Textile cleaning in the Spangled Bedroom

Back in March, Jane Smith, one of the conservators from the National Trust’s Textile Studio in Norfolk came to Knole for 3 days to carry out some cleaning and preventive conservation to upholstered furniture in the Spangled Bedroom.

The X-framed chair and eight stools are covered with the same crimson satin as the Spangled Bed. It is decorated with an extremely rare applique strapwork pattern and originally sewn with small silver spangles, or sequins, now tarnished and viewed today as black dots.

The material is now extremely fragile due to the damage caused by light and relative humidity. Due to the importance and delicate condition of these textiles they are cleaned less frequently than some of the other textiles in the collection, and usually by a member of the Textile Studio team.

An area in the top right corner of the stool after vacuuming showing the removal of the build up of dust.

As well cleaning the textiles on the stools and chair with a conservation vacuum and a micro-vac on low suction, the chair had some netting applied to the back of the chair to prevent loose fibres and threads from coming away. Other parts of the chair had been previously netted a couple of years ago. The net is a mono filament nylon net dyed before hand in the studio to a special recipe to match the colour of the original material. Gutermann polyester thread is used to sew on the netting. Loose pieces of metal thread were also secured in place with bookbinder’s paste.

The netting is held in place with pins until it is secured with thread.

Jane in action!

Thanks to Jane for the photos and information from her report on her work. The Textile Studio have thier own blog to: http://nttextileconservationstudio.wordpress.com/

Emily, Lucy, Melinda, Zena and Sarah

It’s been a while…but we promise we’ve been busy!

So let’s catch up.

Opening weekend already seems like such a long time ago, it was so cold, and the run up to it had its usual amount of craziness. The cold weather had delayed building work and the application of the new lime render on the east wall. Lime render cannot be applied in temperatures below 5c otherwise it will not set properly. This in turn delayed the removal of internal dust protection in most of the first half of the house.

With the timetable of work somewhat out of everybody’s control due to the Siberian winter the UK was experiencing, finishing the winter clean and reinstating the show rooms affected by the building work proved to be a bit of challenging time.  The Conservation Team as always pulled out all the stops to get everything ready on time.

Other jobs we had to do before we opened was find somewhere to temporarily store the two tapestries from Lady Betty’s Bedroom, that had been taken down for the building work.  The tapestries are rolled on 4.5metre long tubes, so there aren’t many areas that presented themselves as suitable places to put them.  We settled with under the refectory table into he Great Hall.

Lady Betty’s Bedroom tapestries temporarily stored under the Great Hall table.

The beautiful Imari dish that has lived at the top of the Lead Stairs for many years has now been moved to the China Closet as part of the re-display of the space back to a historic inventory.

The Imari dish now on display in Lady Betty’s China Closet.

One of the nicest jobs to do to prepare for opening is starting up the clocks again.  Once the clocks and ticking and chiming again it feels like the house is brought back to life ready for the new season.  Thankfully they all behaved themselves and we didn’t have any problems in restarting them.

A key to wind each clock, the biggest key is for the smallest clock!

Each clock has its own record of when it is wound.

Museum of London Archaeology’s Geomatics team have been at Knole for several weeks now.  They are undertaking a measured survey of the showrooms and new spaces we’ll be opening to visitors to provide, for the first time, accurate floor plans of the rooms.  They will also be photographing the spaces and combining this information with survey information to provide elevation and ceiling plans so that we will have a three-dimensional picture.

Neville and Catherine from MOLA surveying at the top of the Lead Stairs.

This information will be used by architects, Rodney Melville Partnership, as part of the design process for the Inspired by Knole project and will also help us to identify key locations within the building (under the floorboards and behind the panelling) which we want to investigate further as part of the archaeological programme – to help us to better understand the origins and developments of the different parts of the building complex.

Some of MOLAs kit, Total Station (basically an electronic theodolite).

We have some brilliant new interpretation in the Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom, and most exciting of all, the conserved headboard of the James II Bed on display!  The room has four boxes of parts of the bed that have returned from the Textile Studio.  We won’t be reconstructing the bed until after the Inspired by Knole project, the less the parts of the bed are handled the less likely it is that any physical damage will occur to this historically important state bed.

How the Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom looks this season, complete with the conserved headboard on display.

And finally…introducing our new seasonal Conservation and Engagement Assistant Zena.

