A Week in the Country

BW here -- thought you might like to know: next week Ellie will be spending a week at Kentchurch Court in Herefordshire doing onsite conservation. It sounds like a pretty amazing place; check out their website. I'm sure she'll have lots to say once she's back.

In the course of getting to Kentchurch, I also stumbled across this profile of her tutor Campbell Norman-Smith. He's quite a guy, but I'm sure she'll tell you more about him. You'll find this profile reveals a lot about the Bucks Furniture Conservation and Restoration program and his vision for it.

How varied is the human appetite!

Encounters on The City streets. . .

We went off to London for the day: Ellie to research a painting in the Library of the National Portrait Gallery, and me to chance encounters on London streets.
With a little time to kill, we came up in the crowds in Trafalgar Square, and wandered around a bit, dropping into the foyer of the London Coliseum – currently home to the English National Opera, where we met these ladies of the early 20th century.

Walking back through some lanes to Trafalgar Square, this large cat that guards Lord Nelson’s column seemed upset; I went to find why, and on the lawn of the National Gallery found the gentleman below. He was faintly familiar, having caused a ruckus with the Brits a few years back. The original life-sized marble George Washington (1785) is in the Virginia Statehouse rotunda; we had been amazed at its detail when we visited last year. The London bronze copy is a gift made some 125 years later.
















Strolling through the Victoria Embankment Gardens along the River Thames I was introduced me to many men of history: William Tyndale published The Bible in English in 1526, and was burned for his troubles ten years later. In societies older than ours, religion was the root of war and martyrdom: In England alone, more than 1,000 people were burned between 1400 and 1557 for the sake of the Gospel.




More recently Churchill said of the Battle of Britain (1940) “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” A few thousand mostly teenage men jumped in flimsy airplanes to keep the German air force at bay. A vivid bronze monument to “The Few” reminds us that over a third lost their lives in that battle, and not half survived the War.










Nearby a tall gentleman named Ben has watched this city since 1859.











In a quiet corner of the Gardens elderly ladies stop to wonder what this old fellow has done to deserve the eternal attention of a sorrowful and underclothed maiden. Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1990) is remembered here, and given the first stanza of Gilbert’s words from Fairfax’s lament in Yeomen of the Guard (1883).





Is life a boon?
If so, it must befall
That Death, whene'er he call,
Must call too soon.
Though fourscore years he give,
Yet one would pray to live
Another moon!
What kind of plaint have I,
Who perish in July?
I might have had to die,
Perchance, in June!

Is life a thorn?
Then count it not a whit!
Man is well done with it;
Soon as he's born
He should all means essay
To put the plague away;
And I, war-worn,
Poor captured fugitive,
My life most gladly give -
I might have had to live,
Another morn!

Best known for the operettas sometimes produced in cow barns by spirited amateurs, Sullivan was his day’s premier composer of serious works, as well as many chestnuts of the Anglican book of hymns. Not familiar with his melody for St. Gertrude? (If you turn your speakers on, your blood will be stirred with an anthem of the Christian imperialism of Sullivan's day.)


Wandering with a map but not much direction, I happened through Covent Garden, but was unable to find an appealing flower girl among the hip hop artists. Maybe I should ask my wife what street she lives on.

















Upon conclusion of Ellie’s research labors, we made our way through St. John’s Gate (1504) on the way to Stuart R. Stevenson, by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen Suppliers of Artist and Gilding Materials, in Clerkenwell.

Surrounded by pens, inks, papers, brushes, and strange tools of all sorts, Mr. Stevenson was a font of knowledge about gilding and with the monastic order of Knights Hospitaller (having much to do with the aforementioned gate). Ellie purchased strange tools that will make her gilder's life simpler, and we came out into the London night, hoping to return again shortly.

Moving Objects

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

Lifecycle of a footstool

I have two footstools that were given to me as practice, which are also for a customer, so my practice has to be perfect...! Here is the process, which is amazing in its time consumptiveness.

First I had to strip them, using very stinky stripper, called "Perfecta." Remove many layers of paint and bronzing powder, using tongue depressor and wire wool. Washing with wasing soda and water, then neutralizing with isopropyl alcohol. This process takes the entire day and I'm feeling pretty bleary from the fumes.

Second, melt rabbit skin glue, apply as first coat to stools.

