New covers for old chairs

This week our sewing volunteer Kristine came to fit some new dust covers for the chairs in the Reynolds Room.  Greater access in the Reynolds Room has been made possible this year by the use off the eyemat replica carpet.(http://knolenationaltrust.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/the-eyemats-have-arrived/).

3 chairs in the Reynolds Room with new covers

As a part of the experimental re-display of the room we also wanted to take away the ropes and stanchions.  This just couldn’t be done without some thought given to how the upholstery of the furniture might be protected from increased dust (as visitors can now get much closer) but also from physical ware and tear caused by touching.

Every touch is damaging. Our silk velvet handling frame in the Great Hall. A modern version of the material used for the upholstery of the Reynolds Room furniture suite.

This silk may look like someone has taken a razor to it but the damage has just been caused by many 1000s of hands.

After much discussion it was decided that we would see if the lovely people at Eyemats could photograph the material and make us a suitable printed fabric thin enough to be could be sewn.  After a few attempts to get the right colour match, Kristine measured the furniture to decide how many metres we would need to order.  It has taken a few weeks to make them but now all the chairs have covers.

We decided to try using this technique instead of the traditional checked or plain cotton dust covers. These bespoke covers although not a perfect match to the original material give visitors an idea of what is underneath while also protecting the material. Once the settee’s have their covers on too, you will probably have to do a ‘double take’ before you realise they are covers.

Once the settee’s have their covers made the ropes and stanchions will be removed in the room.  The suite of furniture in the Reynolds Room is much younger than some of other pieces dating from the Queen Anne period, and after recent investigation prompted by some annotated late 19th  century inventories, we believe the existing upholstery to be much later too.  Due to age of this furniture, it is much more stable and less fragile than other pieces in the collection, which is why it was decided this was the right room to trial not having any ropes or stanchions.

In other conservation news…

Nick from Cliveden Conservation finished the re-grouting of the Great Hall floor today.

Nick paints in the new grouting so it doesn’t look too white and new.

Before and after

Once complete you can’t see which are the newly grouted areas and which aren’t.

Once completed you can’t tell which areas have been re-grouted. Left side of the photo has new grouting yet to be painted. top and right has been painted and blends in to the floor perfectly.

Here is one of our previous blogs that explains more about the conservation work to the Great Hall and Great Stairs floors:
http://knolenationaltrust.wordpress.com/category/care-of-floors-stone/

Lucy, Melinda, Sarah and Emily

 

This week…

..wasn’t as exciting as last week, but we still had lots of work to do.  We were grateful not to have to do any press interviews this week!

As Monday was Bank Holiday and we were open, all the show rooms had to have their deep clean completed on the one closed day this week (Tuesday).  We managed to fit in some much-needed floor waxing too, in the Leicester Gallery, Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom, Billiard Room and Museum Room.  The wet weather has led to much more time spent on the care of floor than dusting objects.

Melinda vacuuming the Reynolds Room eyemat

When vacuuming the floor on Friday we discovered some new scratches to some of the floor boards.  We couldn’t figure out what ad caused them, particularly as one seems to have been created by a sharp object!

New scratches on the Ballroom floor

Sarah inspected the furniture in the Spangled Dressing Room this week, which at the moment has been turned in to a temporary store during the building work.  We’ll be carrying out weekly checks in here as the environment in this room could change as the room is sealed off (for dust protection) when normally there is much more air movement as there are no doors between neighbouring rooms and the windows are very drafty.  The potential micro climate in the space could encourage mould growth and pest insect activity.  In fact during the inspection Sarah did find a live ‘woolly bear’ no top of the dust sheet of one of the stools.  However there were no signs of any recent pest insect damage, or mould growth.

Adult Varied Carpet Beetle on the left, and its larva the ‘woolly bear’ on the right. The larvae causes damage by eating natural textiles.

Woolly bear now in our pest pot so we can show our visitors.

On Wednesday Sally Bowling visited from Rupert Harris Conservation* to look at the lantern on the Great Stairs.

The lantern is currently displayed with real candles in the holders, but lit with a modern lightbulb

We would like to dispose of the modern central lightbulb and put electric candles in the candle holders instead.  Sally explained how the lantern could be adjusted and the different options we had for lightbulbs and candle look finishes.

Sally checking the height of one of the potential new candle fittings

More, vacuuming, dusting and floor waxing next week!

Emily, Sarah, Melinda and Lucy

*You find out more about Rupert Harris Conservation via their website:

http://www.rupertharris.com/index.php

What’s beneath your feet…?

There are so many things to look at in the show rooms at Knole, Stuart furniture from the Royal Palaces, hundreds of portraits, including some by Reynolds, Van Dyck and Lely, rare carpets and tapestries, all housed in rooms with beautifully detailed wood panelling and fine Jacobean ceilings.  However, the one thing visitors probably never look at are the floors, which have a beauty all of their own, and are in fact as fragile as some of the Knole’s famous textiles.

The floor in the Brown Gallery. The vertical boards are 19th century oak, and the horizontal are pine, also 19th century. The change in direction and wood, shows where the gallery originally stopped and there was another room.
The oak boards are some of few in the show rooms in good condition, despite them receiving double the footfall of anywhere else as visitors walk over them twice along the visitor route.e

The show room floors are a mixture of oak and pine, some were laid much later in the 19^th century and others are original 17^th century floorboards, such as in the Cartoon Gallery.  They are affected by the agents of deterioration like the rest of the collection.  The uncontrollable levels of relative humidity cause the wood to swell and contract in the changing damp and dry conditions.