Now we are settling in to the open season cleaning routine, which is differeent for us this year as the house is open 6 days a week, meaning less cleaning time.  Therefore we have ad to re-jig our cleaning programmes and think about how best to use the time we do have and what the priority areas in the house are.  We also have an extra room to care for,  the newly opened Estate Office, which is home to Knole’s oral history project.

The new and interactive Estate Office

Lucy, Emily, Melinda, Sarah and Zena

Mould mould everywhere!

Of the 310 paintings at Knole at least 80 have some level of mould on the surface. Although mould is present or suspected in all rooms, the worst appears to be in the Spangled Dressing room, the Billiard room, the Leicester Gallery and the Reynolds Room and is a direct result of the very poor environmental conditions.

Mould on the surface of the painting ‘Heraclitus’ in the Billiard Room

Mould penetrates the varnish and paint layers on paintings causing a white bloom on the surface, flaking paint and degradation of the canvas support. If left untreated this damage can become irreversible.

More mould on a portrait in Lady Betty’s China Closet

In order to plan how we improve the environment in the showrooms in the future and how we can conserve the paintings, we need to better understand this mould growth; why it appears on some paintings and not others and in some rooms and not others; what factors influence its growth; how can we conserve the paintings and ensure the mould doesn’t return.

‘Cimon and Iphigenia’ bt Sir Peter Lely in the Spangled Dressing Room

We have just started working with The Courtauld Institute of Art on a research project to investigate this mould problem. Six second year students are undertaking a full survey of environmental conditions in the showrooms, looking at data from the past and present to see how the current building works will affect the conditions.

Mould spores already growing in The Billiard Room…

…and in the Spangled Dressing Room, spores began to appear within 48 hours.

The Petri dishes will collect mould spores that can then be analysed and identified. Samples have also been taken from the surface of some paintings and again will be analysed and identified. This project will run for 1 year.

Siobhan

Eek! Only 15 days till we open

It’s been a while since our latest post about what we’ve been up, but we promise we have definitely been busy.  The last few weeks of the winter clean is always fairly hectic.  This year however added to te usual mayhem has been the deinstallation of internal protection work from the first phase of building work, plus preparations for the next phase.  We have also had various contractors and conservators in and out of the house.

The dust protection tunnel and hoarding has now come down in the Leicester Gallery, Museum Room, Billiard Room, Spangled Dressing Room and Spangled Bedroom.  This meant we could finally deep clean the rooms, and it’s a good job we had the protection because it turns out there was a fair amount of dust!

Volunteer Zena, gives the bay window of the Museum Room a thorough clean after the tunnel was taken down.

Our contractors dismantling the tunnel section in the Billiard Room.

With the tunnel  removed from the Billiard Room, it was time to move the Billiard Table back in to its usual place in the room.

The team re-hang net curtains and blackout curtains in the Billiard Room.

This image demonstrates perfectly the need for internal dust protection during building work.

The tunnel coming down revealed that an area of plaster ceiling in the bay window of the Spangled Dressing Room had become unstable.  With our building surveyor Robin and our contractor we discussed what approach should be taken to make it safe.

Some small bits of plaster had broken off altogether.

After investigation and discussion it was decided to remove the unstable are of plaster. It turned out to be a modern plaster skim…

…and not as much of the plaster needed to be removed as we first thought.

Earlier in the month we took a delivery of some parts of the James II Bed, including the headboard and and some curtains.  They have returned after several years of conservation work.  As they are very carefull packed and in quite large boxes we took the decision to store them in the Venetian Ambassador’s Bedroom.  The Headboard will be no display to visitors during the 2013 season.

Conserved parts of the James II bed have returned from the National Trust textile studio in Norfolk.

It took a whole day for the conservation Team with  two of our volunteers to move all the boxes from the Great Hall to the Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom.  There has been lots of other lifting and moving around of various objects in recent weeks.  Including two tapestries on 4.5 metre long tubes.  They came from Lady Betty’s Bedroom which is now empty for the building work and were stored in the Billiard Room last year.  As the Billiard Room has been re-instated we needed to find another temporary home for them.  It turns out they both fitted rather nicely under the refectory table in the Great Hall.

So where do you store two tapestries on 4.5 metre long tubes…? Under a table of course!

Cliveden Conservation have been back carrying out more work to the Great Hall and Great Stairs floors.

Wet paper towels are left overnight on recently repaired areas of grouting to help it set properly.  If it dries out to quickly the new grouting can fail. 

Toning in the new grouting to match the colours of the stone. 

