); two people carry any object larger than a broom handle; take pictures of the object before you even touch it, to record any missing bits or flaws (so you can prove you didn't damage it!); there is always a director for moving, so there are no conflicting directions or suggestions; white gloves are worn for everything except stone; fingerprints on metal, though invisible at the time, will actually etch the metal if left there for several years; if you are walking backwards while carrying something, you have to have another person walking ahead of you with a hand on your shoulder, directing you through doorways and over rugs; rugs can only be rolled in one direction, and around a long tube to prevent creasing; small objects are carried in a box with padding; and so on.
Then when we got to the stately home, we were given another tutorial by the "housekeeper", who in fact runs the place like a curator. It is all rather awe- inspiring.
The house itself is a mid-eighteenth century structure, very much inspired by Greek temples, as you can see. (I don't have a good picture of the house because there is scaffolding all over the front at the moment, but you can see it on the web if you want to) The entire interior is painted, ceilings and walls, with faux marble and trompe l'oeil. It took a team of painters twenty years to complete the job. When you see it all, you wonder, how could they have done it so fast? I don't know why they used so much decorative painting because it cost more than using real materials, but that's what they did. Every square inch was fascinating to look at, and then of course there are the stunning pieces of furniture, statuary, artwork, tapestries, marquetry.... Photographs are totally inadequate.
The things we were asked to move were a set of nine pieces of furniture, Chippendale as I recall, some of which were reproductions so perfect that it was almost impossible to spot them. Two of the originals are worth a quarter of a million pounds (see picture of chair).
The other things we had to move were four marble busts on pedestals. Two of the busts had been out in the garden, "painted" with boot black; when they were taken to be cleaned, they found out that they were not replicas but actual Greek busts dating from 2,500 years ago! What a thrilling little discovery. So, anyway, we had to move them, and they were unbelievably heavy, and were resting on some rather tottery plinths, which was kind of scary. And it was funny to see that the "marble" columns were in fact wood, in sections that didn't rest flatly and we had to put little shims in to keep the bust from toppling to the floor and smashing millions of £'s of stuff all around it!
So it was a fascinating morning, and I hope we can go back to help with cleaning this or that. Ellie
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