Planning, blinds, and the east front revealed!

Hopefully by this time next week Lady Betty’s Bedroom and Sitting Room will be fully re-instated after building work and on show to our visitors once more. That is if it isn’t raining on the 3rd June! The contents of the rooms have been kept up in our store room. The only problem with this is that the store room is two courtyards away from the show rooms and there is no inside route we can take. Therefore if its raining the task will prove to be quite tricky. With some of the smaller objects and those packed in crates we could cover these with polythene sheet, but this may not work so well for the larger paintings and items of furniture.

We have art handlers, Fine Art Services, coming for the day to assist us with bringing the objects down as its very tiring work going back forth and up and down about 50 stairs! We’ll be monitoring the long range weather forecast from now on to see if we can go ahead on Monday or if we have to postpone.

This week we have successfully re-hung the red blind in Lady Betty’s Bedroom. This isn’t something we’ve done a lot of, and typically at Knole, each one is different, so you can’t always copy how you have hung another blind previously!  The blind is tacked to a wooden baton which is then screwed in to some of the panelling in the window bay.  The baton obviously hadn’t been unscrewed for a while as it covered in lots of dust a debris.

The baton covered in dust and debris.

When the blind was taken down we left the baton in place and removed all the tacks in the blind. Although we kept the tacks they were very rusty, so we fixed the blind in place with new upholstery nails.

As the blinds came down in rather a hurry prior to the building work some of the cord was cut too short, so we had to re-thread the blind with new cord, which thankfully proved to be easier than we had imagined it would be. We’ve got one more blind to put up in Lady Betty’s Sitting Room, fingers crossed it works out as well as the bedroom blind!

Sarah re-treads some new cord and ties it securely on the bottom ring.

The scaffolding around the east front of the building has finally been removed and the new lime render is visible for the first time, and it looks fab!

Sarah, Melinda, Lucy, Zena and Emily

Knole Unwrapped, how is it going?

Knole Unwrapped was launched earlier this year, and we’re now half way through our second intake. The whole project has taken a lot of planning and time commitment from all members of the Conservation Team, and we definitely came across some wrinkles that we wanted to iron out from intake one.

Intake one hard at work!

Technical issues with laptops and digital cameras became one of the first hitches, resolved for intake two with the use of iPads. It was discussed among the volunteers that these would be more user friendly and with an integrated camera they make uploading images to object condition reports much easier.  After going through the 5 weeks of intake one, following feedback from the Conservation Team and the Unwrapped volunteers, for intake two we re-jigged the 5 week schedule to allow more time in the store room getting hands on with the objects.

Val and Roz update an object condition report form.

As we are working methodically along the shelves in the store room intake one had the pleasure of working with some mystery boxes of textile fragments. There are several of these boxes, and until now their contents were unknown. The volunteers have now condition checked several of these fragments and written up condition reports for them. Now they have identified they exist we can also have them added on to our inventory. Many of the textiles had been stored rolled, possibly to make the most of the space they had with the type of storage boxes they were using. However it is generally better to store textiles flat where possible.

One of the textile fragments discovered.

One of the volunteers from intake one, Alexandra has written about her experience (we promise we didn’t bribe her to write any of the following

“It sounded intriguing: the opportunity to look behind the scenes at Knole and learn how to handle and record items not usually seen by members of the public. As a steward in the showrooms, it was a unique chance to get closer to the Knole collection and learn how historical items are catalogued. As a one-time helper with the “winter clean” it was an exciting way to extend my very basic preventive conservation skills. “Knole Unwrapped” did all that and more.

We were the “guinea pig group”, the first intake for House Steward Emily Watt’s brilliant idea to allow people outside Knole literally to un-wrap the items kept in store, check their condition, photograph them and record all that information on the collection database. Between the five of us, we had skills in the history of textiles, photography, museums, historical re-enactment and all-round Knole knowledge. Roz, John, Val, Susan and I all learnt as we went along. There were times, to start with, when the technology of recording took longer to master than the techniques of assessing but we got faster. By the time we got to the fifth and final week we had got it down to a fine art and the weather had at last warmed up. Thank goodness because in the early sessions it was hard to feel your fingers at the end of a day.