This week CSC Window Films have been in working int he first half of the house, where windows have been repaired.  They apply a film to the windows that absorbs ultraviolet light out of sunlight coming in the windows.  It is very important to minimise or stop completely any UV coming in to the show rooms as it is the most damaging part of the light spectrum and especially harmful to our textile collection.  Light damage is cumulative and completely irreversible.

Applying new UV film to the windows. The Museum Room window has never had film on before as it has been behind a display cabinets since the 1960s!

More shifting and lifting about!  This time four large portraits needed hanging at the north end of the Leicester Gallery.  They had been taken down while the dust protection was up in front of the window.

The deep clean of rooms has now been finished, leaving two of the long galleries, the Billiard Room, Great Stairs and Spangled Rooms floors to be waxed and polished.  We have already started uncovering some of the rooms and putting the furniture back in to place.  Two more weeks to go and we’ll be open again.  Where did winter go?

Sarah, Lucy, Melinda and Emily

p.s it’s snowing AGAIN!

The Knole Unwrapped Volunteer Experience

2013 is an exciting year at Knole.  Not only does the Inspired by Knole conservation project  continue, but we are launching a very exciting new volunteer opportunity – Knole Unwrapped!

What is the Knole Unwrapped Volunteer Experience?

At Knole, we have a fantastic collection of paintings, furniture, textiles and many other objects, all of which require the work of our Conservation team. What we want is to offer the hands-on opportunity of assisting this team in helping to preserve our collection, learn the techniques involved in preventive conservation, assist with condition checking and repacking of all the objects in the Collections Store and to offer a unique perspective inside Knole that is not usually open to the public.

Anyone can apply, so long as you have a genuine interest in and understanding of conservation and heritage management, and are happy working as part of a team. You don’t need a background in conservation to be part of Knole Unwrapped. This is a great opportunity for those with an interest in this area to gain some practical, first-hand experience. Each week will have some time dedicated to learning about preventive conservation. You’ll learn new skills, help catalogue our collection, learn about Knole’s past and play a major part in its future.

What’s in it for you?

• Become part of Knole’s friendly and dedicated Conservation Team
• Get involved in supporting a new exciting project at Knole
• Gain insight into conservation work within the National Trust
• Learn preventive conservation skills and help to care for a collection of world importance
• Opportunity to become involved in other areas of volunteering at Knole
• The opportunity to enjoy being in this beautiful place, with 600 years of history and volunteer at one England’s greatest houses.

 What’s involved?

-  Group study hour sessions focusing on the care of:
Textiles and upholstered furniture
Furniture (non-upholstered) and leather
Metals and ceramics
Paintings and picture frames

-  Unpacking, condition checking and photographing objects in the Collections Store
-  Conservation cleaning of objects
-  Inventory marking objects
-  Repacking objects to museum standards and to make them more accessible
-  Research objects in store
-  Updating object condition reports electronically

You should have excellent attention to detail and good hand-eye coordination. Physical fitness is important for this role – the role-holder should have the ability to work in cold conditions, and should have a reasonable level of physical fitness to be able to lift and carry. Good IT skills and knowledge of digital cameras would also be useful.

 How you can get involved

Five volunteer places will be offered for each intake. These will be selected via application process.  For an application form contact Simon Blythe, Volunteers Co-ordinator 01732 467159 or simon.blythe@nationaltrust.org.uk

Extra information:

Time commitment	Intake 1: Tuesdays 19th March – 16th April 2013 Intake 2: Tuesdays 30th April – 28th May 2013 Intake 3: Tuesdays 11th June – 9th July 2013 1 day per week 9.30am – 4.30pm (timings may vary)
What you need to wear/ bring	Flat shoes.  Practical clothing, layers for colder months of the year. Lunch. (Tea and coffee provided).
Training/Resources	We ask that you commit to one complete 5 week programme, which will include an initial training session and learning hours at the start of each subsequent week.
Expenses	Out-of-pocket travel costs between home and volunteering place will be paid, and other reasonable expenses agreed in advance
Application deadline	Monday 11th February 2013

It might be below 5c in most of the show rooms but there is still cleaning to be done!

The temperatures are dropping, and we had our first snow of the season this week, but there is still lots to do.  Since the Ballroom the team have moved on to Lady Betty’s China Closet, the Leicester Gallery, Second Painted Stairs, Reynolds Room and Cartoon Gallery.

Lady Betty’s China Closet all wrapped up for winter.