Third, melt gesso from freezer, and apply five coats. Then comes "cutting back," which means getting rid of the excess which inevitably builds up, losing definition in the carved wood. This is done with dental tools, to carefully scrape out the flutes without chipping the gesso, and 320 sandpaper, "Lubrasil," to sand it till the whole thing is as smooth as a baby's bottom. I mixed up gesso paste to fill in the areas that are gashed or missing from the wood. I then put on another five layers of gesso. Then another round of cutting back. Time spent so far, not including the time for each layer to dry: 16 hours.

Fourth, I apply the layers of gold-colored clay, which is composed of clay and rabbit skin glue, carefully mixed to get the clay in suspension. I put on twelve layers of clay, each layer taking half an hour to paint on.

Fifth, extremely light sanding, and then burnishing. First I burnish it with a burnishing brush, then I use an agate burnishing tool, rubbing the surface of the clay. There is naturally-occurring graphite in the clay that burnishes up nicely. However, this step is fraught with danger: you use a lot of pressure, and the burnishing tip is pointy, so when your hand slips, the tool mars the surface, which then has to be burnished again, with risk of chipping the clay. This happens several times. You have to be very careful not to touch the clay with your hands or the burnishing tip, as any oil will make it impossible to gild.

Sixth, the water gilding begins. After many weeks of anticipation, I'm eager. This quickly gives way to a slightly leaden feeling when I see how dastardly difficult the task is to learn. First you cut the gold on a gilder's pad, with a special knife; even this step is rather difficult, as the knife grabs the gold with the tiniest mishandling. If you should happen to exhale, the gold flutters away, or folds on itself, in which case it is impossible to unfold and is officially a "spewing" (gross name) and is saved, if you can manage this, in a tiny box. The pad actually has a screen to keep drafts off the cutting area. Any little puff of air, from anywhere, and you have horrible fluttering bits everywhere. Then you apply a little gilding "liquor," so-named because, well, it's gin. There are circumstances for different kinds of liquor, however, and my liquor is actually distilled water and a gelatin capsule. The idea is to rehydrate the clay surface, which you may remember contains rabbit skin glue, and when it is just at the right level of stickiness (which may take years to recognize), you pick up a piece of gold with the tip of a special brush. The tip of the brush has to have a faint amount of grease on it to attract the gold, which you get by brushing the tip on your face. Then you touch the tip of the brush to the gold piece, ever so gently transport it to the object so as to avoid any air movement, and hovering over the rehydrated section, you lay it on. If you're lucky, it sticks.

When you have done a large area, you then brush it with a different brush, and rub it with cotton wool, and find out if you gauged the stickiness correctly. It turns out I haven't done a great job, and when I ask for help I'm pretty much told that there's a knack to it, a "feel", and I just have to figure it out for myself. Great. Then you come back and try to fill in all the areas you missed, a step called "faulting," using a minute-tipped brush, applying gold, and leave it. At this point it truly looks like hell.
Total time spent so far: 24 hours, not including drying times. There are many more hours to come: gilding the entire surface, faulting, burnishing, toning, turning button feet, cleaning textiles. I know you will be waiting eagerly to see how it turns out...!

More later, Ellie

. . . and -- sure enough -- continued here.

Rooflines

. . . are fascinating. We find ourselves always looking across the tops of buildings: admiring clay tiles, brickwork, chimney pots, and the rest. But thatch?!? Just before we came here Ellie's friend Kate loaned us bootleg videos of a wonderful BBC-Wales production "Tales from the Green Valley," the story of four archaeologists living a year as Elizabethans in an up-country Welsh stone cottage. Every episode focused on the labours of the season, and we were fascinated by the thatching of a cowbarn.

So Saturday we chanced upon the village of Aston Magna in The Cotswolds: it seems as though thatched roofs and topiary are the specialties of some of these rural nooks. As we made our way down the narrow lane past some scaffolding, we found that master thatchers were at work on one of the cottages (dated 1713, I believe). Having been shown by the BBC how it was done from scratch in Ye Olden Dayes, it was intensely interesting to see how modern craftsmen set up to interweave the new with the old, very likely using the same bundling and stitching techniques as the Elizabethans.

A return to the general topic of rooflines brings me to chimneys and chimney pots and chimney corbelling. This picture is not from Harry Potter or Walt Disney; it reflects the real engineering sense and sensibilities of rural people in the village of Mill End, on the River Thames.