We never got as far as furniture for John. Instead, and perhaps appropriately since Knole is known for its textiles, our boxes revealed endless fragments of cloth, stitching and fringing. We were lucky to have Roz with us as her knowledge of textile manufacturing techniques and historical context made even the most threadbare of pieces interesting. But it was the fabric from the Spangled Bed that made it all worthwhile. In better condition than the real thing it gave a sense of how beautiful it must once have been. It was one of those moments that had you wondering who had cut those pieces from the curtains around the bed and why? It’s all part of the biography of an object, as Emily would say.

John and Sue taking detailed photographs for the condition report forms.

Thanks go to the Conservation Team of Sarah, Melinda, Lucy and Zena who were watchful, patient and encouraging and to Helen the House and Collections Manager who helped Emily deliver the learning hours at the start of each day, and the tours of the house and those areas yet to be seen by visitors. The first Knole Unwrapped group were a pleasure to meet and work with. It’d be nice to think they’d have us back later in the year so we can get to do it all again.”

Zena, Melinda, Emily, Sarah and Lucy

Re-hanging tapestries, all in a days work!

As the second phase of external building work has finished we are beginning to reinstate the rooms affected. On Monday the first stage of returning Lady Betty’s Bedroom back to its normal self began with the re-hanging of the two seventeenth century tapestries.

Lady Betty’s Bedroom

Lifting one corner of the bed with lifting straps to get the slider in to place.

Before we could prepare the tapestries for re-hanging, we needed to move Lady Betty’s bed forward to allow us enough room to work and fit in a ladder. To do this we lifted each leg of the bed one by one using lifting straps, to place sliderz under the legs. The sliderz allow us to slide the bed rather than lift it and move it, which creates less physical stress to the structure of the bed.

Sliderz in place under all for bed legs, and its ready to slide forward!

Moving the tapestries from store in the Great Hall to the Ballroom. AS they were on rollers that were 4.5 meters in length, the only place we could store them was under the refectory table in the Hall. The Hall was in use by a school group that day so we moved them to the Cartoon Gallery to prepare them for re-hanging

Textile conservator Zenzie Tinker came along to help us with the tapestries. The first task was to roll the tapestries on to different length rollers. While the tapestries were stored they were on rollers that were 4.5 meters long, this was to make sure they were stable while being held up on textile blocks. The ceiling of Lady Betty’s Bedroom is at least a meter shorter so we needed them on a shorter roller which would allow us to place the roller with tapestry rolled round it upright. This would then enable us to unroll the tapestry along the wall securing the tapestry to the wall with the Velcro as we went.

Preparing the temporary shorter roller.

And we’re ready to (re)roll!

The second attempt at re-rolling on tot he shorter roller, this time starting from scratch with the tapestry fully unrolled.

However best thought out plans don’t always go the way you hope. Initially we began to unroll one tapestry off its long roller and directly on to the new shorter roller. As we had almost completed this task the tapestry had rolled too much at an angle and the ends were spiralling off, which would cause us problems once it was upright. It was decided that we needed to fully unroll the tapestry so that it was flat out on the floor and re-roll the tapestry this way on to the new roller. This meant we could line the roller up better and have better control over the tapestry as we rolled it to prevent it rolling off centre.

Getting the tapestry vertical ready for re-hanging

The second attempt proved to be much easier and with in no time at all the tapestry was rolled and ready to be re-hung. Once the tapestry was positioned upright Zenzie climbed the ladder while other members of the Conservation Team footed the ladder and supported the tapestry. Then little by little the tapestry was unrolled and Zenzie secured the Velcro sewn on the top edge of the tapestry to the opposite strip of Velcro on a wooden baton on the wall.

And the re-hanging begins!

Nearly there!