Lucy and Sarah hard at work dusting the Armada Chests in the Leicester Gallery.

Lisa puts the charcoal burner room heater to bed in its tyvek dust cover.

The contractors were busy on the scaffold too, removing the glass from the north Leicester Gallery window for repairs to the window frame to be carried out.

The table and ceramics from the Second Painted Stairs cleaned and put to bed.

Sarah removes dust from the silver fire dogs in the Reynolds Room, using a soft pony hair brush.

Zena dusting the gilded pier table base…

…before moving on to the marble fireplace. Swapping brushes in between.  For the table she used a soft pony hair brush used only on gilded surfaces, and for the fireplace a hogs hair brush that is used only on marble.

With all the furniture and other objects in the Reynolds Room cleaned and covered, it was time to build the scaffold tower and clean the room from ceiling to floor.

…and on to the Cartoon Gallery

3 pronged attack for the long stool in the Cartoon Gallery. Melinda and Tom are cleaning the textile with Museum Vacuum’s, while Lisa dusts the wooden frame.

Lucy apply’s Renaissance Wax to the iron part of the fire dog, this provides it with a protective seal against moisture.

We don’t have many books in the collection to look after, so it is a treat every winter when we dust the music manuscripts.

Next week we will work our way round the CArtoon Gallery on the scaffold.  That will leave us with the King’s Room, King’s Closet and Lead Stairs to clean and put to bed before Christmas.

Emily, Sarah, Lucy and Melinda

 

The words you don’t want to hear over a radio call are…

… “there is a leak in the Ballroom!”
Thankfully it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds and water wasn’t pouring through the ceiling, but dripping through a crack in the panelling and running down the wall.

Unfortunately the water was running in to the path of one of the paintings and gilt wall lights.

Water running down the panelling in the Ballroom, behind a painting (you can see the bottom of the picture frame at the top of the photo)

So we immediately sprung in to action to remove both objects from the wall.

Painting of the 3rd Duke of Dorset removed from the path of the water.

The gilt wall light that hangs above the portrait of the 3rd Duke.  It is temporarily resting on a sheet of plastazote and acid free tissue till it is safe to be re-hung.

Once the painting was down we thoroughly inspected the back of it to check for any water damage.  The back of the frame in one corner and a very small area on the back of the canvas were slightly damp.  We will allow this to dry out before going back on the wall and monitor it to ensure there is no mould growth or further physical damage.

Very small damp area on the back of the canvas.

Once the movable objects had been taken down from the wall and away from the route of the leak, we set about protecting others that were too big to move, and as the leak was so small unnecessary to move.  We wrapped the large portrait of Elizabeth Colyear, 7th Duchess of Dorset, in tyvek so if there were any further drips they would not come in to contact with the painting or frame.

Absobent pads placed on top of some dusters, on top of the tyvek protecting the picture frame and painting. Although the leak has been isolated this has been left in place just in case more drips find their way down through the crack in the panelling again.

As we were busy moving paintings and hanging Tyvek our Premises Team were hunting down the source of the leak.  Thankfully they found it quite quickly and were able to isolate the problem until it can be permanently repaired.

Just an average Thursday afternoon for the Conservation Team!

Emily, Lucy, Melinda and Sarah

Grotesque conservation

As part of an ongoing project to conserve the deteriorating grotesque paintings in the Cartoon Gallery, specialist conservators Melanie and Trevor visited Knole last week to safely remove the next four grotesques from their panels, to take them away for remedial conservation treatment.

The first step was to remove the wooden edging which secures the paintings in place. This revealed some of the original paint colouring which has not been damaged by light.

Melanie was then able to remove the metal tacks which secured the canvas directly to the panelling.

The three smaller grotesques from the west bay window are in a relatively stable condition and were soon removed from the wall with ease and ready to be packed and taken to Melanie’s studio.

Melanie carefully removes the tacks which held the canvas in place, protecting the paint surface from the pliers with Tyvek.

The larger grotesque on the south wall (which is partially hidden behind a pier glass mirror, taken down to give access a few days earlier) is much more fragile and has been repaired and patched many times over the years. Some of these repairs have not been very sympathetic with some patches being glued directly on to the wooden backing and some even nailed into place. Each of these patches had to be carefully removed and the canvas taken down in sections.

Trevor’s hand can be seen in the hole where a poorly conserved patch of the grotesque canvas has already been carefully removed.

