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Citation for published version (APA): Kandiah, M. D., & Cassar, M. (2014). Development of Science and Research applied to Cultural Heritage, 1947- 2007. Institute of Contemporary British History.
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Download date: 28. Sep. 2021
Development of Science and Research applied to Cultural Heritage, 1947-2007
Edited by May Cassar Michael D. Kandiah
AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme ICBH Witness Seminar Programme
Development of Science and Research applied to Cultural Heritage, 1947-2007
AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme Programme Director: Professor May Cassar, University College London
ICBH Witness Seminar Programme Programme Director: Dr Michael Kandiah, King’s College London
© Institute of Contemporary British History and AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme, 2014
All rights reserved. This material is made available for use for personal research and study. We give permission for the entire files to be downloaded to your computer for such personal use only. For reproduction or further distribution of all or part of the file (except as constitutes fair dealing), permission must be sought from ICBH.
Published by Institute of Contemporary British History Kings College London Strand London WC2R 2LS
ISBN: 978-1-910049-05-1
Acknowledgements
The Science and Heritage Programme would like to thank all participants, Witnesses, Seminar Chairs and Speakers for agreeing to take part in these seminars. Thanks are also due to those who provided material and information for both the seminars and for this publication, to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for supporting the Programme and to Virginia Preston and Debbie Williams for preparing this manuscript for publication.
Development of Science and Research applied to Cultural Heritage, 1947-2007
Four witness seminars held at University College London 8th-9th December 2010
AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme Institute of Contemporary British History Contents
Organising partners 6
What is a witness seminar? 7
Aims of Science and Heritage 8
Glossary 9
Background paper: Science and Heritage: Strategies for surviving turbulent times, May Cassar 10
Seminar I: How Have Concepts of Time and Change Matured? 17 Participants 18 Chronology 19 Introductory paper, Carl Heron 20 Questions for consideration 25 Seminar transcript 26
Seminar II: How Has the Emergence of Heritage Science Come About? 59 Participants 60 Chronology 62 Introductory paper, David Saunders 64 Questions for consideration 71 Seminar transcript 72
Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 106 Participants 107 Chronology 109 Introductory paper, Nancy Bell 113 Questions for consideration 118 Seminar transcript 119
Seminar IV: How Has the Way We Work Been Transformed? 154 Participants 155 Chronology 157 Introductory paper, John Fidler 161 Questions for consideration 174 Seminar transcript 175
Annexes 212
Annex I F.A.I.C. Oral History Interviews A.E.A. Werner (1911-2006) 213 Harold Plenderleith (1898-1997) 224
Annex II Reflections on Conservation Research in Scotland 267 – Historic Perspective 1984-2008 Ingval Maxwell
Annex III Obituaries 273 Norman Bromelle 274 A.D. Baynes-Cope 276 Sir Bernard Feilden 278 Professor H.W.M. Hodges 280 Harold Plenderleith 282 Professor Edward Hall 285 Joyce Plesters 288 Westby Percival-Prescott 290 Garry Thomson 293 Tony Werner 295 6
Organising Partners
AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme
The Science and Heritage Programme is a seven-year strategic research Programme funded jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the United Kingdom. Established in 2007 to fund research activities that will deepen understanding and widen participation in research in the field of science and heritage, the Programme aims to strengthen and develop interdisciplinary research, increase the number of researchers in the field and communicate new knowledge to policy makers, practitioners and the public.
Professor May Cassar is Director of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme.
The Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) at King’s College London and the Witness Seminar Programme
Founded in 1986, ICBH is one of the UK’s leading institutions for the promotion of the study of Britain’s recent past. The Witness Seminar Programme has organised around 100 witness seminars – which are best described as group interviews – on a variety of topics ranging from the Falklands War, the resistance to the Poll Tax, the failure of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 and the Friends of the Nunhead Cemetery, an examination of community activism. ICBH Witness Seminars are widely acknowledged by historians, academics in other disciplines and practitioners as important study and research tools.
Dr Michael Kandiah is Director of the Witness Seminar Programme, ICBH at King’s College London.
7
What is a Witness Seminar Michael D. Kandiah
• It is an exercise in oral history that may be best described as a group interview or a guided discussion. • Key participants meet around the seminar table to discuss and debate the issues relating to the chosen topic as they remember them. As a group interview, the discussion:
o is guided and, where necessary, limited by the Chair, who is usually but not always an academic; and
o will be shaped the ‘group dynamic’: individual speakers will respond to each other, to the Chair and the presence of the audience. • Some academics are keen on observing and analysing this group effect, which has been identified as ‘a kind of “chaining” or “cascading” effect; talk links to, or tumbles out of, the topics and expressions preceding it’ (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002). • It shares certain similarities with a focus group, insofar as they are both considered group discussions or interviews. However, this is where the similarity ends. Participants in witness seminars are chosen for their role in, or ability to comment about, the subject of the witness seminar and they are not anonymous—indeed it is essential to know who they are to properly understand and analyse their testimony. Additionally, individuals in the group generally know each other, which makes the ‘group dynamic’ effect particularly interesting and important. Furthermore, this allows the testimony of participants to be checked, challenged and defended. • A witness seminar is taped and transcribed. Participants are allowed to redact the transcript principally to improve readability and to clarify meaning. An agreed version is published and archived for the use of researchers. • The aim of a witness seminar is to bring together participants or ‘witnesses’—to re- examine and reassess key aspects of, and events in, recent history; to comment, examine and assess developments in the recent past. • A further aim of a witness seminar is to capture nuances of individual and group experiences that cannot be found in, or are absent from, documents or written material.
Since its founding in 1986, the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) has been uniquely associated with the production of witness seminars on events or developments that have taken place within the bounds of living memory. The ICBH Witness Seminar Programme has been copied by other institutions, both in Britain and abroad, and the ICBH regularly collaborates with scholars from other institutions in planning and hosting witness seminars of particular relevance to their work.
Reference
Lindlof, T. R. & Taylor, B. C. 2002. Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, p. 182.
8
Aims of Science and Heritage
From the end of World War II up till the present day, the development of the application of science to cultural heritage (which may be interpreted variously as archaeological science, conservation science, building science and more recently heritage science) has ebbed – and sometimes flowed – according to changes in policy, the economy and socio-cultural priorities. Nevertheless, the trend has been toward slow growth and some improvement. The more recent focus of funding on heritage science research has seen renewed interest in research to support our understanding and the conservation of cultural heritage. New researchers and practitioners are demonstrating interest in the field. The Science and Heritage Programme has enabled thirty five Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and fifty seven non-academic organisations to deliver twenty five Science and Heritage Programme projects. Of the seventeen HEIs and fifty-seven non-academic organisations hosting project partners and collaborators, twelve are located outside the UK (five in the EU and seven overseas).
Mindful of the saying: ‘if we do not learn our history, we are doomed to repeat it’, the Science and Heritage Programme jointly organised with the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s College London a series of seminars to explore our individual and collective memories of the development of science and heritage in the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century with a special though not exclusive focus on the UK. The aim is also to introduce heritage science to the wider research community from which researchers from a range of disciplines are contributing to the field. While the early pioneers in archaeological science, building science and conservation science may have passed away, the generations that have personally known some of these pioneers – Brommelle, Fielden, Hawkes, Plenderleith, Thomson, Werner – or have worked with others associated with them, or been influenced by them, are here to share their story.
9
Glossary
AATA Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts AHRB Arts and Humanities Research Board AHRC Arts and Humanities Research Council AIC American Institute for Conservation CCC Council for the Care of Churches CLRTTAP 30-year Convention on Long-range Trans-boundary Air Pollution EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ESRC Economic and Social Research Council GCI Getty Conservation Institute ICCROM International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, Rome ICN Instituut Collectie Nederland (now RCE) ICOM-CC International Council of Museums ICOMOS International Council on Monuments and Sites Icon Institute of Conservation IIC International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works IRPA The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage MGC Museums and Galleries Commission NERC Natural Environment Research Council POST Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology RILEM Reunion Internationale des Laboratoires et Experts des Materiaux, Systemes de Construction et Ouvrages SPAB Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings TICCIH The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage UK HERG UK Historic Environment Research Group UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
Background paper: Science and Heritage: Strategies for Surviving Turbulent Times
MAY CASSAR
A version of this paper was delivered as the Thirteenth Annual Harold Plenderleith Memorial Lecture on the evening of 19 November 2010 at the National Gallery Weston Link, Edinburgh at the invitation of the ICON Scotland Group. Vision Science and heritage in the UK today is both stronger and potentially more vulnerable than it has ever been. Strong because of the huge investment of £8.1 million made by the Research Councils in science and heritage in recent years, its increasing visibility and the leveraging of additional resources that have resulted; and at the same time vulnerable because of the risks posed by current economic uncertainty. We have grappled in the past with chronic lack of funding and having to make do; but the deficiencies in the system were clear and understood; we got used to managing on limited resources. Today we face an unfamiliar and complex mix of risks and opportunities: new partnerships, new facilities and new data on the one hand, and weak statistics, poor forecasting and inconsistent influence over policy on the other. Opportunities derive from our ability to work in interdisciplinary ways, to value new knowledge, and to apply it to solve problems and devise solutions. The risks emanate from our inability to focus on issues that are beyond our immediate control, to muster our evidence of impact and to exert influence over decision-making consistently. Science and heritage research and practice in the UK are a comparatively small field, but we punch above our size globally. We have strong international networks across North America and Europe, and with English as the language of science, we are well placed to lead in heritage science. We are admired internationally for our achievements in science and heritage, so we must communicate our knowledge internationally in order to gain influence for science and heritage locally. We need to do this to advance our cultural values and to derive economic benefits. We need to build on our networks and collaborations – principally with our traditional partners in North America and Europe, but increasingly the political steer is towards the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. However our openness abroad needs to be matched by our resilience at home. This remains the most pressing issue we face today. This requires a transformation in the way we think about the future of science and heritage and how we build on our achievements. Our strategy must be to gear ourselves up to face uncertainty. We need to weigh up present and future concerns and prepare to deal with them. Our willingness to do so depends crucially on the role we want science and heritage to play in Britain. We have huge advantages: museums, galleries, libraries or archives are present in virtually every village, town and city in the United Kingdom. Dotted around the countryside are magnificent country houses; archaeology is everywhere and then there are historic towns and cities – Edinburgh, Stirling, York, Bath, Oxford, Canterbury, Winchester – to name a few. Local and overseas visitors in their millions visit for their education or enjoyment. According to DCMS in 2010, heritage tourism directly accounted for £4.3 billion in GDP and 113,000 employees and by including heritage green spaces this figure increased to £7.4 billion and 195,000 employees thus making the sector larger than car manufacturing and advertising. Our contribution to economic growth, our quality of life and our values are clear. Our link with growth is important because it enables us to afford the skills and capabilities we need to advance our scientific and conservation expertise. It is also directly relevant to one of only two Departmental Strategic Science and Heritage: Strategies for Surviving Turbulent Times 11
Objectives of HM Treasury: to ensure high and sustainable levels of economic growth, wellbeing and prosperity for all. The road which science and heritage in the UK has recently travelled began in 2004 when London hosted the Sixth European Commission Conference on Sustaining Europe’s Cultural Heritage: From Research to Policy. The Declaration on Sustaining Cultural Heritage Research1 which concluded the conference contributed to the process which the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee had already begun; to hold an Inquiry on Science and Heritage. In 2006, the Inquiry Report recommended a dedicated programme of funding for research in science and heritage, the development of a heritage science strategy by the cultural sector and the appointment by DCMS of a Chief Scientific Adviser. In 2007 the 5-year Science and Heritage Programme2 supported by AHRC and EPSRC was launched, DCMS appointed its first Chief Analyst and Chief Scientific Adviser in September 2008 and in March 2010 a National Heritage Science Strategy was published. At that point it seemed credible to suggest that these actions would provide a firm foundation for science and heritage in the future, but the 2010 budget announcements signalled a more cautious approach. To what extent do we factor into our strategies a world we know is changing? While the Comprehensive Spending Review safeguarded the Science base through a combination of evidence of economic impact, effective lobbying and good fortune, the museum and heritage landscape is changing rapidly. Times are difficult and work today, whether in museums, galleries, libraries, archives, heritage institutions, universities or the private sector, is uncertain. Redundancies are not the only consequence of the current economic turbulence. There is a more fundamental shift taking place in the relationship between employer and employee. Until now the employment contract within our sector has depended on the good will of employees willing to give much more than they were compensated for, from a sense of loyalty to what the work represented to them – often perceived in the cultural sector as a good cause - which employers gratefully if silently accepted. The fundamental change we are experiencing is that employers are demanding from employees what they previously offered as goodwill. We are already seeing jobs being amalgamated and an expectation that employees should consider themselves lucky that they have jobs at all while work and responsibilities are added, and opportunities to be creative and innovative disappear. Experienced heritage scientists are taking early retirement thus denying present and future generations the benefit of their invaluable expertise. We need to act quickly and effectively to address the potential loss of know-how. This means having access to the best possible advice, and crucially, the right people making decisions. It means considering issues in the round, recognising that when it comes to science and heritage, academic and cultural heritage institutions are not separate entities but two halves of the same story. This is why the recommendation in the recent National Heritage Science Strategy to establish a National Heritage Science Forum of ‘users and doers of heritage science, so that the many institutions that play a part in the heritage science sector can share a sense of ownership’ is potentially of huge significance for the future of science and heritage. It must exercise oversight of science and heritage in the UK, ensure a strategic and tightly coordinated approach to decision-makers and highlight the risks and opportunities faced by science and heritage. It must take into account the recent experience of the Science and Heritage Programme in growing the capability of science and heritage and how it can be sustained. Today we face a potential setback that may outweigh recent gains from the Science and Heritage Programme because of the added value of the senior
1 EU 6th European Conference on Sustaining Europe’s Cultural Heritage: From Research to Policy. Declaration on Sustaining Europe’s Cultural Heritage, 2004. See http://cordis.europa.eu/sustdev/environment/ev080904.htm 2 The Science and Heritage Programme has funded 39 projects totalling £6,866,771of investment. This represents 6.5% of the total amount of over £105 million submitted to the research councils for funding. The Programme has funded 14% of the total number of 282 projects bidding for funding. These figures indicate the strong ground swell of interest in science and heritage research in the UK across the domain of movable and immovable cultural heritage. Science and Heritage: Strategies for Surviving Turbulent Times 12 researchers that we risk losing. We need to devise ways for them to share their knowledge, and we need to prepare for the future by implementing the National Heritage Science Strategy alongside clear agreement on the UK’s research priorities, the capabilities we need to achieve them and the resources that will be required. We need a hard-headed appraisal of our strategic options including the role we wish to play in society, as well as the risks we face in this fast changing, uncertain world. Our vision must be to use our capabilities to contribute to economic growth, extend our knowledge in the world and strengthen science and heritage at home. We must view our cultural assets as instruments of prosperity and diplomacy as well as knowledge. We should examine our existing areas of comparative advantage and the areas we can develop in the future.