The second tapestry proved to be much easier. For one it wasn’t as a wide as the first, so less textile to manage, also we started off swapping rollers by fully unrolling the tapestry and re-rolling it from flat. Our last job of the day was to reposition the bed again. The whole process took about 5 hours. Thanks to Zenzie for her assistance, it made the task much less stressful then had we attempted it on our own.

The second tapestry almost up.

Emily, Zena, Lucy, Melinda 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

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!

More mould, more dusting and a crane lift!

Following a much welcomed break over Christmas and New Year the Conservation Team are now back hard at work continuing with the winter clean! Our usual winter routine is very different this season as we are working around the building works taking place as part of the first phase of the Inspired by Knole project.

On the 8th January, a crane returned to Knole to lift off some of the larger scaffold beams from the first phase of works now completed.  As this work takes places directly over the show rooms for safety reasons the house was out of bounds for the day.

The crane swings over the East front of the house.

As we weren’t able to go into the main showrooms, we set to work in the Orangery to give it a deep clean. We soon

discovered that the mild and damp weather conditions had caused mould growth along the windowsills and on some of the benches.

Mould on the windowsills and benches.

The windowsills and benches were cleaned with mild detergent in warm water and lots of elbow grease!

Melinda removes the excess water from the windowsill.

For the rest of the week we have been winter cleaning in the Great Hall. As the ceiling is so high, we built our scaffolding to its highest point which allows us to clean the tops of the picture frames and change light bulbs as well as getting lovely views of the room below.

Here is our time lapse video of a weeks cleaning in the Great Hall

Sarah begins dusting at the top of the Great Hall screen.

We work from the ceiling down, removing cobwebs and dust. As the Great Hall had played host to the Knole staff Christmas party in December, we found rather a lot of party balloons on the top of the panelling along with the usual cobwebs!

Melinda and Sarah dust a painting frame from the scaffolding.

This week, our contractors have begun removing the polythene tunnel which provided dust protection from the building works.  It had been in place along the east front show rooms March 2012. This will allow us to start reinstating the contents of the rooms, much of which has been in store since the tunnel was built, ready for visitors when the house reopens on 9th March.

As part of the preparation for this, all the net curtains (used to keep direct sunlight out of the rooms) from these rooms need washing. These were taken down to allow for the windows to be repaired and were badly water stained from the regular leaks from the windows over the years.  Each curtain has been hand sewn and made to measure so to avoid shrinkage they are individually washed by hand.

The bathroom becomes a temporary laundry!

Thank you to volunteers Zena, Nadja, Susie and Lisa for their hard work this week.

Lucy, Melinda, Sarah and Emily

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

Happy New Year…

…to all our readers.  I hope you enjoyed all that we shared with you during 2012.  2013 promises to be just as much (if not more) fun, challenging, hard work, a bit crazy and full of new things!

The Inspired by Knole project continues.  Staff and volunteers are hard at work on our second round HLF bid.  The second year of external building repairs is underway.  Phase 1.1 is nearing completion with some scaffold already beginning to be dismantled. Phase 1.2 had begun before Christmas, which is finishing of work on the south end of the east front and round the south front of the building.

The Conservation Team are cracking on with the winter clean.  Work begins in the Great Hall, which involves some very high level cleaning!  We built our tower scaffold this morning, to the highest it will go (or the highest we’re all prepared to build it!).  The room will be dusted from top to bottom, all the picture frames in-between and panelling.  This is also our annual opportunity  to change and replace light bulbs in the picture lights.  A daring and delicate operation, a head for heights and nimble hands required.

One of the challenges this year will be 6 day opening for the show rooms (now to be Tuesday to Sunday, and Bank Holidays).  To help manage all the conservation cleaning we are recruiting a seasonal post to join the Conservation Team.  If you are interested in becoming a Conservation and Engagement Assistant at Knole you can find out more about the role and how to apply via the National Trust jobs website.

Emily, Lucy, Melinda and Sarah

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

 

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