 

Melanie consolidated the loose sections of canvas using a heated spatula…

When all the smaller pieces had been carefully removed or secured, it was time for Trevor to remove the last tacks and ease the canvas down from the wall, under the scaffold tower and on to a backing sheet.

 

The largest piece of canvas – resembling a jigsaw puzzle!

Specialist conservation  transport company Constantine arrived the next day to carefully pack the grotesques and deliver them Melanie’s conservation studio.  Each canvas was sandwiched in acid free tissue paper and secured between two boards. This ensures the canvases do not move around or bend during their journey.

 

 

We are really looking forward to seeing the results of Melanie and Trevor’s work (which will take approximately one year) and seeing the grotesques back up on display.

Lucy, Melinda, Sarah and Emily

Winter Clean in the Ballroom

Completing the first room of the winter clean is always a good feeling.  It took 8 days and there were a couple of extra challenges this year.  In preparation for the next phase of external building works the window in the Ballroom is to be boarded up to prevent dust ingress from the work to the window and stone work.

In order for this to be built we have had to take down the pelmet and curtains and the big red blind, as well as move some items of furniture up to the other end of the room and take four paintings down off the wall.  This was definitely a job for the scaffold tower, which was already in use in the room for high level ceiling and picture frame cleaning.

A view of the Ballroom ‘put to bed’ for the winter from the scaffold tower.

Until we got up to the top of the scaffold tower we were not exactly sure how the pelmet was secured in place.  We soon discovered it was simply nailed to a bit of wood!  We used the end of a flat head screw driver and pliers to release the nails.  We also discovered that what from the ground looks like a pelmet that is all of one piece, it is actually in four separate sections.  Which was good news as it made it easier to handle and not as heavy as it would have been in one piece.

The pelmet was nailed in to a wooden shelf attached to the wall with brackets.

The first section of the pelmet down and ready for a surface clean.

The pelmet and curtains are scheduled for cleaning every five years.  They were last done (in-situ) in 2009.  So although they were not due a for full clean just yet we took advantage of the fact that they were coming down to remove any surface dust and debris.

Lucy passes the second section of the pelmet down the scaffold tower to Sarah.

Sarah and Lucy laying out a section of pelmet on Tyvek. Each section has been interleaved with Tyvek to keep dust off them while they are down from the window.

Some of the interesting creatures in the frieze around the top of the panelling.

Lucy uses a soft pony hair brush to surface clean a section of the pelmet, by teasing cobwebs, clumps of dust and debris in to the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner.

The bay window after we had finished preparing the area for the dust protection to be installed.

Paintings from the South wall either side the bay window have been taken down and stored at the other end of the Ballroom while the building work takes place.

You can watch our winter clean work in the Ballroom on our timelapse film.

Emily, Sarah, Lucy and Melinda

If only our ceramics were dishwasher proof!

We have over 350 individual ceramic or glass objects at Knole. We have items ranging from 18th century wine bottles to Sevres and Royal Worcester porcelain to Imari plates.  During the winter clean is every piece is cleaned and inspected for any change in its condition. Pieces closest to the visitor route are also dusted at intervals in the open season.

During the last week of opening we began wet cleaning the ceramics in Lady Betty’s China Closet as a part of our ‘putting the house to bed’ demonstration event.

Lucy using a hogs hair brush to remove loose dust before wet cleaning

Depending on the condition and the decorative surface of a ceramic object, to remove dust we use either a hog’s hair brush or a softer pony hair brush.  The extremely high levels of relative humidity at Knole can cause dust to stick to the surface of the ceramics.  This can mean dusting with a brush alone does not remove all the dust particles.

Wet cleaning using a lightly damp cotton bud. The gilded areas of the ceramic are avoided and not cleaned with water.

To remove the stuck on dust we wet clean the ceramics every other year.  We do this using a piece of cotton wool or cotton bud, dipped into water containing a small amount of conservation grade detergent.  We go over the ceramics a second time, again with cotton wool lightly damp, but with just plain water to remove any traces of detergent.  We then carefully dry the piece with a paper towel.

Used cotton buds after wet cleaning!

Any piece that is cracked, chipped or has a previous repair can not be wet cleaned as the risk of water getting behind the glaze could cause further damage.   Ceramics with decorative gilt are only cleaned with a pony hair brush as water could remove the gilt.   The pieces are then wrapped in acid free tissue paper to keep them clean until we open again.

Some of the ceramics in Lady Betty’s China Closet wrapped in acid free tissue paper for the winter.

Sarah, Melinda Lucy and Emily