National Museums Liverpool Blog - conservation

You may remember in my last post that I had taken a model in great need of conservation to the Lady Lever Art Gallery for demonstration purposes. The model had several snapped yards and masts, and missing blocks. Many people remarked on the blackness of the thick dirt, and how complicated the broken and twisted rigging was, and were interested to know how I would go about treating the model. As the treatment of the model has now been completed, I would like to share some of the treatment processes.

The first challenge was to carefully clean the model. This was more difficult than usual as the model had many small crevices and great care had to be taken to avoid the already damaged rigging. This was undertaken using small cotton wool swabs. Once the model was cleaned to an appropriate level I could then begin the very difficult process of untangling the threads of the rigging, and working out where each broken or missing rope needed to go. Fortunately I have learnt the arrangements and purposes of rigging and so it was not as complicated as it first appeared. Once the spars and yard arms had been re-joined (using wood pins and adhesive), the rigging could be repaired.  Where possible, I saved the original thread, attaching it to new cotton thread at the breakages. In some areas the threads were too friable and needed to be replaced.

The silk flag also required conservation and so was removed. It was very stiff and bent, so I decided to re-humidify it using a sandwich of damp bloating paper, gortex, the flag, and then the same arrangement on the other side. This flattened the flag well. It was still very dirty and so after testing; I cleaned it by soaking in a solution of 5% tri-ammonium citrate (a chelating agent) in water. The silk itself was fragile, and to ensure that it was strong enough to place back onto the model I mounted it onto dyed silk crepeline.

The last problem to address on the model was the lead disease of the fittings on the baseboard. This was crumbling white corrosion product that I removed mechanically under a microscope, before coating with a protective coating. After making replica blocks for the anchor and reattaching the flag to the flag staff, the model was complete and now looks like an impressive ship of war. 

See a larger version of the image above on Flickr to see more detail.

Gemma Thorns

Update: 20/02/2012: See more photos of the model on our Flickr set of before and after conservation. 

Often as a conservator, there are not many opportunities to engage with the public. Working in studios undertaking practical conservation work can leave little time for interaction with those who enjoy and visit the collections. So when I was recently given the opportunity to do a demonstration of ship model conservation at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight Village I was eager to accept.

The Gallery is part of National Museums Liverpool, and houses a collection of fine and decorative art. The Lady Lever Art Gallery was founded by William Hesketh Lever, and contains the best of his personal art collection. As part of the education programme, the gallery runs demonstrations of various art related topics, and so I did an afternoon of ship model conservation in one of the galleries.

I chose a model in great need of conservation work, which would also be an interesting example. The wooden model depicts an 18th Century ship of war with 38 guns and fully rigged. Its many areas of deterioration included broken masts, tangled rigging, and lead disease. The model was very dirty and so I set up a table so that I could do cleaning whilst on the gallery.

Whilst it was fairly quiet, the people whom I spoke to were very interested in the conservation and it was great to be able to tell them what we do in Ship and Historic Model Conservation. Many visitors who approached me had not seen the demonstration advertised, and were simply curious as to what I was doing. Equally the visitors were interested in the type of ship the model depicted, and as I had researched this well, was able to explain the historical context which then informs the conservation process. Many were fascinated as to how I would be able to repair the complicated rigging, which requires extensive knowledge of ships rigging.

I thoroughly enjoyed talking to the public about the work we do in the Conservation Centre, as well as being able to share my enthusiasm for maritime history. I found that people were very interested in conservation and many had not heard of the profession previously. And not uncommon for conservators, the popular phrase of the day was “you must have a lot of patience”. 

Ann Stewart; Head of Framing, Paper and Paintings Conservation tells us a bit more about the wonderful work our Stewart Bale Volunteers have achieved this past year…

“Based in the paper conservation studio, a volunteer project to clean and re-house glass plate negatives from the Stewart Bale collection began in March this year.

Mainly due to the poor condition of the original packaging, most of these images haven't been seen since the collection came to us.

9 months later the volunteers have steadily worked their way through an amazing 10,000 negatives. There are approximately 30,000 negatives still to be cleaned! The entire collection which also includes film sheet negatives is c.200,000.

During the course of the year we have seen 26 volunteers involved in the project with a further 17 due to start in the New Year.”

Well done to all volunteers involved!

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact the Volunteers Team to find out more.

The conservation of the Chinese junk from Swatow is now complete. Being such an interesting project, I will briefly share the treatment processes which have transformed a dirty, unstable model, back to its original beauty.

Firstly the hull and wooden components required cleaning. The model was vacuumed to remove any loose dirt on the deck and inside the bulkheads. After testing to find the safest, and most effective cleaning materials, the hull was cleaning using detergent in deionised water, which made a huge difference to the models appearance, as the shine of the wood oil can now be appreciated. The painted surfaces on the model were carefully cleaned using saliva, which is a surprisingly effective cleaning material.