Values and way of life Economic growth in the future is likely to be driven by the world knowledge economy. This gives us great opportunities to use science and heritage to spread our knowledge and values among our global networks and collaborators. As the world becomes more interconnected through technology, cyberspace and shared interests, the value of our connections will grow. As a result of technological developments, social networking and the round-the-clock news media, our multiple networks around science and heritage will enable us to exert collective influence. Signs of this future are already here. Between 2008 and 2011, a European project titled Net-Heritage became the first significant initiative ever to attempt to co-ordinate the national research programmes of European member states in the field of research applied to the protection of cultural heritage. The key aims of this project were to identify common strategic priorities for research and to stimulate the exploitation of research results. The United Kingdom’s role to develop a Heritage Portal has been fundamental to knowledge sharing. With contributions of research news, information, case studies and data from around Europe, the Portal has become a key hub for the exchange of knowledge and ideas in our sector. It is clear that co-operation rather than the ‘survival of the fittest’ will characterise human life in the future. Within our sector, archaeologists have demonstrated consummate skill and sophistication in gaining influence and support across academia, learned societies and government in order to further the cause of archaeology. For ours is a cause, a social enterprise, in which we strive to improve cultural heritage not only for economic growth but also because it mirrors our values and quality of life. To protect our values, we must protect our cultural heritage from all major risks that can affect it directly. The ways to do this must be appropriate and sufficient, but our objectives must also be ambitious in line with the means available to us. Even in these uncertain times, the pace of scientific and technological innovation will continue to increase and technological knowledge will spread more widely and more rapidly than before. The numbers of people able to access information and to innovate will increase. Innovation will be the key to energy security through the development of new energy technologies. Science and heritage has a part to play in informing building adaptation and the design and performance of new systems that are compatible with the historic environment. Social and demographic trends are also shaping the future, as are environmental factors. The physical effects of climate change are likely to become increasingly significant as a ‘risk multiplier’ that can exacerbate existing tensions around the world. The 2007 floods in the UK, which created the largest ever civil emergency response since World War II, highlight the impact that natural disasters can have, even on a fully developed networked society such as the UK. If we are determined that the influence of science and heritage should grow, we need to prioritise our effort to tackle climate change. The networked world creates great opportunities but also new vulnerabilities. Protecting virtual assets such as our powerful and expanding digital collections on which we will increasingly depend for our contribution to the knowledge economy, becomes as important as Science and Heritage: Strategies for Surviving Turbulent Times 13 protecting physical objects. Our ability to remain adaptable for the future will be fundamental, as will our ability to identify risks and opportunities at the earliest possible stage. Recognising that climate change and security risks to tangible, intangible and digital cultural heritage will increase in the future, the United Kingdom as a member state of the European Union is participating in the EU Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage and Global Change: A new Challenge for Europe. The aim of Joint Programming is to increase the value of relevant national and EU research and development funding by concerted and joint planning. EU member states coordinate national research activities, bundle resources, benefit from complementarities and develop common research agendas, in order to face the big societal challenges that cannot be solved solely on a national level. The Arts and Humanities Research Council, on behalf of the United Kingdom is leading the development of the JPI’s Strategic Research Agenda for Europe. Instruments of change If we are determined to build on the progress that science and heritage has made in recent years and to strengthen the research evidence-base for policy and practice, our core objective must be to engage with and influence public policy priorities. To tackle the key issues and priority risks, our decisions need to be based on understanding our capabilities and the steps we need to take to build resilience. We need a survival kit for these turbulent times. The essential components of this survival kit are: (i) research evidence to inform policy; (ii) influencing policy, and (iii) putting policy into practice. What strategies can we adopt in research, policy and practice? Research Exploring the future We must respond in different ways at a time of unprecedented uncertainty. If we know where we want to be, we can influence the future to a limited extent. We need to develop a new way of thinking. Strategic futures thinking provides an alternative approach to policies that are often driven by an ‘official’ view of the future; it enables a wider range of potential opportunities to be assessed and for risks to be identified and managed. By testing policies against different futures, we build resilience. By creating a picture of where we are now, we can try to avoid our less preferred future and develop the contingency plans that we need to survive. By scanning the horizon for future risks to science and heritage, we can construct longer term scenarios. Horizon scanning methods can be used as the basis for a national risk assessment of science and heritage capability by identifying the full range of existing and potential risks that might materialise over a 5 and 20 year horizon, and their relative likelihood and impact. In judging priority, it will be necessary to consider our vulnerability or our preparedness to handle risk with the resources available to us. The insight into potential future risks that these methods provide, will contribute to decisions on capabilities for the future. We need to look forward and not only at the rear view mirror. We need to value our thinking on the future because the more information we can add to what we think will happen, the better the future will be. Statistics and data One of our potential weaknesses as well as one of our strengths is the multi-dimensional impact of science and heritage. DCMS has identified among the areas on which cultural heritage has an impact as economic performance, education and learning, local and national identity, regeneration, research, social capital, sustainability, quality of place and wellbeing. Science and heritage has the potential to provide data in many of these areas. Evidence on the size of the cultural heritage economy is increasingly well documented; for example, the Heritage Counts 20103 report for England focuses on the economic importance of the historic environment. In other areas, quantified evidence of impact that would carry weight with funders and policy makers is
3 English Heritage, Heritage Counts 2010. Available at: http://hc.english-heritage.org.uk/ Science and Heritage: Strategies for Surviving Turbulent Times 14 very limited. A notable exception is Taking Part,4 England’s survey of leisure, culture and sport. It is the first survey to provide detailed, robust data about engagement with culture and sport. The need for consistent, high quality data led to DCMS, the Arts Council England, English Heritage, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Sports England to commission Taking Part, a continuous survey to provide a central, reliable evidence source that can be used for a wide range of analysis of cultural and sporting engagement. By comparison, science and heritage data has to be gathered from dispersed sources, using different methodologies, making data disjointed and of varying reliability, and of doubtful use to policy makers and funders. A start at overcoming this problem would be for science and heritage datasets to be deposited with the Archaeology Data Service5 and the EU Heritage Portal6. A complementary action would be for a study to be commissioned to map what datasets are available and where they are located. We must ensure that science and heritage datasets are deposited for not-for-profit educational and research uses in a way similar to the UK Economic and Social Data Archive at Essex University. It is clear that socio-economic statistics to inform policy making is more accessible than scientific and technological data, and this situation must change. Standards and ethics If we are serious about enhancing our reach and influence in order to protect our position at home, we need to play an active and leading role in shaping international standards and norms. We have advancied knowledge and skills in science and heritage, and the multidisciplinary context and contacts to lead in identifying the conservation areas that would benefit from international standards and norms. By using scientific evidence, we can decide if standards are needed or if guidelines will have to suffice until evidence proves otherwise. The United Kingdom is not alone in working on the development of damage functions defined here as the rate of change, or deterioration, caused by a variety of parameters, for a range of cultural heritage materials. But we are in a strong position to ensure that standards in our field reflect the present state of knowledge and evidence base; this should ensure that only standards that are backed by peer-reviewed scientific evidence are presented as such to the cultural heritage community. We also need to be ahead of the game by reviewing what is coming across the horizon from other fields. Consider developments in nanotechnology, biotechnology or geospatial technologies and their potential use in science and heritage. Developments in nano-medicine are beginning to have considerable impact on drug delivery, and heritage scientists are beginning to consider how modified techniques might be applied to the conservation of cultural heritage. So a future scenario could involve nano-conservation. In this fast changing technological age, it would be well to consider developments around our sector, what impact they might have on conservation and to draw up guidelines on the application of advanced technologies in conservation. Policy Sustaining high level contact with Government Departments, Committees and elected Members or Officers of Parliament, or Assembly, and responding to public consultations is necessary to communicate evidence that will improve policy for science and heritage. A good example of how to engage with policy makers is The Archaeology Forum7. This is a grouping of independent bodies concerned with the archaeological investigation, management and interpretation of the UK’s buried remains and archaeological standing structures. The Forum provides an opportunity for institutions to discuss matters of common concern, with the aim of establishing shared
4 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Taking Part. Available at: http://www.dcms.gov.uk/what_we_do/research_and_statistics/4828.aspx 5 Archaeology Data Service. http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/ 6 EU Heritage Portal. http://www.heritageportal.eu/ 7 The Archaeology Forum. http://www.britarch.ac.uk/archforum/ Science and Heritage: Strategies for Surviving Turbulent Times 15 positions and promoting clear and consistent messages to Government from archaeological practitioners and other stakeholders. It works in a joined-up way with others in the historic environment sector through other umbrella organisations like the Heritage Alliance8, Built Environment Forum Scotland9 and Wales Environment Link10. The Forum also supports the work of the All Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group11. The Archaeology Forum is a useful model for the National Heritage Science Forum. We could do worse by following the example of the Royal Society of Chemistry which has designated a person responsible for Government Relations and appointing Parliamentary Advisers from among serving Members of Parliament from both sides of Government to represent its work in the House of Commons. Creating formal channels of communication with policy makers such as these will ensure that the opportunities that are available are used to raise the profile of science and heritage among policy makers. Practice Localism and mutuality While our sector has an important international dimension, a significant percentage of practice takes place at a local level, and localism has been on governmental agendas for some time. White papers, legislation and consultations released over the past decade have aimed to transfer decision-making power from national to regional and local government, right down to individual citizens. Since the election in 2010, the Coalition Government has focused on localism. Localism can be broadly described as moving the focus of policy design and service delivery onto local councils, local government and the community working together to deliver services, blurring the distinction between service users and service providers and empowering local communities. One of the new models of council governance being considered is that of the ‘Co-operative Borough’ where the use of mutual action aims to lead to stronger communities and sustainable outcomes. A key principle of mutuality is that those involved usually do not contribute financially but derive their rights through their relationship with others. Mutuals are owned by their members and they exist for members to benefit from the services they provide. Earlier I wrote that as a result of the Comprehensive Spending Review, the heritage landscape will change beyond recognition. With respect to mutuals, it is changing for the better. SHARE12 is a Network of Know How, and a success story of the East of England Renaissance Hub. Its values are entirely mutual. Utilising the time, knowledge and expertise given by the four hub museum services – Cambridge, Norfolk, Ipswich and Luton as well as the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, SHARE helps any museum in the East of England, including independent, local authority and volunteer-run, to access the assistance they need to develop. Between them, these museums committed over 1,000 days of staff time in 2009-10 to a central skills ‘bank’. The expertise covered by the bank ranges from curatorial knowledge to marketing experience, from visitor services to learning and outreach. The scheme also includes four regional conservation officers whose remit is to work with museums across the region to improve collections care. The support SHARE offers takes many forms including practical advice, training, one to one consultations, skills sharing, work placements, special project work and mentoring support. The success of SHARE has led to a proposal to set up a mutual company. The skills in community building created by SHARE could be in demand as councils look to improve participation in the decision making process. Councils could well be looking for our expertise to deliver services or engage users. In what ways could we get involved? What are
8 The Heritage Alliance: http:// www.theheritagealliance.org.uk/ 9 Built Environment Forum Scotland. http://www.befs.co.uk/ 10 Wales Environment Link. http://www.waleslink.org/ 11 All Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group. http://www.appag.org.uk/ 12 SHARE. http://www.mla.gov.uk/what/programmes/renaissance/regions/east_of_england/info_for_sector/SHARE Science and Heritage: Strategies for Surviving Turbulent Times 16 our current links with the local council? Would we be able to suggest closer ways of working to deliver specific projects, perhaps linked to delivering public services? How should we prepare for this possible demand for expertise? Could one of our professional bodies act as brokers? Information that we can gather on community engagement and participation could feed into local and national discussions on localism. Volunteering An important way in which conservation has recently engaged with communities is through volunteering. DCMS stated that heritage accounts for 8 per cent of current volunteers. There are around half a million heritage volunteers in England. Each year, heritage volunteers give 58.5 million hours which equates to a national value of £335 million. In 2008/09 there were over 55,000 National Trust volunteers. This is a 6 per cent increase over the previous year and a 45 per cent increase on 2001/02. Another outstanding example of conservation practice and community partnerships was Conservation Science Investigation: Sittingbourne13 and its impact on conservators, interns, volunteers and the general public. Volunteers played a pivotal role in making the CSI Laboratory a community project as well as carrying out supervised conservation work. In these difficult economic times, where the choice in Sittingbourne was between artefacts deteriorating or being conserved for free, the added value was the transformation of conservation into an active social practice. Skills base Earlier, work was described as a difficult place. So how might our changing workforce demographics be managed in these turbulent times? We have an urgent need to monitor the flow into early retirement of senior researchers as the first step in valuing and retaining their contribution. We need to draw the attention of employers to the reality of retiring employees who leave with sizeable amounts of knowledge; they do not only put the sector at risk but also their organisations. It is therefore necessary to explore with museums, galleries, libraries and archives, the possibility of retaining their former employees on a part-time, time limited basis in order to support the national science and heritage research effort. In practical terms one day per week will mean an organisation saving 86 per cent of an individual’s salary rather than the full 100 per cent; i.e., making an in-kind contribution equivalent to 14 per cent to the science and heritage effort. Conclusion In this paper, I have presented a number of opportunities on which, as professionals, we can lead and which can result in making heritage science more resilient. To seize these opportunities: We must rid ourselves of problems that hold us back by turning them into opportunities. We need to leverage every opportunity – whether it is funding or good will. We need to work with others and share resources. We need to focus on where we have the greatest impact and visibility. We need to recognise that we have no option but to collaborate internationally in everything we do whether it is research, policy or practice. In turbulent times, too often the temptation is to accept a pared down future rather than optimising and growing the landscape. This kind of corrosive thinking damages us. The potential of science and heritage, and the opportunities out there, will enhance our resources and our standing in the eyes of our funders. We have got to make sure we change our minds enough to make it worthwhile.
13 Conservation Science Investigation: Sittingbourne. http://anglosaxoncsi.wordpress.com/ Witness Seminar I
How Have Concepts of Time and Change Matured?
Wilkins Old Refectory, University College London
Wednesday 8th December 2010 10am-12.45pm
Format
Seminar 1 – How Have Concepts of Time and Change Matured? – considered among other issues changes in our understanding of the time depth of chronology, the move from consideration of individual objects to populations of collections, and from damage to the management of material change.
The witness seminar is best considered like a group interview or conversation, led and moderated by the chair. The witness seminar was recorded and transcribed. Speakers have been asked if they wish to make any redactions to improve the clarity of their utterances. The agreed transcript of the proceedings, with speakers and their contributions identified, is being published here.
Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 18
Participants
Chair:
PROFESSOR SIR Professor of Urban and Regional Systems, University College London ALAN WILSON and Chair, Arts and Humanities Research Council
Papergiver:
PROFESSOR CARL Professor of Archaeological Sciences, University of Bradford HERON
Witnesses:
MIKE CORFIELD Heritage Science and Conservation Consultant; Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University
PROFESSOR George Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science, University of MARTIN JONES Cambridge
VELSON HORIE Collection Care and Conservation Consultant
STEFAN Senior Conservation Scientist, Canadian Conservation Institute MICHALSKI
DR ANDREW Formerly Keeper of Conservation at The British Museum 1985-2002 ODDY
Audience Participants:
DR PETER Formerly Keeper of the Departments of Art, Birmingham Museum CANNON- and Art Gallery (1965-78) and National Museum of Wales (1978-86) BROOKES
PROFESSOR MAY Director of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme; CASSAR Director of the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, University College London
JERRY PODANY Senior Conservator of Antiquities, J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
DR JOYCE HILL Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Material STONER Culture, University of Delaware and Paintings Conservator
PROFESSOR Emeritus Professor of Archaeological Science, Research Laboratory MICHAEL TITE for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford
Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 19
Chronology
1949 J.R. Arnold and W.F. Libby’s publication of ‘Age determinations by radiocarbon content: checks with samples of known age’ in Science.
Late-1940s A.W.G. Lowther pioneered the use of tree rings for archaeological dating
1955 Research Laboratory for Archaeology founded at the University of Oxford
1957 The first issue of Medieval Archaeology
1958 Research Laboratory for Archaeology published first volume of Archaeometry.
1959 First radiocarbon date list produced by The British Museum’s laboratory
1960 W. F. Libby wins Nobel Prize.
1961 Publication of Grahame Clark in World Prehistory
1961 Aikten’s first edition of Physics and Archaeology published
Late-1960s Development of dendrochronology in the UK
1968 Publication of Colin Renfew’s ‘Wessex without Mycenae’ paper
Dec 1969 Joint symposium held by the Royal Society and the British Academy to mark the twentieth anniversary of the discovery of radiocarbon dating
1972 Publication of Tite’s Methods of Physical Examination in Archaeology
1973 Publication of Colin Renfrew’s Before Civilization
1974 Second edition of Physics and Archaeology published
1970s The Science and Engineering Research Council supports the formation of the Science-Based Archaeology Committee to fund new developments in the field.
2005-06 Report of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Inquiry on Science and Heritage
Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 20
Introductory paper: Time and Heritage Science or How Concepts of Time and Change have Matured: Time Depth of Chronology, from Individual Objects to Populations of Collections, from Damage to Change
CARL HERON University of Bradford Introduction In exploring the contribution of science to the study of cultural heritage in the second half of the twentieth century in the UK, I start with an influential publication from the first half of the twentieth century that appeared in the USA! The first author of the paper, published in Science was a post-doctoral researcher nuclear chemist, James R. Arnold. The second author was Willard Libby (Arnold and Libby, 1949). Forty-one years ago, on 11-12 December 1969, a joint symposium held by the Royal Society and the British Academy marked the twentieth anniversary of the discovery of radiocarbon dating (published as Allibone et al., 1970). The first contributor was Libby who some years before had given his Nobel prizewinning lecture on 12 December 1960 in Stockholm – almost 50 years ago to this day! Prior to Libby’s banquet speech on 10 December the President of the Royal Academy of Sciences and astronomer Bertil Lindblad, addressed the laureate as follows: ‘Dr. Libby, your famous method of age determination has given us a fascinating illustration of how the living organisms on this earth depend on the mysterious rays from the macrocosmos. The extremely delicate measurements of the carbon-14 isotope which you have inaugurated in your ingenious method serve not only natural science but to a very great extent archaeology and the study of the history of mankind in its early ages.’ (see www1). The paragraph above, liberally sprinkled with dates demonstrates how time is so vital and fundamental not only to heritage scientists but to the very nature of the human condition. It has long been recognised that archaeology’s great advantage over many other disciplines that seek to evaluate human behaviour is the time dimension well beyond written sources. The archaeologist is concerned with material culture from the present to some 20,000 generations ago to the first hominids. The impacts of the discovery of ‘deep time’ in human antiquity have been felt since the middle of the nineteenth century (Murray, 1993). Establishing chronology has been one of the major achievements of archaeology and is a cornerstone of the heritage science agenda (Williams, 2009a-c). Yet how does time feature in the wider heritage science milieu? Material culture, so important to the archaeological process, is prone to alteration and destruction with different materials subject to radically different and complex mechanisms. Deterioration over time is inevitable. The rate and direction of change depends on the environmental conditions (e.g. Krumbein et al., 1994; Brimblecombe unpublished). Understanding these issues is essential to enhance the long term survival of materials for the future. The National Heritage Science Strategy report identifies areas where a lack of scientific knowledge is hampering current efforts to sustain these resources (Williams, 2009a). Preservation and restoration of cultural materials to which a specific community attaches value has a long history (Muñoz-Vinas, 2005). The very act of conservation varies according to the time in which it is undertaken. For example, Caple (2009) Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 21 shows how the aims of conservation may vary between objects and across time, or even come into conflict with each other. Studies such as these demonstrate that time impacts on the social and the scientific issues underpinning the conservation of cultural materials. This short contribution focuses on the development of chronological investigations in the UK. It cannot do justice to the wealth of dating techniques that have developed in the last 50-60 years and the considerable advances that have been made to secure accurate and precise dates. The aim is to illustrate the contribution of some of the key figures in these developments and to highlight some of the key questions that have been posed and that in many cases we still seek solutions to. In a recent review, Geoff Bailey (2006: 717) has identified that ‘as dates have become more numerous and more accessible, the literature concerning the theory of temporal patterning in archaeological data, the sorts of temporal ordering presented by archaeological materials and dates, the kinds of explanations they facilitate or preclude, and what the durability of material culture and the vaster time scales involved might tell us about the wider human condition has grown apace…’. One consequence is greater theoretical awareness of approaches to studying time and many different perspectives have emerged particularly regarding perceptions of time of those who lived in the past and how archaeologists might tackle such complex ideas (e.g., Bailey 2007; Lucas 2005; Murray, 1999). These assert that a chronology is meaningless unless informed by general and specific enquiries and theories and some discriminate different ways of understanding time (chronological time, real time, social time, linear time, cyclical time and so on). Different people perceive time in different ways; time is culturally variable. Trigger (2006: 41) illustrated this by identifying how British and American archaeologists differ in the way they situate earlier and later periods in the past in their time lines and time charts. The meeting ground between the significant advances in developing chronologies on the one hand and the interpretations of temporality on the other is, according to Bailey, a ‘large area of unexplored territory. Dating specialists need to engage more fully with the theoretical implications of the novel and often counterintuitive empirical patterns that their methods reveal, archaeological practitioners need to ask themselves why they want more dates or more accurate ones, and archaeological theorists need to take more seriously the problems and opportunities posed by the application of scientific dating methods. When that happens, then, perhaps, it may be possible to talk about an archaeology of time.’ Bailey (2006: 719-720). Developments in the UK After Libby’s pioneering work the task of setting up a radiocarbon laboratory in Britain fell to Harold Barker at The British Museum after I.E.S. Edwards, the Assistant Keeper in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities brought Libby to The British Museum in 1948. The first radiocarbon date list from The British Museum’s laboratory appeared in 1959. Although the Sub-Department of Quaternary Research in Cambridge was already producing radiocarbon dates, The British Museum’s laboratory was the first devoted almost entirely to archaeological samples. It operated for more than 40 years (Bowman, 2002). The impact of radiocarbon dating was dramatic from the start and the aftermath of the well documented radiocarbon revolutions have kept the dating method at the forefront of the agenda ever since. Colin Renfrew’s Before Civilization (1973) was based on a systematic analysis of calibrated radiocarbon dates obtained from tree-rings. This demonstrated convincingly a chronological ‘fault line’ (Renfrew 1973: 115) between the accepted dates for Egypt and the Near East that remained largely unchanged and those of western and northern Europe that, following calibration, set the chronology of Europe several centuries earlier than before. This questioned the suggested connections between Bronze Age Wessex and Mycenean Greece and many other claimed relationships based on archaeological observation alone. Once calibrated the radiocarbon dates for Stonehenge were significantly earlier. The issue was articulated in the famous ‘Wessex without Mycenae’ paper (Renfrew 1968). Bruce Trigger (2006: 382-84) has Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 22 charted briefly the relationship between radiocarbon dating and the development of a global perspective in the study of archaeology exemplified by Grahame Clark in World Prehistory (1961). Other dating methods A major focus for the development of scientific dating in the UK was the Research Laboratory for Archaeology founded in 1955 at the University of Oxford by Lord Cherwell, a physicist, and Christopher Hawkes, an archaeologist. The first director was Edward (Teddy) Hall and he remained in post for 35 years. The Research Laboratory provided the impetus for the international archaeometry symposia, the most recent of which was held in Tampa, Florida in May 2010. The laboratory also launched a new journal dedicated to advances at the interface of archaeology and science. Volume 1 of Archaeometry was published in 1958. The journal is well- known today for its datelist of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates measured by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU). Radiocarbon dating at Oxford was a later development; the first paper on radiocarbon dating did not appear in Archaeometry until Volume 10, published in 1967. The dating technique that featured most prominently in the early days of the journal was archaeomagnetic dating pioneered by Martin Aitken and others (Sternberg, 2008) and to a lesser extent thermoluminescence (TL) dating. Aitken also pioneered the latter technique in its application to the dating of archaeological ceramics. TL dating was presented in book form by Aitken (1985) and in a review article by Wintle (2008) in the fiftieth anniversary volume of Archaeometry. This summarises recent developments including increased precision from single-grain optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL) and newer applications such as dating fired bricks in buildings (Bailiff, 2007). Remarkably the first edition of Physics and Archaeology published by Aitken in 1961 was identified as the first comprehensive textbook on the emerging field of Archaeometry (Tite, 1990: 6). The second edition, published in 1974 together with Mike Tite’s volume Methods of Physical Examination in Archaeology (1972) were essential buys for the author as he struggled with some of the concepts as an undergraduate student of Arnold Aspinall, Stanley Warren and others at the University of Bradford. The first issue of Medieval Archaeology was published in 1957 and included research into dendrochronology – the use of tree rings to date archaeological remains. A.W.G. Lowther was the pioneer in the use of tree rings for archaeological dating in the UK in the late 1940s. At the time there was no cross dating with wood of known age so a relative or ‘floating’ chronology cross dated with coins and other well-dated remains was established and initially covered the Roman and Medieval periods (Schove and Lowther, 1975). However it was in Northern Ireland at the Palaeoecology Laboratory at Queen’s University, Belfast where the technique underwent rapid development in the UK with the discovery of subfossil oak and pine during road building in the late 1960s. The tree-ring patterns provided good opportunities for cross-dating for all periods from around 8,000 years ago. This long tree-ring chronology was important in the high- precision calibration of radiocarbon dates (Pilcher, 1973). The contribution of dendrochronology as a dating technique has been covered in key books by Mike Baillie (Baillie, 1982; 1995). By the time of a review in the late 1990s, dendrochronology had been used to date approximately 650 standing buildings with all dates published in Vernacular Architecture (Pearson, 1997) although further work is underway on less easily dated softwoods used in post-eighteenth century buildings (Williams, 2009: 26). Dendrochronology is also used for dating wood panel paintings. During the 1970s, the Science and Engineering Research Council supported the formation of the Science-Based Archaeology Committee to fund new developments in the field. Scientific methods of dating benefited significantly from this including the development of AMS dating at the University of Oxford. AMS dating constitutes another of the ‘radiocarbon revolutions’ (Bronk Ramsey, 2008). The ability to date smaller samples, together with better procedures for sample clean-up, has impacted dramatically on both archaeology and conservation science since dateable materials can be accessed from the museum store as well as from the stratigraphic archaeological context. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 23
Later the Natural Environment Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (subsequently Council) have supported both applied and fundamental research into the nation’s heritage. However, there has been a growing unease about the sustainability and development of the science base for conservation and the long-term preservation of cultural heritage. This was an important conclusion in the 2005-06 report of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Inquiry on Science and Heritage. One key recommendation was an organisational framework whereby the hitherto fragmented heritage sector could come together with university-based scientists and funding bodies to develop strategic priorities for heritage science and collaborative projects and research proposals. The National Heritage Science Strategy has produced three reports aiming to provide an ‘evidence-base’ for a UK wide strategy for heritage science, covering both movable and immovable heritage (Williams, 2009a-c). Advancing diverse chronological methods is a recurrent theme in these reports. Some impressive breakthroughs have been made. Far beyond the timescale of radiocarbon dating, multiple dating techniques including amino acid racemisation and palaeomagnetism have been used to date to c. 700,000 years the earliest evidence of human occupation north of the Alps (Parfitt et al., 2005). The application of Bayesian statistics has allowed further refinement of calibrated radiocarbon dates which take into account stratigraphic information providing more precise dates that in turn stimulates new thinking within a framework of past human lifetimes and generations (Whittle and Bayliss, 2007). This beckons the kind of dialogue that Bailey (2006) exhorts. Refinement of radiocarbon calibration beyond that offered by tree rings has been advanced with data from corals, foraminifera and lake deposits (varves). Ongoing research offers exciting possibilities such as the dating of individual compounds free from diagenetic effects (Bronk Ramsey, 2008). The degree to which there is wider public understanding of heritage science is debatable. However, greater visibility in the media over the last 10-20 years has resulted in more and more people outside of the discipline grasping at least why archaeologists and heritage scientists try to date events and things and even how they date things. Surely few people today think Radio- carbon 14 is a pirate radio station (Rahtz, 1985: 163). Acknowledgements Thank you to Dr Cathy Batt, University of Bradford for suggesting papers and books for me to consult. I also thank Professor Mark Pollard for his suggestions and Professor May Cassar for inviting me to take on this task and Dr Michael Kandiah for his comments and suggestions. Any errors, whether calibrated or not, are my own. References Aitken, M.J. 1985. Thermoluminescence dating. London: Academic Press. Allibone, T.E., Wheeler, M., Edwards, I.E.S., Hall, E.T. and Werner, A.E.A. 1970. The Impact of the Natural Sciences on Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arnold, J.R. and Libby, W.F. 1949. Age determinations by radiocarbon content: checks with samples of known age. Science 110, pp 678–680. Bailey, G.W. 2006. Time’s arrow: the measurement and theory of archaeological time. Antiquity 80, pp 717-720. Bailey, G.N. 2007. Time perspectives, palimpsests and the archaeology of time. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26, pp 198–223. Bailiff, I.K. 2007. Methodological developments in the luminescence dating of brick from English late-medieval and post-medieval buildings. Archaeometry 49, pp 827-51. Baillie, M.G.L. 1982. Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology. London: Croom-Helm. Baillie, M.G.L. 1995. A Slice through Time: Dendrochronology and precision dating. London: Routledge. Bowman, S. 2002. Radiocarbon dating at The British Museum – the end of an era. Antiquity 76, pp 56-61. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 24
Brimblecombe, P. Understanding how the environment causes physical change. Unpublished paper for the Arts and Humanities Research Council Heritage Science initiative. Bronk Ramsey, C. 2008. Radiocarbon dating: revolutions in understanding. Archaeometry 50, pp 249-275. Caple, C. 2009. The aims of conservation. In A. Richmond and A. Bracker, (eds.) Conservation: Principles, Dilemmas and Uncomfortable Truths. London: Butterworth-Heinemann/V&A Museum. Pp. 25-31. Krumbein, W., Brimblecombe, P., Cosgrove, D.E. and Staniforth, S. 1994. Durability and Change: The science, responsibility, and cost of sustaining cultural heritage. Chichester: Wiley. Lucas, G. 2005. The Archaeology of Time. Abingdon: Routledge. Muñoz-Vinas, S. 2005. Contemporary Theory of Conservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murray, T. 1993. Archaeology and the threat of the past: Sir Henry Rider Haggard and the acquisition of time. World Archaeology 25, pp 175-186. Murray, T. (ed.) 1999. Time and Archaeology. London: Routledge. Parfitt, S., Barendregt, R.W., Breda, M., Candy, I., Collins, M.J., Coope, G.R., Durbidge, P., Field, M.H., Lee, J.R., Lister, A.M., Mutch, R., Penkman, K.E.H., Preece, R.C., Rose, J., Stringer, C.B., Symmons, R., Whittaker, J.E., Wymer, J.J. & Stuart, A.J. 2005. The earliest record of human activity in northern Europe. Nature 438, pp 1008-1012. Pearson, S. 1997. Tree-ring dating: A review. Vernacular Architecture 28, pp 25-39. Pilcher, J. 1973. Tree-ring research in Ireland. Tree-Ring Research 33, pp 1-5. Rahtz, P. 1985. Invitation to Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell. Renfrew, C. 1968. Wessex without Mycenae. Annual of the British School at Athens 63, pp 277-85. Renfrew, C. 1973. Before Civilization: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Schove, D.J. and Lowther, A.W.G. 1957. Tree-rings and archaeology. Medieval Archaeology 1, pp 78-95. Sternberg, R.S. 2008. Archaeomagnetism in Archaeometry – A semi-centennial review. Archaeometry 50, pp 983-998. Tite, M.S. 1990. On the retirement of Martin Aitken. Archaeometry 32, pp 5-6 Trigger, B.G. 2006. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whittle, A. and Bayliss, A. 2007. The times of their lives: from chronological precision to kinds of history and change. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17, pp 21-28. Williams, J. 2009a. The Role of Science in the Management of the UK’s Heritage. National Heritage Science Strategy Report No. 1. Available at: www.heritagescienceforum.org.uk/publications- page.php Williams, J. 2009b. The Use of Science to Enhance our Understanding of the Past. National Heritage Science Strategy Report No. 2. Available at: www.heritagescienceforum.org.uk/publications- page.php Williams, J. 2009c. Understanding Capacity in the Heritage Science Sector. National Heritage Science Strategy Report No. 3. Available at: www.heritagescienceforum.org.uk/publications-page.php Wintle, A.G. 2008. Fifty years of luminescence dating. Archaeometry 50, pp 276-312. www1 Nobelprize.org http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1960/libby- speech.html [Accessed 4th November 2010].
Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 25
Questions for Consideration
1. What is the relevance of (1) time and (2) material change to different applications of heritage science? 2. How have (1) time and (2) material change been considered by different cultural heritage disciplines (archaeology, objects, buildings, conservation) in the past? 3. Can we think about developing a continuum or convergence of our different approaches to time and change? 4. How does the materiality and physicality of cultural heritage affect our consideration of time and change? 5. What are the big questions that remain to be addressed in terms of (1) established chronologies, (2) dating, (3) provenancing or (4) providing socio-cultural information? 6. What techniques can be considered to have revolutionised approaches to heritage science? 7. Are the pressures of different drivers (e.g.: commercial archaeology, stakeholder demands, industrial involvement in research, academic research) undermining the holistic view of scientific evidence? 8. Research of works of art and non-archaeological objects in museum and gallery collections is mainly based on documentary analysis and stylistic studies. Can science play a more direct role?
Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 26
Session One
PROFESSOR SIR It is my pleasure to welcome everyone. I shall introduce myself. My ALAN WILSON name is Alan Wilson, a Professor at UCL, but today I am wearing my hat as Chairman of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). I am welcoming everyone on behalf of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme. Professor May Cassar, the Director of that Programme, is one of the participants today. The Director of the [Witness Seminar Programme at the] Centre for Contemporary British History at King’s College London, Dr Michael Kandiah, is sitting next to May Cassar. As is fairly obvious from the microphones, the proceedings are being recorded. I must first encourage everyone to speak up, including myself because I have a very soft voice. I introduce Harry Loughlin, the sound recordist. He will advise us if he thinks things are not being recorded properly. Everything is being transcribed. Everyone who contributes to our proceedings will be sent a draft transcript at some point. We operate on the exact opposite of Chatham House Rules. I am so used to saying that Chatham House Rules apply, but today is the exact opposite. All contributions will be attributed by name, but we shall have the opportunity to check the transcript. For the record, I do not think that anyone else is recording our proceedings, but no one else is allowed to record it. I shall start with the witnesses. I have two or three announcements to make, and I shall then ask them to do a 60-second introduction of themselves and what perspective they will bring to our seminar. We are having two sessions. This first session will end about 11.15 am, so I shall keep an eye on the clock. We will then have a coffee break and start again at 11.30 am. It will be a new experience for almost everyone in the room except Michael [Kandiah]. The answer to the question, ‘What is a witness seminar?’ will evolve for all of us as time passes. It is an exercise in oral history. Michael thinks of it as a group interview or group conversation, so we will have a conversation, as it were, about time and archaeology. Time and change and how they have matured: there is a whole programme of such matters and I am sure that you could look it all up through websites, so without further ado I shall ask the witnesses to introduce themselves. I shall start with Velson and go anti- clockwise round the room. Carl Heron, on my right, will give an introductory paper in a minute. Velson, will you kick off? VELSON HORIE I’m not Dr Velson Horie: I’m flying under a false flag here [Referring to the label with the identification ‘Dr Velson Horie’]. I am a conservator and I did a degree in chemistry and with an interest in archaeology conservation. I became an archaeological conservator. Went to the Manchester Museum as a conservator – natural history, archaeology and other things. I have always been interested in applying science to conservation. I am not essentially a heritage scientist, but a conservator using the science as a tool like many other tools that we use, whether they be microphones or audiences. I am interested in Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 27
education and different standards of science, knowledge and their use in conservation. I am interested in professionalism, to make sure that conservators are more professional in their attitudes at all sorts of levels and in all sorts of aspects. I am still working. MIKE CORFIELD I am predominantly an archaeological conservator. I trained at the Institute of Archaeology and have had the good fortune to work in Wiltshire where I established and ran for 14 years a laboratory providing conservation for museums and archaeologists throughout the county. I moved to the National Museum of Wales in 1986 where I became the first Head of Conservation for the entire museum. In 1991 I moved to English Heritage as Head of Conservation, later Head of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory, and in 1999 I became the first Chief Scientist. During my time at English Heritage I managed multifunctional conservation teams, which have included everything from archaeology to buildings and paintings. As head of the laboratory I managed a diverse team of archaeological scientists and established the team of Regional Science Advisers. I became very interested in the question of preservation of archaeology in the ground and how it is affected by changes to the ground environment, and that remains a continuing interest. I was able to promote a number of research projects to gain a better understanding of the burial environment and also projects concerned with land contamination, climate change and the impact of bats on church interiors. PROFESSOR I am Professor of Archaeological Sciences at the University of CARL HERON Bradford. I am an archaeological scientist by training: my bachelor’s degree has that title. It is a sort of hybrid arena where the sciences meet the humanities of archaeology. My research area is primarily molecular science. I apply biomolecular techniques derived from biochemistry and analytical chemistry to questions of archaeological interest, such as the function of artefacts or the diet of humans in the past. I was invited by May Cassar to present the briefing paper for the time and heritage science component of the briefing seminar. DR ANDREW ODDY I spent all my working life at the British Museum, initially as a conservation scientist, then moved into archaeometry and ended up doing administration for conservation. During the latter part of my career, I became interested in the history of conservation right back to the post-medieval period when we can first trace the subject. I have been retired nine years, and I have made no attempt to keep up with modern developments since then. PROFESSOR I am from Cambridge and am an archaeologist of food and, unlike MARTIN JONES Carl, I have had no training in archaeological science. It did not exist when I was a student but, in the four decades of my career, the archaeology of food has unfolded. I also realised that I am a habitual chairman. I have made a list of them. I have chaired panels for English Heritage, the Wellcome Trust, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the AHRC. I emphasise that to show how many bodies are really excited and interested in our field. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 28
STEFAN MICHALSKI I am a senior Conservation Scientist at the Canadian Conservation Institute. Some of you may wonder why I am here. I am a bit of an outsider, but I am a British citizen by birth and by very early education. If the Jesuit claim, ‘He’s ours, if we have him until seven’, is right, Britain has me as I was educated here up until the age of seven. I have worked my entire career at the Canadian Conservation Institute, which is now 31 years old. What do I do? Nominally, it is research but, to a large extent, my job is to digest the scientific literature for our Canadian clients, which are the museums, archives and galleries in the country with public collections, and to transform the scientific literature that is relevant into useful and practical advice. My first degree was in physics and maths. I then trained as an object conservator. I started when our training was focused on an object. I then became involved in what was called ‘climate and light’, which then became preventive conservation. I was the first co-ordinator following after the formation of the preventive conservation group within the ICOM-CC.1 I am now really more interested in the risk management perspective to whole collections. I work quite a bit with the ICCROM2 in developing its courses and delivering them throughout the world. I bring both a Canadian and a British international perspective. I am currently in the middle of a lot of discussions on humidity and temperature guidelines for museums and galleries not because I am particularly clever, but because of circumstance and having a job – probably the only one in the world – where it is my full-time job to keep up on humidity and temperature, and reasons and rationale. I am asked to a number of different forums where it is still a debate. I do not see it as a debate myself. I just see it as clarifying information and an approach, but it still perceived very much as a debate within the conservation and museum community. That is what I am in the middle of at the moment. ALAN WILSON I should, in fact, say two or three sentences about my own academic background. I am Professor of Urban and Regional Systems at University College London. I am a geographer academically, but located in the Bartlett School of Planning. Looking at some of the matters that we shall talk about, which Carl will lead us into in a minute, there is a leap from objects to socio-cultural and now we add geographical information. I do actually work with archaeologists at UCL on early settlement evolution. Although I am an amateur in terms of almost everything that we are talking about, I have the connection with local archaeologists. Carl, over to you. CARL HERON Good morning everybody. In advance of the witness seminar I presented a paper3, which is only about four or five sides, around the issues of time and heritage science. What I am about to say bears little relation to my paper, but I hope that it will be a stimulus for further discussion. There are also questions for consideration, which
1 ICOM-CC - International Council of Museums 2 ICCROM - International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, Rome. 3 See above, pp.20-24. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 29
the Chair will take us through and to which the witnesses will be able to contribute and develop some points. I am an archaeologist, and I am fascinated by the relationship between archaeology and the sciences. It is a long-term relationship, which goes back to the origins of archaeology, and we cannot divorce ourselves from the diverse sciences that help to contribute to a better understanding of the past. Those archaeologists among you will know that the birth place of understanding the time depth to archaeology was the National Museum of Antiquities in Copenhagen, Denmark in the nineteenth century, with Christian Jürgensen Thomsen’s4 Three-Age System, which was subsequently refined by other archaeologists there. The origins of scientific dating applied to the study of the past are not as familiar. Interestingly, a scientist at UCL, our venue for today’s seminar, made an important early contribution. In 1845, James Middleton, a professor of geology at UCL published an article in the Proceedings of the Geological Society. He wrote that: ‘the accumulation of fluoride of calcium in fossil bones constitutes a very interesting and important subject of inquiry with reference to geology, since it seems to involve the element of time.’ The uptake of fluorine from the groundwater and mixing with the calcium irons in the bone provided a means of measurement of fluoride update and a means of relative dating. You will all have heard of the Piltdown Hoax. In the 1940s, Kenneth Oakley5 worked on the levels of fluorine in the mandible of the Piltdown skull and suggested that there was a problem with the very low amount of fluorine that was found in the bones. He questioned the authenticity of the find and with others the hoax was exposed. Kenneth Oakley was also a graduate of UCL in anthropology and science. As I said earlier, I am an archaeologist, but much of my training and research has been in scientific approaches to archaeology. When asked to define archaeology by my first-year students in lectures, I always quote the late, great David Clarke,6 a Cambridge archaeologist who published widely in the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote that ‘archaeology is the discipline with the theory and practice for the recovery of unobservable hominid behaviour patterns from indirect traces in bad samples.’ It gives the impression of the immense challenge that archaeology faces when recovering information about people in the past; their motivations, their ideas and their beliefs as well as the material traces that they left behind. It is an immense challenge, and one that again has to rely on all of the sciences. The Chair spoke of his interest in relationships between geography and archaeology. It is any discipline really from astronomy to zoology that can captivate and interest archaeologists in trying to eke out more about the study of the past. From time to time, I have written about the historical relationship between archaeology and science. It is important not just for intrinsic reasons, but there is also no uniform trajectory of engagement between archaeology and heritage science – which I shall try to use
4 Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (1788–1865), archaeologist. 5 Kenneth Oakley (1911–81), anthropologist, palaeontologist and geologist. 6 David Clarke (1937–76), archaeologist. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 30
more widely – and the other sciences. The relationship has been heavily influenced by wider debates in society. You can go back to C.P. Snow’s7 ‘Two Cultures’ in the 1950s, which is still lauded greatly in archaeology, when individuals talk about the relationship between the humanities and the sciences. The wider post-modernist movements in the past couple of decades have heavily influenced the study of archaeology. More widely, heritage science is a fundamental and very important link between the arts and the sciences, and that has tremendous interest for society today. It attracts huge public interest and it is one of those areas where the trans-disciplinary and the inter-disciplinary agenda are so important: our being able to move freely across our disciplines, to be able to communicate with other scholars and researchers, and present our results to the wider public who, at the end of the day, are funding us to do our research. My short paper, which the audience has not seen, but which the witnesses have, is heavily biased towards my interests in archaeology. It is rather narrow in terms of the dating techniques that it embraces. The brief that May [Cassar] gave me was much wider in terms of the heritage science agenda. When writing my paper, I realised how ill equipped I was to tackle some of the wider philosophical themes within the conservation science agenda, and I have delighted that we have those specialists as witnesses who can contribute much more openly to some key questions of time and change, and how they impact on our disciplines. My paper, while mostly archaeological in spirit, has two main aspects: the first is on the impact of the scientific dating techniques on establishing chronology in the past. There is quite a lot about radio carbon dating. As a student, I was heavily influenced by Colin Renfrew’s8 1973 classic, Before Civilisation, which I encourage my students to read. I am not sure how many of them actually do, but it remains one of the most influential books that has ever been written about archaeology. The techniques that I list in my paper are by no means exhaustive. I hardly mention some of the important chronological techniques that have helped to establish ‘Deep Time’. For example, uranium series dating, potassium-argon dating, and so on. They have their own history and trajectory and inter-relationship as well. The second key point is how the heritage science community embraces the concepts of time in its interpretation and understanding of the materials with which it works. That is quite a challenging question. I found it quite a challenge to articulate in my paper, and to capture the diversity of agendas that are out there. I hope that might come through in our discussions. Let us celebrate the achievements and the breakthroughs that have been made. In the United Kingdom, there has been an incredible and immense contribution of individuals, research groups and organisations that have helped to
7 C.P. Snow (Lord Snow of the City of Leicester, 1905–80), physicist and novelist. On 7th May 1959 he delivered the Rede Lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’, which was later published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1960). 8 Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn. Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge University, 1981–2004. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 31