Floorboards in the Cartoon Gallery. When you stand at one end and look all the way down the floor you can see (although not very well in this photo) that the floor has been laid in a zigzag. There seems to be no reason for the zigzag effect, as the gallery was originally covered in rush matting, the zigzag would not have been seen. They are 17th century pine boards.

The floors aren’t safe from insect attack either.  Our wood-boring pest insects have had attacked the pine boards in particular, as it is softer than the later oak floors.  You can see the tunnels that the larvae of the Common Furniture Beetle (woodworm) have munched.  They wouldn’t have been visible at first but over the years with tens of thousands of feet walking over the floorboards the top layer of the wood has been worn away to reveal the tunnels.  Not all the damage is historic, we have active infestations too.  Fresh holes and frass were found in the Leicester Gallery just last week.

The tunnelling damage caused by woodworm in the Reynolds Room, 19th century oak boards.

95,000 pairs of feet walked over Knole’s floors last year, and over for 4000 visitors came over the Easter weekend this year.  Some of those feet were particularly wet and muddy thanks to April showers.  We vacuüm the floors every day before we open.  We do this to keep dust levels to a minimum, but also in adverse weather much more mud, grit and stones are brought in by visitor’s shoes.  If we don’t vacuum the mud etc up it will be trodden in to the floorboards causing dents and gauges in the wood, possibly leading to the board edges breaking up where they are already vulnerable.

Damage to the floorboards in the Leicester Gallery, the edge of the board has broken down, pine boards, probably 17th century.

Repairs to the Leicester Gallery floor. Broken edges are taken back and squared off to insert a new piece of wood. Some of the gaps in the floor where the boards have crumbled away are quite big.

Other physical damage is caused by different types of shoes.  Stiletto heels in particular are the worst offenders.  They leave pit marks in the floor, and will break down a weak part of the board, or even get stuck in one of the cracks between the boards.  We wax the floors regularly to give the top surface some protection against the repeated wear and tear.  In the open season we spend most of cleaning time in the mornings before we open caring for the floors.

Pit marks in the China Closet floor caused by stiletto heels.

We could protect the floor with the use of drugget carpets, but then we wouldn’t be presenting the rooms at Knole as they were historically.   However some of floors had some protection in the past.  We have evidence in our archives that show the Cartoon Gallery had rush matting, and a small fragment was found a couple of years ago by our PHD students.  19^th Century photographs also show three large Persian carpets in the Gallery, perhaps something we could do again.

Persian carpets in the Cartoon Gallery.

New methods of floor protection are also an possible option.  We are currently trailing an eyemat at the top of the Great Stairs.  A high resolution photograph was taken of the area and printed on to a rubber backed mat.  It holds itself to the floorboards and merges in to the real floor as if it wasn’t there.  It protects the floor from heels and mud, and it a good dust collector too!

The floorboard eyemat at the top of the Great Stairs, protecting 19th century oak boards.

So when you visit Knole, take a moment and look down at floors in each room, you’ll see that every floor is completely different from the next, beautiful in their own right and fragile too!  But before you come in make sure you’ve wiped your feet and please don’t come in your best stiletto heels, you’ll leave a mark on Knole’s floors forever!

Lucy, Melinda, Emily and Sarah

 

 

The ‘eyemats’ have arrived!!!

Monday was a very exciting day for the Conservation Team.  A few posts ago we told you about the Reynolds Room carpet being photographed to produce an eyemat version of the carpet…well on Monday it arrived!

Having a reproduction of the carpet produced will allow us to test how the heatmat we had installed will cope with being walked on by 95,000 pairs of feet each season.  From a trial carried out from winter 2011 to winter 2012 the heatmat was able to control the relative humidity levels in the room for the first time.  It was the first time this heatmat technology had been used in this situation, so now we want to see how much physical stress it can cope with.

The Reynolds Room heatmat

Melinda and Sarah assist Kevin from 'eyemat' lay our new carpet

The eyemat is 5 sections which are taped together on the back

Having the eyemat down instead of the extremely fragile and rare carpet will allow visitors to get closer to the Reynolds portraits in this room for the first time.

The eyemat is a brilliant replica, you can't really tell that it's not the actual carpet.

The detail of the eyemat is fantastic. Even the damage caused by pest insects has been replicated just as it looks on the real carpet

We’ve also had eyemats made for the floor in the China Closet and at the top of the Great Stairs.

We have been working on changing the appearance of the China Closet.  Historic photos show a fragment of tapestry on the floor.  We don’t have the original fragment any more, so instead we photographed a section of one of our other tapestries and had it produced as an eyemat instead.

China Closet floor before the tapestry eyemat goes down

Kevin from eyemat trims the edges of the 'tapestry'

Soon we'll be moving the Imari dish from the top of the Lead Stairs to sit in the China Closet, where our historic photos showed it once lived.

The floorboard eyemat at the top of the stairs is another experiment to see if it will help to protect our floorboards.  Floors in houses aren’t often paid much attention by visitors, but they are the one part of the house that suffer the most wear and tear.  The Conservation Team spend many hours throughout the open season re-waxing the floorboards, having  applied two wax layers (one by hand) during the winter clean.

Melinda and Sarah admire the new floorboard eyemat at the top of the Great Stairs

We’re really pleased with all our new eyemats.  We reckon you won’t be able to tell the difference between the eyemats and the real floorboards and the Reynolds Room carpet.  Come along and walk all over them!

Emily, Sarah, Melinda, and Lucy

Find out more about eyemats on their website:
http://www.conservation-flooring.co.uk/