The sails were the most complicated area of the model to treat. The materials being so fragile, and already greatly damaged meant that careful consideration needed to be taken to make sure they were strong enough to be put back onto the masts. So after much thinking, testing, and asking for advice, the treatment was as follows:

The sails were vacuumed, using a Museum vac (small specialist vacuum for museum objects), and a small paint brush to carefully dislodge the dirt away from the surface. I decided to only use dry cleaning methods, as water could cause the plant materials to swell. Erasers are a good way to remove dirt from paper like materials, but it would have been dangerous to the caning to rub the surface. Therefore I used a scalpel to slice up the end of an eraser to make a flexible brush, which was much gentler on the sails surface and removed the dirt well.

Then for the repairs. Japanese paper, roughly the same thickness of the plant material, was painted using acrylic paint to match the colour of the sails. This was then adhered to the edges of the breaks using wheat starch paste. To replicate the missing caning, strips of the Japanese paper were cut and painted to match. These were then attached to the original and woven in the same way on both sides, an extremely tricky job! These repairs not only improved the sails visually, but strengthened them enough to be put back onto the model. Once the rigging was repaired, the treatment was completed and the junk can once again be appreciated as a fascinating ship model.

Here's an interesting tale from senior organics conservator Tracey Seddon about one of the unusual objects that she has prepared for display in the Museum of Liverpool:

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"If you live in Liverpool you will be familiar with the stunning Tudor mansion Speke Hall, south of the city next to Liverpool John Lennon Airport. The history of the families that lived there, from the Norrises who had it for nearly 400 years from the 1300s, to the Watts from 1795 to 1943, is well documented. But the Museum of Liverpool is soon to introduce a previously unknown member of the 1550s household – the pet dog.

In the late 1970s repair work was carried out in the Billiard Room of the Hall and the opportunity was taken to carry out an archaeological excavation under the floor. Amongst the archaeological finds here was the skeleton of a mediaeval dog, dating from around 1550. Sadly, the dog had no head (after it died obviously!) and only three legs. The circumstances of the lost body parts are something of a mystery. We cannot tell whether these horrible injuries occurred before or after the dog died, and if after death, whether before or after burial. One theory is that they may have been lost during later alterations to the house.  

The remains of the skeleton were recently  brought into the organic objects conservation studio for some care and attention, ready to be displayed in the final phase of the Museum of Liverpool later this year.  I was fortunate to have lots of help with the current treatment from conservation student, Nikkita Walker, and archaeology student, Elizabeth Hardwick. However the bones had survived pretty well since 1979 due to initial cleaning and repairs carried out soon after excavation. This work was in fact carried out by Dr Clem Fisher, who still works here as our eminent Curator of Vertebrate Zoology, more than thirty years on!  

Find out more about how the skeleton was conserved in this new feature on the website."

Ship models have been made for centuries, representing changes in style and function of ships and boats, all around the world, making them such interesting objects! My current project in ship and historic model conservation illustrates this point well, as it is a model of a Chinese junk. A “junk” is a ship from China, and as you can see they are most unlike the European ships we are used to seeing. This project represents a challenge as the historical context of objects is an important consideration when conserving objects, and I had no knowledge about junks prior to starting the project.

 Firstly some interesting information I found out about junks of this particular type. The style and shape of the junk shows that it is a vessel from Swatow in the south of China. It is unknown when the model was made, as junks remained mostly unchanged throughout the centuries. Whilst they may look crude in comparison to their European counter parts, Chinese junks were perfected for their purpose and therefore did not need modification. Most junks were highly decorated, painted with pictures and symbols. A common decoration can be seen on the model, of eyes either side of the hull, called the oculus. This can differentiate between types of junk, as when the eyeball is set low in the white of the eye it suggests a fishing vessel, and when looking straight ahead a trading vessel, to see distant peril.

At first glance I thought that the crusty substance between the wooden planks was some sort of build-up of dirt, but after research I realised that this represented caulking;  which is where the Chinese mix lime , hemp and wood oil (known as chunam), and use this mixture to fill the gaps between the planks to prevent any water getting in. Wood identification revealed that the hull of the model was made from a type of native pine, and the masts from a hard wood. The wood is coated with t’ung oil, which is a hard yellow wood oil which was used to make the real life junks waterproof.

Another special characteristic of junks is the sails. What makes them unusual is the battens of bamboo which run horizontally along the sail cloth, usually mat. These battens keep the keep the sail flat, and give the sail great strength. The model of junk that I’m working on has very rare sails made from plant material and caning with rattan, unlike any other junks in the collection. Unfortunately these sails are in very poor condition, with holes and breakages that mean they are too fragile to be hung from the masts on the model. Therefore they present quite a challenge to conserve them successfully.

To be continued…

My name is Gemma and I am a conservation intern at the National Museums Liverpool. I am here on a year long internship in Ship and Historic Model Conservation, funded by ICON (Institute of Conservation) and the Heritage Lottery Fund. As I am now nearly half way through my internship, I have had many interesting and exciting projects to work on which I would like to share, so I will put regular updates on the blog.

Unsurprisingly, model conservation is a very specialist branch of conservation and so far I have learnt many new conservation treatments and crafts skills to conserve and repair models, as well as getting the chance to make some of my own boat models. Historic models, far from being similar objects, can be made from a huge range of materials, which makes each project fascinating and exciting to uncover the models history!