shape our heritage science. From the beginning, the United Kingdom has been a world leader. That term is banded-about far too often, but it is genuine in the case of the heritage science agenda. We are world leaders, but nevertheless the briefing paper that May [Cassar]9 appended to these papers identifies a number of challenges about maintaining our active research within the heritage science agenda, given the current economic issues that impact on all our work. I will leave it there. There were a series of eight questions10, and I thank May and Michael [Kandiah], in particular, for helping me to tease out questions. I was quite good at writing the history in archaeology. I have done that a few times, but I am not so good at teasing out the questions. As the Chair said, this is a new idea – and this is a new concept for me personally to present at a witness seminar. But given my interests in the historical trajectory of my discipline and its relationship with other disciplines, I am very excited and interested to hear what the witnesses have to say. Thank you very much. ALAN WILSON Thank you for that excellent introduction, Carl. I want to make one more comment in order to give the witnesses time to think about what I am now going to ask them to do. I am not going to work through the eight questions as though it was an exam paper. That would not be easy and would not necessarily get us to the most important things, although the substance of all that is there. I want the witnesses to kick off with some introductory remarks about what they think are the most important things on the agenda. Will you each give us an introduction? That would be excellent. I shall ask a volunteer to start. I want to follow up Carl’s comment on UCL. Another famous archaeologist was a professor here for 40 years. Petrie who was Professor of Egyptology,11 was one of the pioneers of science in Egyptology. He was one of the very few – there are only two or three, if that – archaeologists who were actually Fellows of the Royal Society. If you have time to go into our library and go halfway up the steps, you will see an exhibition of the history of UCL Fellows of the Royal Society, which includes Petrie and some of his documents. Who would like to kick off? VELSON HORIE I do not want to subvert the discussion too much but, as a conservator, I have worked on different types of materials and objects, and archaeology is one small segment of that part of time. I look at the type of objects that I deal with, and they have different depths of time. If you are preserving a USB memory stick, the oldest one is about 10 years old. You go back through cinema film I have worked on, which is 100 years old; or ceramics, 2,000 to 4,000; meteorites, 4.2 billion. Each of them has their time frames, and we should be considering not just archaeology but the other materials. For the modern materials, we are considering different types of time,
9 See above, pp.10-16. 10 See above, p.25. 11 Sir Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology, UCL, 1892-1933. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 32
different types of heritage science; what goes into them; and how we approach them. Physical processes may be similar, but the implications and the cultural changes and the time frame that change… and how we approach those times will be different. Talk to geologists about time and they will have a different answer from archaeologists; we talk to a cinema historian, and then that is also different. ALAN WILSON If we are talking about the maturing of concepts, how have the different times underpinning different sorts of objects evolved over time? Have they evolved with the science that allows us to understand time? VELSON HORIE Each discipline has a different concept of time. I do not like the term ‘maturing’ it assumes that objects are like Bordeaux wine … because at the end of it, it is undrinkable. It actually changes. More like a Madeira. MARTIN JONES I want to add something to Carl’s overview of the concept. He mentioned the very important paper by Colin Renfrew written in 1973 which, in many ways, separated two concepts of time, which in my view drew on twentieth-century archaeology. I want to add a nineteenth century and a twenty-first-century suggestion of important concepts. The 1973 paper was the split between diffusionary concepts of explaining time and sequence, and autonomous concepts. Every region has its own story that can be sorted out. Of the two concepts that I shall throw in, a nineteenth-century concept is the ladder of progress. So much of the heritage presentation we still see around the world today is constructed on the nineteenth- century ladder of progress. The other concept is really relevant for our use of time and heritage in the future. A lot of bodies are getting much more interested in interconnectivity between things like culture, climate change and food security both in the past and the present, and that involves a completely different usage of time, a different usage of time from the style that Colin Renfrew was introducing for the second half of the twentieth century. MIKE CORFIELD You cannot divorce yourself from the concept of time if you work in conservation. You cannot divorce yourself from the idea that everything that you look at has its place within that chronology of time. You also have to look at the fact that all those objects can tell you something, often more than just from the form of the object itself. There is information attached to that object that helps you to pin it to its chronology and make you better understand it. In the broader range of archaeological evidence, we now know that there is much more information we can glean from materials that come from excavations than we would ever have dreamt of when I came into this business. That goes right through the whole spectrum of conservation research. One of the interesting groups of people that I was privileged to manage was a group of architectural paint researchers. They had discovered that a great deal of evidence of past decoration of houses, Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 33
buildings and structures survives in the nooks and crannies that paint strippers missed when they were preparing the sites for the next round of ideas about how they should look. That has enabled recreations of historic interiors with much greater accuracy and informed by knowledge of the original intention of the architect, whether Kenwood House12 or St Pancras Station13 – with the beautiful blue arch that no one would ever have believed a Victorian engineer would have finished his wonderful structure with. It is understanding and knowledge that we are gaining all the time and, for my part, the person who kicked off my realisation in such matters was that wonderful eccentric Leo Biek,14 who really was an incredible character. He did more than anyone else to make us understand how much there was to be learned from material that passes under our noses. ANDREW ODDY I have to say that, when I was asked to participate, I had not a clue what was meant by ‘How have concepts of time and change matured?’ My first reaction was not to think about it because I would then be ‘inspired’; then I decided that I would not be inspired so I had better think about it. I see it very differently from how Carl has interpreted matters. With all due respect, he has concentrated on the history of dating and how dating of objects has developed our understanding of past. As a conservation scientist, I saw time as meaning life, and I thought about the life of objects. In conservation terms, until the early twentieth century, people who conserved objects thought that they had finished them for once and for all. That was it. They stuck an arm back on a statue and it could go in a museum and no one would have to worry about it anymore. I am not actually sure when attitudes started to change, but by the 1960s when I came into the business, people were beginning to move away from total conservation in which you cleaned things to within an inch of their life and coated them with plastic and put them on display. They were beginning to think in terms of, ‘Perhaps I won’t be the last person to interfere with the “life” of this object. It may have life after me. Perhaps it should have life after me. Perhaps it would be better if it did have life after me.’ People in the conservation world have moved towards minimum intervention from maximum intervention, and the concept that whatever they are doing now, the next generation might have to re- treat the same object and might get new information from it. The less we do that is consistent with preserving longevity, the better, because we would then not interfere with the life of the object in the future. I am really interested in the life of objects and how that has changed, and it has changed enormously from the heavy conservation approach that persisted certainly through the 1960s and, in some places, into the seventies. In less-developed countries, it possibly exists today. I have certainly seen a lot of over-conservation since I have travelled around the world.
12 Robert Adam (1728–92), remodelled Kenwood House, 1764-79. 13 Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811–78), architect of St Pancras Railway Station in London (constructed 1866–76). 14 Leopold Biek (1922–2002), Officer-in-Charge of Ancient Monuments Laboratory, 1950–66. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 34
This country has been one of the leaders, but not the only one. I accept that we are talking about our history today, but I want to throw in the name of a Polish conservator, Hanna Jędrzejewska15 who died about 10 years ago. Her death went unreported in western literature because she lived in Warsaw. In the 1960s, she wrote two major papers on the conservation of bronzes in which she said, ‘Stop. What you are doing is wrong. All this heavy cleaning has got to stop. Look at the object and what it means.’16 For me, her papers were a seminal moment in the history of conservation. ALAN WILSON That fits closely with what Mike [Corfield] was saying in terms of rescuing intelligence. I will ask Carl to come back in a moment. Stefan, do you want to join in at this stage? STEFAN MICHALSKI I had a list of words that I was free associating when I was given the briefing papers in the past couple of days, such as permanence, authenticity, artists’ intent, tangible, intangible, lifetime, patina … I hope to come back to them as the discussion progresses, but to link them to some things that have come already. Lifetime is an interesting concept. I hope that a lot of what we will be discussing is the kind of metaphors in terms that we have used. Lifetime is certainly one of them. The difference between an object and a collection is that lifetime applies to an individual, whereas the community continues. In the same sense, objects are finite in their lifetimes, whereas collections are dynamic communities of objects and they continue. The notion of lifetime changes when we go from the individual to the community or the collection. The thing I most thought about when asked to come here was when the notion of permanence or lifetime or forever emerged in our profession. I think that it did and that it was actually a brief flowering. From my perspective, the word flowering is perhaps too positive. It was really a black hole, a rabbit hole idea that emerged in our profession. As for the notion of a permanent object, collections clearly were permanent because the notion is different and has a much longer life. I have mentioned notions of time in some of my attempts to be slightly post-structuralist, about the three phases of time. I found that in an archaeologist’s paper, but I cannot remember which. The three phases of time go back to language: recent, old and ancient and how that changes from the individual to the community. If we focus on the collection we have a flux of stuff coming in, stuff going out or stuff dying, which is different from how we approach matters when we think of the object. There has been slippage or misapplication of ideas from one to the other. I think of the traditional restorer in terms of stereotypes of the brown coats versus the change into white lab coats. At that point of time, the fantasy that we could make things last forever emerged. I do not think that traditional restorers had a fantasy that, when they
15 Hanna Jędrzejewska (1906–2002), chemist and conservator. 16 Jędrzejewska, Hanna (1963), ‘Some New Experiments in the Conservation of Ancient Bronzes’ in Recent Advances in Conservation (London: Butterworths, pp. 135–9); Jędrzejewska, Hanna (1964), ‘The Conservation of Ancient Bronzes’, Studies in Conservation, Vol.9, No.1. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 35
did a nice cleaning job on a great painting, that was it for all time. They did their best and they saw themselves as part of a continuum. Now we are trying to deconstruct the fantasy that conservators or heritage organisations make individual objects last forever. That emerged at the same time as the fantasy that humans could have cryogenics. It was the belief that science would give us the utopia of absolutes. I do not think that we consciously thought about it. We just started talking about permanence. What is good conservation material? Something that is permanent. ‘Well, what about if it looks like hell?’ ‘No, but if it is permanent, it is conservation material.’ That was a blip, and we are now struggling to put that monster back down with some difficulty. It came at the same time as science fiction movies on TV, and the notion that you freeze your body and in 200 years someone in California will know how to thaw you out so that you can live forever. It was a post-war delusion and it infiltrated our professional model. Now we come to the National Trust perspective phrase on managing change. It says something that we have to reintroduce that concept that should have just been there. As reasonable human beings, we are born; we live; we do something and we die – and the community goes on. That point links to some other things, such as patina. We are schizophrenic. Let us look at some of the early arguments in the high end of the restoration of paintings. Artists’ intent was another mythology about permanence. Once we thought, ‘We cannot recover the original painting, but surely we can recover the artist’s intent as some pure absolute that lasts for-ever.’ Mercifully, that got demolished, but some people are still clinging to it. However, we like patina because it sends the message of decay, although we have the illusion that we can stop it. I like the archaeometric aspect, but more for metaphors. Most of the clocks for chronology have some kind of decay: radioactive decay, thermal essence or it is an accumulation of doses from something decaying, which then you decay in the lab and measure its intensity. Our profession got into the magician’s role that we can control the rate of decay of objects and make it go to zero. At the same time, we had incredible arguments about how important patina was, recognising that it only came about from decay. Is it okay to call that maturing? I suppose that, as an amateur historian, I put a kind of spiral rather than cyclical optimistic perspective on the history of humanity. We may go round in circles, but we advance to some extent. If we recover what was good about before the belief in cryogenics and forever, and come back to managing that with the best available science, we will do fine. I shall leave talking about authenticity until later in our discussion. ALAN WILSON I shall make two or three comments in the form of questions from what we have heard so far. I shall then ask Carl to respond. I shall ask our witnesses at this stage rather more than Andrew wants us to do with Carl to perhaps disagree with each other or comment on whether there are different perspectives that we need to get hold of. As an amateur, I want to say what I get out of this. There is something about timing objects and life-timing objects, and Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 36
conservation and what that actually means. I want to connect that to another point. Something Martin [Jones] said rang bells with me. There is something about models of time and models of evolution, so if the ladder of progress is too simple and we have to get into spirals or whatever, what are we trying to do? It would be an interesting challenge to articulate it. The third thing that I had in mind concerns the term ‘chronology’. It occurs every now and again. I started to think that there are two kinds of chronologies. There is the chronology of heritage science and archaeology. We have talked a bit about where critical points occur, and there is what archaeology says about human chronology, which is a different matter that connects back to ladders of progress. I would be interested in comments on that, but I do not particularly want to divert the discussion. I hope that witnesses have their own perspectives. We will get to the audience at some point, too. My fourth point connects back to the fantasy that objects live forever. It goes back to point one: a lifetime of objects and so on. There is a separate point in that there are objects, but there is knowledge that has been recorded about objects at different points in time. There is what was achieved in the 1920s, what Mike [Corfield] has been achieving with remnants since and how that knowledge is recorded and accumulated. I suspect that raises a different question, so it is not about the objects themselves but about the record of what we now know, and then how it all interconnects. So interconnectivity is critical. We have already heard enough to spark me into a number of questions, but I will have to keep quiet for a while. CARL HERON It is interesting how different kinds of time are emerging. Velson [Horie] kicked off quite nicely stressing the chronological range of enquiries from meteorites to memory sticks. Archaeology is somewhere in the middle, and can extend in both directions. There are different concepts of time. Our concept of time in the western world is different from that of other people who inhabit the planet today. I do not think that Andrew and I are so divergent in our approaches because they are fundamental questions across the conservation and the archaeological world. Archaeologists have written a lot recently about biographies of objects. That is not just about the objects, but about how people identify changing meanings in those objects. There is a continuum from the person in the past who conceived of an artefact and helped to create it, and gave meaning to it, to the archaeologist who excavates it, to the individuals in the laboratories who help to conserve it. The issue of permanence comes in here, as well, as the individuals who engage with the artefact in the museum environment. Lifetime, biography and our changing responses give a lot of meaning to the convergence between my approach and some of the other approaches heard around the table. I want to give an archaeological example. Star Carr is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the UK. It was dug by Grahame Clark17 in the 1940s and 1950s. It had tremendous organic
