Inspiration

People often ask how I got into conservation, so here it is. I’ve always loved art, both looking at and making it. At 19 I decided getting a degree and History of Art seemed like a good way to spend the next few years, so started looking around universities at their courses. When I went to see the department at Edinburgh University I was shown the library, the seminar rooms and, down in the basement, the conservation lab. I suppose I must have been aware of ‘restoration’ but before being shown the basement lab in George Square it had never occurred to me that that was something that I might be able to do.

Early in my first term I went to meet my Director of Studies, Dr. Patsy Campbell, who it turned out was the enthusiastic keeper of the conservation lab and gave courses in the History of Conservation until her retirement in 2006. I have since met a number of other conservators who were inspired by Dr Campbell to pursue a career in conservation, both contemporaries of mine and others up to 20 years my senior. During my third or fourth year I took the History of Conservation course, as part of which we could spend some time in the conservation lab working on whatever projects were in. We also went on field trips to the National Galleries of Scotland Conservation Department and to Northumbria University’s MA Conservation of Fine Art open day. The trainee conservators there were divided into two easily identifiable groups: lab coats for those studying Works on Paper and black smocks for Oil Paintings. It was great.

Testing the water

Having studied for four years I wasn’t ready to jump into another two-year course straight away, so after graduation I went home to Manchester. I was wondering whether or not I’d have the patience to work with such tiny brushes when I was (by a rather convoluted route that I won’t go into) given the number of a person who worked at Manchester Art Gallery’s Conservation Department and was happy to accept a volunteer. This was a really lucky break since many places now won’t take a volunteer who hasn’t already been through a training programme. I went to the studios a couple of days a week and had the opportunity to spend time working with the frames conservator, a paper conservator and the paintings conservators (one of whom was a former student of Dr Campbell’s). At the time there was a big project underway in the painting department. William Etty’s huge The Sirens and Ulysses was lying on a specially extended table face down and in the midst of a lining reversal, which involved using a scalpel to flick off the old animal glue, which had once adhered another massive canvas to the original one, from the back of the original canvas. (If you click on the link it will take you through to a video of the project- my glue-flicking cameo is at 1:59.) It’s one of the less glamorous tasks in conservation but I was hooked.

Training

Now that I knew which discipline of conservation I wanted to pursue I was ready to spend two more years studying. I was lucky enough to get a place on the Masters programme at Northumbria. The course was intense, with Chemistry and Physics classes every week, lectures about materials, theory, museum environment management, technical examination, more art history and ethics, as well as practical projects- both real and mock-up paintings. The eight of us on the course worked on different projects and shared our experiences and discoveries.

In the summer between the two years of teaching I did work placements in a private studio and a museum department (Manchester City Galleries again, where I was able to assist with the retouching phase of the Etty project), where all of the theory started to fall into place and my confidence really grew.

Post-training experience

Unfortunately the economic crash in 2008 coincided with my entry into the world of work, seriously reducing job opportunities in the museum sector. Nevertheless over the next couple of years I was able to gain experience in at Lancashire County Museums Service as a volunteer, Manchester City Galleries as a freelancer, and then a maternity- cover post at National Museums Liverpool. Setting up on my own has allowed me to take up the slack in some of the institutions nearby that either don’t employ any conservators due to budget restraints or whose conservators are overstretched, but also allows me to offer museum standard conservation to private owners of paintings.