One of my recent projects was the conservation of a ship model of a fishing boat from Rye, the “Water Lily” (Accession number: L1963.17.4). It is a beautifully made model, complete with a planked deck, fittings, fully rigged and with silk sails.  It was in relatively good condition, but it was a little dirty and some of the green paint on the hull had flaked off. I began the treatment by vacuuming the surface using a Museum vac over mesh; gently brushing the sails to dislodge dirt. To remove the dried on dirt a small amount of detergent in deionised water was effective, applied with a cotton wool swab. I decided not to wet clean the sails, as this can have repercussions with shrinkage etc, so I used a smoke sponge (vulcanized natural rubber) to gently lift the dirt off the surface. Then all that was left to do was retouch the losses in paint using acrylic paint, which can be easily detectable and removed.

The model is not required for display at the moment, but it has been carefully wrapped to be placed back into storage, where it will remain clean and happy for many years to come.

Here's a brain teaser for eagle-eyed people who know our collections well. Today I had the opportunity to see something that I'm very familiar with in unusual circumstances. Can you guess what it is from the detail above?

Here's a clue - it fits in quite well with the theme of a certain big festival down on the waterfront that starts later this week. All will be revealed in a few days...

On Tuesday 23 August interns funded through the Icon-HLF scheme travelled from far and wide to attend a visit to National Museums Liverpool’s (NML’s) conservation studios.  There are three current conservation interns at NML funded through the Icon-HLF scheme.  Gemma Thorns and Robin Gibson are undertaking Internships in Ships and Historic Models Conservation, and myself; Ellie Baumber, is undertaking an Internship in Objects Conservation and Public Engagement.  We arranged the visit to provide fellow interns with the opportunity to see some of the fantastic projects that we have been working on during our time at NML.

With so much to see, Tuesday’s visit centred around just four of the many conservation sections based in the Midland Railway Building.  Visits were made to the Historic Models, Ceramics, Metals and Organics conservation departments, providing the opportunity for interns to see and discuss some of the objects currently undergoing conservation treatment.  Many of these objects will be exhibited in the Museum of Liverpool later this year and include a seat from Liverpool’s Overhead Railway, as well as a headless dog skeleton!  In the afternoon we visited the National Conservation Centre’s former public exhibition ‘Reveal’, which closed due to government spending cuts in December 2010.  Here we were able to share our experiences regarding the public face of conservation and also the effects of recent government spending cuts upon the sector. 

The day concluded with a sunny walk down to the new Museum of Liverpool where we were able to have a look around and discuss conservation work carried out on some of the objects on display.  We even found time for a quick viewing of the Beatles show! 

The visit proved to be a fantastic opportunity to share some of our internship experiences.  Thank you to all those conservation staff involved in the visit and we hope that everyone attending enjoyed it as much as we did! 

National Museums Liverpool’s conservation studios have been a hive of activity over the past few months, as conservators have been busy preparing objects for the new Museum of Liverpool, which opens in just 12 days' time. 

Recently I have been lucky enough to conserve a number of handheld fans which will be exhibited in the new museum’s Global City gallery.  When I found out that I would be conserving fans, I expected to encounter paper and perhaps some plastic or wooden sticks, but I was in for a much bigger treat!  Lacquer, ivory, tortoiseshell, silk, feathers, gold pigment and mother of pearl were just some of the materials that I came across. 

One of my favourite fans is shown in the image above.  The fan dates from around 1840 -1880 and was exported from China for the European market.  The fan is known as an ‘applied faces’ fan, as the face of each figure depicted on the decorative leaf has been made from a thin piece of ivory.  These tiny ivory faces were then delicately painted and applied to the paper leaf with glue.  Even the figures’ clothes have been cut from decorative silk textiles and applied onto the surface.

The fan came into the organics conservation department for treatment as one of its black lacquered sticks had broken and many of the applied silk pieces had begun to fold and lift away.  Although the decoration of the fan is fascinating enough, it wasn’t until I looked even more closely that I found out its best kept secret! 

Whilst examining the fan I noticed that the lacquer sticks could be moved up and down slightly, creating a sliding motion.  Curiously the movement seemed to be purposeful, being part of the design rather than being caused by any faults or breaks.  I wondered... 'Could this make it an extendable fan?!' 

After carrying out some background research, my suspicions were confirmed and I discovered that the fan was indeed telescopic.  In the above image the fan is shown in its half-extended position.  However, the black lacquered sticks can be extended further by pulling them out from inside the paper leaf.  When opened this creates a large dramatic fan.  When the fan is no longer needed it can be folded up and the sticks cleverly pushed back inside the paper leaf to create a compact foldable fan.  In its compact position the fan is perfect for carrying around and would take up far less room in a handbag!

Unfortunately the action of extending and retracting the sticks today would place too much stress on the materials, which are now around 170 years old.  But nevertheless, what a fantastic design!  You can see the fan in the new Museum of Liverpool, which opens on Tuesday 19 July 2011.