17 Sir Grahame Clark (1907–1995), Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge University, 1952–74. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 37
preservation from the wetlands around the fringes of the former Lake Pickering in Yorkshire. Many of those finds are displayed in museums in the north and in Cambridge, in particular. Re-excavation of some areas around Star Carr 60 years later has shown that the original well-preserved finds of antler and bone have changed in the intervening years since Grahame Clark’s excavations to materials excavated a couple of years ago with the consistency of a wet sponge, as they were described recently. The site is more than 10,000 years old, but 60 years ago the excavation recovered near pristine material. However, 60 years on because of the dewatering and drying out of the landscapes around the former Lake Pickering, material has now been recovered that is in an incredibly poor state of preservation. The idea of permanence is really important, and we have got to get to the more transient and ephemeral issues, and think about different notions. Whether they are flawed is another case in point, but it is a salient question. Archaeologists have worked hard – I know Mike [Corfield] has – to look at preservation of archaeological remains in situ, but the changing geological/geochemical regimes are bringing about devastating changes to the archaeological resource. The areas of wetland in northern Europe from Denmark and Northern Germany into Britain, with major dewatering and drying out of the areas is causing incredible difficulties for the long term well-being of an incredible archaeological resource. The questions are really quite interesting not only about what is brought out of the ground, but what is in the ground and the changes that are happening there. MARTIN JONES Chair, you asked for some disagreement. There are many things with which I agree, but I shall start by having a dig at Stefan [Michalski]. I was absolutely intrigued by what he said because it was so insightful, and then by his use of the subject’s own heritage. He said that we need to get back to halcyon days before the white coats. That was interesting because that is how we all use heritage. We use the past to return to some mythical stable thing. I want to challenge Stefan on that: if we look back before the white coat age to what parts were being constructed, they are all basically extraordinarily Eurocentric. Both the ladder of progress and the diffusionary model certainly are. Do we want to go back to a world where that happened? I am inspired to think about Asian conservation. ICOMOS may have concerns at the fact that things like the Great Wall keep being repaired and rebuilt, but if we consider Chinese archaeology when, if something is broken, it is fixed, build a new bit and so forth with no problem. But ironically comes the narrative that Chinese archaeologists imported from their training from Flinders Petrie, whom our Chair has mentioned. There were somehow or other smart people who discovered something and explained it all to stupid people in other parts of the world. I am not quite sure what the solution is in respect of going back to before the horrible white- coated folks started messing everything up. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 38
STEFAN MICHALSKI I certainly do not want to go back. I was actually chairing a session last Saturday in Rome of an organisation called Herity.18 It started in Italy and is now spreading throughout the world. It wants to develop the ‘Good Housekeeping’ seal of approval for science, based on conservation terms. The session was about the notion of authenticity. Two speakers were Asian, one of whom was a Korean woman who trained in New York in architectural restoration and is now at the Ministry of Culture, advising on the conservation of various temples. The other woman was from Beijing and was comparing urban planning renewal projects in Beijing with those in Melbourne, and was trained in Melbourne. When reviewing the papers there, I had just seen a New Scientist article written from an evolutionary scientist’s perspective about WEIRD– western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic countries. When counting up cultures by real differences of world view and language, and then saying what about the emphasis on tangible versus intangible material versus immaterial – we are in the minority. We dominate in terms of power, but if you are just counting up cultures and some kind of objective of what is a normal human being: we are the weird ones. The Asian continuity is in the method of reconstructing the Wall, but not with the particular brick with its particular piece of lichen that was there 400 years ago. They are in the majority and we are in the minority. We just happen to run the IMF and everything else, so that obviously makes a difference. But if we are asking what is a normal human being as opposed to what is the most powerful culture, in the last few years we will have received a very different answer. The question is then what can we learn from that, and what will happen in the future? I see the emergence of the cosmopolitan heritage. When the Berlin Wall came down [in November 1989] and everyone became excited, for Canadians the notion of the cosmopolitan notion is a key concept. It might be less for Britain, but when you are fully engaged with the EU, perhaps you will really get into it – if that ever happens. I will have to strike that from the transcript! Humans can enjoy such a process face to face without having to live with repercussions. Where was I? I have derailed myself as usual. There was a brief moment where there would be savings because the Cold War was over, and there would be flowering, but then fundamentalism, terrorism and those cultures came along and said, ‘We do not want a cosmopolitan world’. The Nara Document of Authenticity19 came along, equal numbers of Asian’s sitting at the table with Europeans, saying: ‘We want this notion that authenticity and heritage is intangible and is at least as important as all these material Eurocentric notions of change.’ That clearly has a relation to our concept, because the concepts of time and change are linked to the things that we use as indicators to measure it. As you lean towards the intangible aspects of culture, the lifetime notion is much more flowing and
18 http://www.herity.it/ 19 http://www.international.icomos.org/charters/nara_e.htm Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 39
ongoing as opposed to the individual object. So even compared with collections, lifetime of intangible culture is a different idea from a collection of objects. It has its own vulnerabilities, and I think that it is disappearing faster than the British Museum’s collection is disappearing. I did write down that I was rephrasing the title of the witness seminar. It is not how concepts of time and change mature; in a way, it is how have the concepts of what we can do about interfering with time and change matured? When you [Velson Horie] referred to meteorites and memory sticks, and that came back as a parable, its strength is in the notion of those who are intrinsically inevitable and that is how it is. Most of what our business is about is whether we can actually change that. It is linked to how we have changed our approach to the global climate. The nineteenth-century religious caretaker approach, wonderfully moral as it seemed, did not work out so well. We now have to realise that we are just part of a system that we might make a complete mess of, so it is the concepts of how we manage, control or interfere which raise questions not only of our ability, but what authorities and responsibilities we should be exercising. Do we just sit back and say, ‘I have meteorites: will they be here forever? I’ve got memory sticks, and they will go on for 10 years? Life goes on. Let us get a beer.’ That is not what our profession is about. It is about managing things. To go back to the earlier point, we had a brief moment when we thought we were stopping time, and we would make things last. It is not so much going back, but saving the best part of the old world, where there was a process, and eliminating the notion that we deal with the absolutes. It is the absolute notion of infinity that was wrong, but it was there for most of my career. MIKE CORFIELD The way that we can now measure time has gone through such a revolution in the past 20 to 30 years. When I came into the business, we talked in terms of plus or minus 1,000 years. Now we talk in terms of plus or minus a couple of months. We are getting so much more precise in our ability to pin down dates specifically. We do not rely now on the sort of re-evaluation of Bronze Age Britain20 through the artefacts alone to show that the Bronze Age in Britain could not possibly have developed from Mycenae, but came before Mycenae. That is one of the most fascinating things. One of my team, Alex Bayliss, who developed the use of Bayesian mathematics to refine the dating evidence further and contextualise it with a whole range of different parameters has changed things enormously. The idea that the trees from Seahenge21 were felled in April 2000 or whenever is quite extraordinary to my mind. That is really quite a change. New dating methods have come on stream and will be coming more robust as they are used more frequently: OSL, Optically Stimulated Luminescence, for example, can be used to date the actual sediments in which archaeological evidence is located. Again, that is new and
20 Circa 2,500-800 BC. 21 Bronze Age timber circle, Holme-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, discovered in 1998. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 40
will help archaeologists in trying to decide whether a particular level within their excavation is significant. Bringing matters a little more into focus in terms of artefacts and what Andrew [Oddy] was saying about maximum and minimum intervention, one of the things that amazed me early on in my career was having to work on the collections of two great archaeologists from the turn of the eighteenth/nineteenth century, Richard Colt- Hoare22 and William Cunnington23, who dug up a large number of the burial mounds in Wiltshire. Seventy odd years later, General Pitt Rivers24, the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments, also dug up a large part of the Wiltshire countryside to understand better the monuments on his estate and more widely throughout the United Kingdom. When their artefacts recovered and drawn by their respective illustrators, they were dumped into paraffin wax, which resulted in the most remarkable preservation of evidence, such as the scabbards of daggers and the survival of textiles on spearheads from Saxon graves. It made me realise that, doing as we were told to do with the Pitt Rivers Collection [by the Treasury as part of the deal to accept it in lieu of Death Duty] – to conserve it meant at the time to take it through the entire process. We stripped off all the paraffin wax. We found all the wonderful information and then we re-conserved it. It probably did not need it. In fact, it definitely did not need it because we destroyed the information about the way in which those great archaeologists dealt with things and what they enabled to be recovered. Kathleen Kenyon25 did the same thing when she excavated the Tombs of Jericho. She rushed in with buckets of molten paraffin wax and threw them over the organic remains to prevent them being destroyed by the warm moist air. The result is that they can now be seen displayed in the British Museum. The idea of the time that things were found and how they were dealt with is important to recognise. It was unfortunate that, for a long period, conservation was driven by improving the understanding of the science of conservation. When I came into conservation, science was the top. We learned how to strip off corrosion. Whether it was good corrosion or bad corrosion did not matter too much, but it all went into the chemicals. We lost a lot in that. Hanna Jędrzejewska, whom Andrew [Oddy] mentioned spoke about the importance of evidence and the fact that there might be more than one meaning to an object. There might be more layers of evidence to an object and that to preserve one aspect of the evidence that we consider to be most important might require the destruction of other bits of evidence. We have to be aware of that. I want to touch on my interest in the preservation of archaeological sites, as Carl [Heron] mentioned. When I came back to English Heritage in 1991, I was handed the job of looking after the Rose
22 Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838), antiquarian and archaeologist. 23 William Cunnington (1754–1810), antiquarian and archaeologist. 24 Lieutenant-General Augustus Pitt Rivers (1827–1900), ethnologist and archaeologist. In 1882 Pitt Rivers was appointed the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments. 25 Kathleen Kenyon (1906-78), archaeologist. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 41
Theatre, an Elizabethan theatre excavated in 1989. It caused a huge kerfuffle because it was going to be destroyed; £5 million of public money was spent to redesign the building that was going up over the top of it so that the remains would survive, and an extensive series of hydrological monitoring was to be installed, which became my pleasure to have to manage. We had reams of information to tell us that everything was okay, but it occurred to me at the time that it was just one place in a rather unusual situation – underneath a building, besides the River Thames with London going on around it. We could not really put what we were seeing and the results we were getting into any sort of context, so we started looking at other sites. Fortunately, English Heritage was going through its programme of wetland archaeological surveys at the time and a lot of sites were being looked at. A lot of places looked as if they had good potential for testing out the process. I am glad to say that that work has gone on and has been taken up by others. Next year in Denmark, we will be holding the fourth conference on the preservation of archaeological sites in situ. I am not sure that we still really understand what is going on and what the effect of change will be, but it is the modern change now that we are looking at and what does happen when we allow someone to build over an archaeological site. Does the evidence remain there or are we just making an excuse to allow development to go ahead without the benefit of detailed archaeological excavation? ALAN WILSON I can see coffee landing. We have two minutes to go, so I shall just make a couple of comments. After coffee, it will be the turn of Velson [Horie], Andrew [Oddy] and Carl [Heron]. It has also been suggested that a number of people in the audience will have different perspectives. Is Dr Hill Stoner here? I know that Professor Tite is here. Is Jerry Podany here? I will ask the three of you to comment on whether we are covering the right questions. You might have contrary perspectives in some cases. It would be interesting to know reaction to what you have heard so far, then we can come back to the witnesses and then perhaps, if there is time, we can go into the audience generally. We will reconvene at 11.30am. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 42
Session Two
ALAN WILSON Let us re-start. I shall hit on a number of members of the audience to give us a brief perspective on where we have got to and to say whether they have new questions. I ask Joyce Hill Stoner to kick off first. DR JOYCE I am not sure which hat I should put on, but I think I am here HILL STONER because I am the Co-ordinator of the Oral History Project for International Conservation. We have more than 245 interviews and when I got my material and it mentioned Tony Werner,26 Norman Brommelle27 and Plenderleith,28 I printed out and re-read on the aeroplane their history interviews, which I can offer to anyone by email should they later be interested in them. I am here as a protégé of Gettens and Stout.29 I knew them both and they launched this history project, but they always emphasised that it be international. Of course, it is very Brit-centred because of IIC and the wonderful things that happened here. I was also Managing Editor of Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts30 for 17 years from 1969 to 1986, after it moved entirely to the Getty Conservation Institute. Andrew [Oddy] said that there were a lot of things that began in the 1960s. I am a painting conservator and, to me, 1974 is the great change when it was the moratorium on the lining of paintings that was a result of the Greenwich Comparative Lining Conference of 1974. That spread around and, to me, so many other professions followed suit after that and began to look at what they were doing and the idea of minimum intervention. Preventive conservation and the managing of change can be traced to the 1967 IIC Congress so the idea was already there, but as each of you has pointed out the management of change has become so important. Something else that has happened is the awareness that advocacy for conservation should take place in the halls of Congress in the US Capitol, in Parliament, and as part of public outreach. If we talk among ourselves, we will get very little change of these concepts that are emerging. Visible conservation: the Liverpool Museum, the Lunder Center31 in the United States – the idea that we should not be in the back room or the basement, that we should have people watching us will impact on Congress and the public. Intangibles are important – David Bomford (as already noted)32 – has brought up the metaphysical side of conservation beautifully: his study as an
26 A.E.A. Werner (1911-2006), research chemist, National Gallery, London 1946-54; Principal Scientific Officer, British Museum 1954-9, Keeper of the Research Laboratory 1959-75; President, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 1971-4. 27 Norman S. Brommelle (1915-89), First Keeper of Conservation at the V&A, 1960-77. 28 Harold Plenderleith (1898-1997), conservator and archaeologist. 29 Rutherford John Gettens (1900-74) and George L. Stout (1897–78), the founding fathers of the Fogg Art Museum conservation laboratory in the USA during the 1920s. 30 Now AATA online http://aata.getty.edu/nps/ 31 http://americanart.si.edu/lunder/ 32 David Bomford, Associate Director for Collections, The Getty; formerly Senior Restorer of Paintings at The National Gallery, London. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 43
undergraduate was on the metaphysical poets. It was also brought up in May[Cassar]’s paper on national treasures. If we look at the Japanese and the idea of who, intangibly, are our national treasures, the matter comes back to oral history. Have we interviewed them? Have we tried to suck their brains and put it in our archives for us to use? Jerry [Podany] and I were both privileged to be in the Salzburg Global Collection seminar a year ago again bringing the wonderful concept of the intangible. One of the African members of the group said that, when an elder dies, a library burns. So we are all here together to begin finding out what such information is so that we can collect it. Velson [Horie] said to me at the break that each of us has to bang our drum first, tell who we are and where we are from and then, after that, I see a wonderful collecting of discourse and where we should go next on this. As to what you were asking about a different perspective, I would like to think that we are international in our approach. We are all English-speaking in this room, and that is an immediate limitation, but we are not so different. When Mr Stout said, ‘Let us begin this oral history’, he said, ‘Do not make it American-centred. Make it as international as you can.’ Language is a problem, but we are trying to address that. PROFESSOR I am a physicist by training, and I am very much an archaeological MICHAEL TITE scientist. I have really been using science for understanding the past, although for a short while I ran the Conservation Department at The British Museum. As regards scientific dating methods, when I started in the field, radiocarbon dating was just coming in. The introduction of an absolute chronology has changed dramatically the emphasis of many archaeologists. Before then, we had Gordon Childe33 on a global scale, trying to establish a chronology through stylistic developments of pottery and metalwork, but mainly pottery. At the beginning there was some reluctance to accept the dates provided by radiocarbon. I remember Stuart Piggott,34 who dated the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Britain on stylistic grounds, being very uncertain about whether one should accept radiocarbon dates because it was completely changing the chronology that had been established. Radiocarbon dating has dramatically changed the emphasis of archaeology. Now, if one is looking at the style of objects, there is less need to use it strictly to establish the chronology from one area to another. Having said that, there are still areas in dating where archaeologists or art historians are very much better than the scientific methods. As for pottery, Roman terra sigillata can be dated much more accurately by the archaeologists than the scientists can and probably will ever be able to. What has interested me this morning is the emphasis being put on the switch from maximum to minimum intervention. I am also intrigued by the pulling back from the philosophy of the permanence of an object. Does that mean that conservators will now be less
33 V. Gordon Childe (1892–1957), Co-founder and President of the Prehistoric Society and Director of the Institute of Archaeology 1947-57. 34 Stuart Piggott, CBE (1910–1996), archaeologist. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 44
reluctant at the removal of small samples from the objects for scientific study? I find that it is the conservators who are reluctant about the taking of samples, not the curators or the archaeologists. I just wonder if the change might make life easier for archaeological scientists. JERRY PODANY I do not work or reside in the UK, but as a heritage conservation professional and as someone who was educated in conservation at the Institute of Archaeology, I obviously have an interest in how conservation and conservation science has developed in the UK. And as President of the International Institute for Conservation I hope to bring an international perspective to the session. What strikes me this morning is that in exploring the development of science and conservation in Britain we are struggling, in this session, with the same thing that all the sessions will struggle with: science and its relationship with conservation. ‘Science’ functioning either as an archaeometric discipline or as one that contributes specifically to the development of heritage preservation. Professor Tite talked about scientific aspects of dating, which is an aspect of looking at how much time has passed. Stefan [Michalski] emphasised time forward, and how our concept of time changes as we consider the future. I am mostly interested in that; the future. And I must say am increasingly interested in how scientific method and analytical results can assist in the prolongation of the usefulness of cultural material (a way of defining heritage preservation). The conservation profession has certainly changed from a time when the discipline hid behind the mantle of science, and pretended to be something that it was not, or at least looked to scientific disciplines for the credibility its roots in restoration could not offer. But today the blending of analytical science and the technical approach of conservation enables us to realise that what we do is manage change … or as Stefan mentioned, manage time. This attitude has very much been influenced by our shift from preserving something, putting it away and not letting anyone touch it, to being concerned about a more intangible aspect, that of ‘use’ as meaning and purpose. If we are to use the object, whether for scientific investigation or pleasure, if we are to consume it by putting it on exhibition, and thus recognise that ‘use’ is part of the importance of any artefact, then we are also recognising that the object has an end. And by recognising an end date for the object’s existence, we put ourselves in the uncomfortable position of realising that we cannot pretend to have the power to preserve something forever. That is a difficult adjustment to make and one which analytical science does not prepare us for or assist us with. ALAN WILSON Thank you. We shall come back to the panel now. We will hear from Velson, Andrew and Carl. VELSON HORIE One of the results of my being a conservator is that I am a really rotten social historian, which revolves around the psychology of time and what it means to all of us. Stefan and Jerry Podany have pointed out that time is intangible and one of the things that western society Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 45
likes is certainty and to try to tie it down, which is why there is an obsession with dating. We change our attitude to time each generation. We remake time as we remake objects that are icons of time. I am a Morris dancer, and it is intangible heritage. We remake our Morris dances each week: they are remade into a new form. Some Morris dancers wish to capture it in aspic and keep it as it was at some point of time. As conservators, we try to do this. We study objects the best we can at that time and at that moment. Who would have thought 50 years ago that we would have DNA analysis? ANDREW ODDY We have been talking about dating and conservation science. There is one essential difference, which is that the dating of objects does not change the object at all, apart from taking a small sample. We change our perception of them, but the objects effectively are the same before we do the dating and after the dating. But if you are a conservation scientist dealing with either portable heritage, sites or monuments, whatever you do will change what you are working on. Stefan [Michalski] mentioned patina as an indication of decay. I do not agree with him. It is an indication of age, and it is unfortunate that it is. A lot of art historians latch on to patina as something that is absolutely sacred. Those wonderful Chinese bronzes with the watery green surface never existed in antiquity. They exist now, but their appearance bears no relation whatever to Chinese art and civilisation two and a half thousand years ago when they were made. Let us consider the perception of people today about objects and sites, for instance Arthur Evans35 at Knossos with his reconstructions of buildings that I gather are roundly condemned by most people today, although it is not my field. Using my experience, we might consider the problems that The British Museum has with the Elgin Marbles. Everyone forgets when they get into the Elgin Marbles debate that in the 1930s, when a certain amount of injudicious cleaning was carried out, but by no means the amount that a lot of people would like to pretend, extensive cleaning was the fashion. Everything was overcleaned in the 1930s. We changed objects, and we did it in response to how people expected to see them. In the 1960s when I came into conservation, excavated archaeological iron was very difficult to stabilise. One way of doing so was to dump it in paraffin wax, which Mike [Corfield] talked about. The problem was that they did not just dump it in paraffin wax, they mixed the paraffin wax with graphite and dumped it in that so that the surface became black – they thought that it looked nicer if it was black. I remember Henry Hodges36 saying, ‘It does have a scientific basis because graphite is lamellar. If you get it nicely mixed up, when it dries out the plates will form a barrier.’ That is a load of old rubbish, but it did make them look black and people thought that they looked better. We must come to terms with how, over time, the
35 Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941), archaeologist and conservation educator. 36 Professor H.W.M Hodges (1920-2007), Assistant Lecturer in Archaeology, Queen’s University, Belfast 1953-57; Lecturer in Archaeological Technology, Institute of Archaeology, London University 1957-74; Professor of Artefacts Conservation, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario 1974-87 (Emeritus). Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 46
perception of objects by art historians, curators and archaeologists has affected how they look now and how we, as conservators, must to intervene in the future. ALAN WILSON We may come back to that. We shall go to Carl and then I shall open the discussion up around the table, and then go to the audience so you can get ready to leap back in. CARL HERON I will be brief, because I am enjoying hearing the discussion from members of the audience and the detail that is coming from the witnesses. Members of the audience have raised some interesting issues. Mike Tite, who I know very well, talked about Stuart Piggott. Some very famous archaeologists are being talked about today. In the 1950s Stuart Piggott referred to the first radiocarbon date from Durrington Walls – he said that it was ‘archaeologically inacceptable’! Andrew [Oddy] made the distinction between dating and conservation science in the sense that once something has been dated, it was the same before as it was after the date. No change to the object. Most dating is rather destructive. When you were talking about it, I was thinking about the few remains of Neanderthal specimens that we have. Velson [Horie] mentioned DNA, and we now have a Neanderthal genome that has been published by the Max Planck Institute in Germany. A recent paper on the analysis of the Neanderthal skeleton from a dating perspective, as well as from a molecular biological perspective, started by saying that most specimens now bear the scars of our attempts to date them and to study them in one way or another. These are incredibly finite resources, so we have to be very careful in many ways. ALAN WILSON Okay. Who wants to jump in? STEFAN MICHALSKI I am glad that someone mentioned Henry Hodges. The witnesses were asked whether we knew any people who were influential, but who were dead and whom we could talk about. I drew up a list of people and also put down a couple who are still alive. Listening to the discussion, it clarified in my mind that we have two different components of the concept of time. I realise now that in the archaeological chronology time is a sequence. That is important for dating. The reason why it is important is that we are looking for causality between periods. Your interest in an absolute clock is not whether it stretches or shrinks, but what is in front of each other. It is a causality; sequencing notion of time and precision is incredibly important, because it changes causality and that is what archaeological explanation is pretty much about. The other idea of time that is actually closer to some of the things that I have been raising is that time is an interval. What is a long or a short time? How much should we make things last a long time? Speaking with Jerry over coffee helped clarify that. It is easy to understand why precision and calibration in scientific methods is really important for causality, sequencing ideas of time. But, within cultural, moral, ethical decisions, it is the interval notion of time. That reminded me of when I spoke to some First Nations people about the matter when I was researching social discount rate for how much Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 47
into the future we should actually try to manage collections and risk. Forever does not work. One hundred years is almost impossible and Governments use ten years. One of the First Nations groups said that we speak of seven generations for any decision: the generation of yourself, the three generations behind you and the three generations in front. The nice thing that I liked about that was that it resonated with what some of the more radical global climate change economists are saying, which is that we have to do social discount rate or the time rising has to go out three generations – 100 years – in order to do good benefit costs in a modelling of our decisions. That is a huge discussion. How much should we try to spend: billions of dollars now to save which generation? As we add more generations, we should be spending huge sums of money now to stop the screw-ups that they will face. On the other hand, with short term it does not work. Within our profession, it is the interval issue whereas, in archaeology, it is very much the sequencing causality issue. In terms of historical references, in order of more or less age, I was in the last classes that Henry Hodges taught at Queen’s University.37 We had him as a conservation tutor. He admitted that he knew little about object conservation, but that he could teach us about the history of technology. I remember two things about Henry: he was a chain smoker, despite having only one lung left that worked. I know that I have seen this quoted elsewhere, coming from other sources, but I know that Henry said in 1977, ‘The problem with museums is that they have no excretory function’: He was a pathologist by training. I have seen that emerge in other ways, but Henry said that in the late-1970s. It is a notion that there is already a criticism, but it is not a dynamic notion of a collection. It is just accumulate, accumulate, which is another form of absolutism. I met Garry Thompson38 briefly on tours of The National Gallery in 1981. I remember two things about him. One of the first things it was important for him to tell me was where to find a good, chocolate desert across the road from the gallery for lunch time. The other thing was when he was showing us all the light data he was gathering from all of the galleries. I had just visited the conservation restoration lab, which was wide open with skylights. I asked him to show me the values for the restoration. He said, ‘I don’t dare monitor the light values in there. I am just looking at the galleries.’ There was the divide between the responsibilities for exposure between what we do as conservators because somehow we are above all that, and what we prescribe for the general public who are trying to look at paintings. I got to see Westby Percival-Prescott39 bouncing around his lab for a while, and that was a real treat. I learnt from him that paintings could be left alone, unlined and slack with a belly on them – as he would say – and that was okay. I had just been exposed to a lot of debate
37 Hodges was Professor of Artefacts Conservation, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, between 1974 and 1987. 38 Garry Thomson (1925–2007), conservator. Research Chemist, National Gallery 1955-60, Scientific Adviser to the Trustees and Head of the Scientific Department 1960-85. 39 Westby Percival-Prescott (1923-2005), conservator. Head of Picture Conservation Department, National Maritime Museum, 1961-83, Keeper and Head of Picture Department, 1977-83. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 48
about linings and linings under rigid supports and, as a scientist, it seemed logical that you want to hold them in place. Westby came along and said, ‘No, we do not need to do that.’ For me, as a material scientist focused on why paintings crack and mechanics, that was revelatory.
VELSON HORIE Can I just chip in about Henry Hodges?40. He lectured me at the Institute of Archaeology. I had just done my degree in chemistry. Henry Hodges gave people their science and that may account for how science progressed in heritage in the following decades. STEFAN MICHALSKI … The notion that you could end up closing an important site for preservation reasons so that it would be there for the future and that only a few members of the public would see the real thing, but instead just see a reproduction shook me up a bit. I have never been happy with that decision, but I understand it as a rational decision if we want seriously to take the future generation’s interests to heart. [tape unclear] An Azarian king’s project was to restore the architecture and castle structures of a predecessor who was highly venerated. The notion of memorialising or honouring a prior individual by restoring their architecture seems to go back many thousands of years, certainly within recorded history. That I found comforting because it seemed that we tend to think of it as the last 200 years or even European, but the idea of the value of heritage as embodied in material remains seems incredibly old and the aristocracy has always been at the forefront of implementing it, witnessing other peoples who came before my generation. ALAN WILSON I will take Martin next. If other contributors from the audience have questions or comments, be prepared in the next few minutes to leap in. MARTIN JONES I want to pick up on one of the interesting things that Stefan said, and this time take a dig at my own profession. Stefan is right that archaeologists are highly concerned with sequence, but that is because we are not very good at thinking about other aspects of time. It is not that other aspects of time are not significant within archaeology, but we are just not good at it. In his paper, Carl rightly drew attention to one of the few people who has taken the matter forward and that is Geoff Bailey.41 I will also mention Chris Gosden42 at Oxford. We need to get better especially as we now have tools of much greater precision. Another point that Stefan made was that sequence is all about causality, and to link with something that Velson said, causality is about certainty. If you are back in the nineteenth century and progress to the certain truth, sequence feeds in very directly to that. If you are in the early twentieth century and developing inferior notions of truth, sequence is also very valuable for that. But now that we are in the twentieth-century and can look at all sorts of other
40 Hodges was Lecturer in Archaeological Technology, Institute of Archaeology, University of London, 1957-74. 41 Geoff Bailey, archaeologist. Anniversary Chair, University of York. 42 Chris Gosden, Chair of European Archaeology, University of Oxford. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 49
aspects of time, and have massive precision at our fingertips and very precise dates, we need to get better as archaeologists at thinking about other forms of time. I will link one historical anecdote. It must have been in the 1980s when the Irish and the German dendrochronologists finally agreed on a key point in the master sequence. There was a consensus between Belfast and the German chronologist about the master sequence for dendrochronology. At a wonderful meeting in Belfast, Mike Baillie,43 the key dendrochronologist, a great florid speaker, was rightly triumphant. He made the point – perhaps slightly over the top – that pretty soon we will be able to take the Bronze Age farmstead and say what date it was started. There was a slight pause, not because we doubted it, but because we were not entirely sure how that would advance our understanding of anything. It was the first time in my experience when we were faced with the concept of more precision than we knew what to do with. That was back in the 1980s and, since then, we have the option – certainly in respect of seasons of the year – that allows us to look into all sorts of aspects of the way time and human biography and human experience work. I just do not think archaeologists are very good at it. VELSON HORIE Let me pick up on the idea that time is necessarily the causality. We can pick up what the chaos theory does. MARTIN JONES Precisely. The whole determinate universe is anachronistic. VELSON HORIE You cannot deny – MARTIN JONES The entire world is now driven by complexity and disequilibrium. As I said earlier, when we start talking about the relationship between human society and climate change, an issue for the present and for the past, equilibrium dynamics and causality are not the way to go. ALAN WILSON I shall ask Martin to say more about other concepts of time. In relation to the exchange that has just taken place, I want to throw in my own threepennorth because that is precisely what I work on academically. You can determine something, but there is a lot that you cannot, such as multiple equilibria, alternative futures and alternative pasts. I used to be a physicist and one of the things that is particularly interesting in terms of heritage and archaeology is what physicists call phased transitions. If you look at changes in technologies over long periods, which in archaeology we get from the changing nature of tools and so on, the dating of phased transitions almost by definition takes place in short intervals of time – to take Stefan’s point. It is something real. It is not chaotic. To identify them is potentially important. To get phased transitions identified in archaeology is one of the things that the culture evolution people, also funded by AHRC, are doing.44 Martin, will you say a bit more about alternative forms of time? I understand intervals. It is quite interesting that intervals are probably longer the further we go back in the past. I am arguing that we cannot ditch
43 Professor Mike Baillie, The Queen’s University, Belfast. 44 Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875), lawyer and geologist. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 50
sequences because some things in the sequences are important. I would now like to know what the other concepts are. MARTIN JONES The two issues are time scale and moving from time as humanly experienced and time as invented. Invented histories through time are not perceived by any human agent–issue of scale. The other thing you know far more about than me is minute sensitivity. One of the key elements is the isotopic triangle, when you can take a human body and get a data climatic signal and a dietary signal from the same body. It is clear how we can take that sort of evidence, if it is well contextualised, forward, but I want to link it to an exhibition of the science of human bodies that The Wellcome Institute held two years ago. It was its most popular exhibition. People just streamed in to see science being done on human bodies. As has been said, ordinary people’s perception of heritage does not have to fix on the permanence of objects. It can be much more intellectually engaging. ALAN WILSON Are there contributors from the audience who want to speak? PROFESSOR I would like to focus on part of the question that deals with change. MAY CASSAR It is interesting that so far this morning we have not heard the mention of the word ‘damage’. We heard reference to destructive analysis, destructive sampling, and to minimal intervention. That has come from different disciplines: archaeological science, on the one hand, and conservation science, on the other. Both laud the fact that conservators are becoming more relaxed about the notion of sampling. Could reference be made to what we actually mean by ‘damage’? Why are we using the word ‘change’ if we are referring really to damage? Are we therefore moving away from what seems to me, if I have understood it correctly this morning, the position that in the past, although rather ad hoc methods of preservation might have been used, there was a willingness to engage with the latest and most current scientific or synthetic materials and utilise them for preservation purposes. Are we becoming so risk averse today that there is a whole swathe of advance technologies and scientific techniques that we risk not trying because we are now becoming too wedded to minimal intervention? DR PETER I am most interested in the emphasis on the sequential concerns of CANNON-BROOKES archaeologists, but it stems so much further back. The night before last we had a Talk Dinner at the Athenaeum and a talk on Lyell45 and geological time. Richard Fortey46 pointed out that the minimal changes in morphology of fossils, where we have a species that has survived up to the present day, seem to be difficult to reconcile with the churning of the genome that has been going on meanwhile. He said that the average species lasted for about 100,000 years. Some pretty acid comments were made about the homo sapiens who have just barely started, yet have made such a huge impression on the
45 AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity, http://www.cecd.ucl.ac.uk/home/ 46 Richard A. Fortey, palaeontologist, President of the Geological Society. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 51
world. The idea that morphology can continue on, while the genome is evolving is slightly salutary. ALAN WILSON Are there other comments or questions from the audience? I shall then go back to the witness panel. Does anyone want to comment on damage and change to risk aversion or morphology? MIKE CORFIELD I shall comment on damage and link it to conservation and what we generally call minimum conservation. Perhaps it should be termed more correctly as minimal conservation. In other words, do the minimum necessary to achieve the end you want. That difference in nuance is very important, otherwise we just put things in bags of silica gel or in the fridge and forget about them. Damage is slightly different. It may be deliberate damage before an object is buried, it may be damage caused during burial or it is an unforeseen event, something that happens after the object has been found or otherwise acquired. We have to approach it carefully. The extent to which the damage that has happened in the historic past is a question of some controversy and we should tread with some caution. No one can doubt that objects do get damaged in museums either accidentally or through the ravages of time. When we decide to restore objects we have to ask ourselves whether we are taking something away in terms of evidence by reshaping them. There is a lot to be said for keeping archaeological objects in the form that they come up from the ground: rather battered and bashed by the ravages of time. It gives context to the object and adds to it when it is put on display. There was recently a large cauldron that came from an Elizabethan shipwreck. It was flattened, but still recognisable as a cauldron, but very misshapen. We asked ourselves whether we should try to reshape it. In fact, the answer was quite easy. It was so badly corroded that it could not be reshaped. When we did put on display, it was very impressive as an object. Damage is a very complex term and needs a lot of thought and analysis. Another form of damage that has been touched on by Carl [Heron] and Martin [Jones] is sampling. An enormous number of archaeological objects in particular have been mutilated in the past by the enthusiasm to take samples to find out about, for example, the composition of Bronze Age daggers. It makes me weep when I see a dagger with a huge drill hole in it of a quarter of an inch diameter. Fortunately, technology is coming to our aid and we are able to manage with much less material than we needed in the past. When English Heritage moved into Fortress House in Savile Row, we installed in the basement one of Teddy Edwards’ enormous microprobe analysers that occupied a large part of the room to analyse metal objects. Now we can get the same result out of a thing we can hold in our hands. Once the samples have been taken, their association with the object seems to be lost forever. To my mind, that is wrong because someone else will come along in years to come and say, ‘We can get something more out of the object. Let us take another sample.’ Why not keep the sample with the object, as it should be? Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 52
ALAN WILSON Those words have lots of connotations. I am tempted to ask the question: when is patina damage? MICHAEL TITE I entirely agree with the need to retain samples. Thus, there are many examples of samples first used for electron microprobe analysis being later used for LA-ICP-MS which extends the analytical data to include trace elements and isotopic ratios. It is a matter of where the samples are kept. There is a problem. Some museums have resources to keep samples with the objects. Others are less well equipped. My philosophy is to keep them myself and pass them on to my research students, who hopefully will continue using them during their careers. Ideally, the samples would go back to the museum, but it depends on the museum having the resources to curate them. The other point is whether we should always wait for an improvement in a technique, and to what extent do we allow the discipline to be held up for decades as we would have done if we had delayed the application of radiocarbon dating until the development of the accelerator mass spectrometer method. We obviously have to take the risk that there will be improvements in technique. The responsible thing, given more and more techniques, is either to take small samples or retain the samples for future use with newly developed techniques. A point always to bear in mind is that when you dissolve something in acid, you have normally lost it. However, when you analyse a sample with the electron microprobe, you still have it available for future analyses mounted in a resin block. It is then a matter of what you do with the resin block. It worries me. I have a large number of such resin blocks. What do I do with them? If I give them to the Ashmolean Museum, will they have the resources to curate and document them for use by future researchers? MIKE CORFIELD Perhaps you need a repository. MICHAEL TITE That is right. Who will set that up? A repository for samples is a real need, and someone should be encouraged to set one up. MIKE CORFIELD Repositories are fashionable in the IT world at the moment. ALAN WILSON Perhaps someone ought to fire a project in the direction of AHRC to design one of them and put it out to bids to see who might start it. We have just under 25 minutes to go. I shall leave about 10 minutes at the end and ask people around the table to have two minutes of final comments and summing up. Let us move on from damage, and see whether colleagues want to introduce new topics. CARL HERON I have made lots of notes, but I was preparing for my two minutes of summary so I am happy to hear other comments. ALAN WILSON Common language, Stefan. STEFAN MICHALSKI I shall answer May [Cassar]’s question … The discussion about damage from sampling is a very particular specific example. It is damage because it started to use ‘change’ as a term, which is cleverly used by the National Trust as it is neutral. We then go to ‘damage’, and that is a value judgment. I tried 15 years to coin the usage of Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 53
deterioration from material change, and damage being the loss of value due to that material change. As we all know, patina is a form of material change due to age, which actually increases value. We have been dealing with that a long time. People round the table laugh because they are the scientists, and we just know that patina is an increase in value, due to material change which can, from a scientific perspective, be seen as decay. Change is neutral. Material change is still neutral, but it is scientifically of interest. Damage then has to be reserved for loss of value. If we have samples of exactly the same thing, we could say that, from the material point of view, we have lost nothing. All we have done is to taken out a cylinder. What happens is that it is disconnected. There is disassociation of the sample from the original and so on. It is a huge loss of value, which is why we are excited about it. When it comes to managing change, we are managing losses and gains in the profession. The National Trust is saying that we should now think about that, but that is difficult to sell to a politician if you say it is about managing change. We are talking about managing value loss and value gains. I met a person at the seminar that May [Cassar] put together to establish her programme. It is the process that UCL makes you go through. The external adviser was a Professor of Psychology. During the coffee break, we asked him about what he thought about conservators and conservation. He said he thought that conservators are just people who cannot deal with loss. I thought that that was the most perceptive summary of our profession that I had ever heard. From a psychologist, the word ‘loss’ resonates with huge Freudian or Jungian thinking or whatever. ‘Loss’ is a big word, and ‘damage’ is attached to loss. Patina is attached to gain. Those are all matters that our profession has struggled with. When we abandon the absolute notions of gains and losses and went to relativists, the interval of time becomes incredibly important. You do not have to talk about an interval of time if you talk about forever, but as soon as you make it finite, it becomes an ethical decision about us and future generations, and damage is linked to that. However, in terms of terminology, I hope that people understand that when they use the word ‘damage’, in every language that I have come across it is a loss of value. It is on a value plain. It is not on a material state plain. ALAN WILSON That is certainly an interesting, philosophical analysis and it answers my question on patina extremely well. MIKE CORFIELD I just want to comment on what Stefan said about not being able to stand loss. That is probably quite true. Our job is about trying to stop thing falling apart. The National Museum of Wales recently published a book about this called Things Fall Apart,47 an acknowledgement that things do change and that sometimes drastic action is needed and sometimes you cannot put them back together again. Several years ago, I went to a conference in the [United] States on varying
47 Buttler, C., and Davies, M. (eds), Things Fall Apart (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006). Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 54
archaeological sites in New Mexico. We had an interesting discourse on the reburial of pre-European sites which was made necessary by the high cost of maintaining them. We then had a meeting with the leaders of the First Nation people who had quite a different take on it: their belief was that everything comes from the ground, and everything goes back to the ground, and that was the end of the story as far as they were concerned. We have to look at things in the context of the things we are conserving and the beliefs of those who may have a continuing interest in their fate. STEFAN MICHALSKI I want to ask a question of the archaeologists. Traditionally, until recently, the maxim was that reburial was the safest low-budget way to save things for the future. However, the examples of climate change and the fact that water tables move around and are moving more rapidly now completely turns that maxim on its head. That would be a change in the past 30 years. It used to be given that reburial would be the best thing for it, but you are giving examples of when that is no longer such a simple solution. MARTIN JONES Mike [Corfield] and I had a friendly dispute over this, the details of which will not go into the transcript. ALAN WILSON May, are there any unanswered questions? I shall then go round the table and everyone can have three minutes each for their final words of wisdom. MAY CASSAR In archaeological science, the latest and most advanced scientific techniques are being used to make advances in our understanding of our archaeological past. It seems that, in other areas of cultural heritage, we do not have the same attitude to the use of the most advanced techniques. In conservation, we have used them in the past and have made mistakes, examples of which we have heard this morning, but I wonder whether we ought to be more robust in our approach to scientific and technological advances in all areas of heritage science, not just in archaeology. ALAN WILSON Can you say what those areas are? MAY CASSAR In archive conservation, book conservation, objects and the way in which DNA has been used by archaeologists so now we have the sequencing of Neanderthal man. CARL HERON I am an archaeologist, but I would not want you to be left with the impression that the world of archaeology is a complete paragon of virtue when it comes to the application of modern scientific methods. Martin made that point. We have to learn from our history, and that is part of the reasoning for having a meeting like this. In the 1930s, William Boyd,48 an immunologist in America, got permission to sample hundreds of Egyptian mummies from museums in North America and Europe – not for DNA analysis, but for blood group analysis – with the very laudable aim of establishing family groupings among Egyptian preserved bodies. Within about 10 to 20 years, other
48 William Clouser Boyd (1903-83), immunochemist. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 55
research had shown that blood group systems degrade over time and methods established for modern samples cannot be applied to archaeological samples. The lesson is that we must learn from past failures. Martin [Jones] made an important point when he said that, with the increasing sophistication of our techniques, we have to have parallel sophistication in the questions that we are asking. As an archaeological scientist, I sometimes see applications for destructive analysis that go to museums or through grant applications that I am quite unhappy with. ALAN WILSON We really are running out of time. I shall give May no more than one minute and everyone else has two minutes. If anyone wants to respond to May, it will have to be within their two minutes. I will then go to Velson and round the table. MAY CASSAR In some parts of the cultural heritage field, the application of conservation actually subscribes to minimal intervention. Do archaeological scientists do the same? Do you subscribe to that notion, because it seems that, in doing so, we are held back? The impression that I have is that you do not subscribe to it, and you apply scientific techniques more readily. ALAN WILSON Carl may get an extra 30 seconds to respond to that. Velson. VELSON HORIE Every object is an experiment. Every day is an experiment… That is the same attitude that was taken 150 years ago to the object. They did the best they could in the circumstances. We are still doing minimal intervention, instead of doing things that will take the subject forwards. We are really risk averse and we have to accept the failures and losses that result from action. We need to be confident about the culture that we live in… MIKE CORFIELD The idea of doing the best we can in the time that we happen to live in is not always the way. A good example is the construction of Vasa, the Swedish battleship that sank in the seventeenth century.49 It was brought up to the surface, beautifully conserved over 30 years and is now on display in Stockholm where, to the horror of conservators, it has been discovered that the ship is now stuffed full of sulphuric acid created by the sulphur that got into the ship during its burial at the bottom of Stockholm harbour. That was reacting with the residues of iron in the ship. It was completely unheard of anywhere else until the problem arose on the Vasa and the Swedish government has put in money and time to correct this. That was an example of doing the best we could. It was a brilliant bit of conservation, which then turned sour. A lot depends on the brief that you are given. When English Heritage restored the Albert Memorial [in Kensington, London], it was told by the Government that it had to be done in such a way that no major intervention would be needed for 60 years. We have to do the best we can and not over conserve but we may
49 http://www.vasamuseet.se/ Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 56
have to interpret this according to the circumstances prevailing at the time. ALAN WILSON I shall give Carl the last word, and then go to Andrew. ANDREW ODDY I want to pick up on the life of an object, a concept that we have heard once or twice. When a pot, for instance, is broken, that is part of its life cycle. If we put the pot back together, we are trying to turn back time. Part of me says that if we try to do that sort of conservation, we are going against nature. But we would diminish the richness of our museums if we did not put things back together. I saw what I thought at the time was wonderful ceramic conservation some years ago at The Getty Museum. You could look at the pot and it obeyed what we in this country call the 6 inch, 6 foot rule. As you walked past the display case, it looked complete. If you held it in your hand, you could clearly see where the object had been conserved or restored. But the object never looked like that before it entered a museum. It is another aspect of the patina thing. I have now become a heretic because in my dotage I believe that if you are going to put a pot together you should be going back to the nineteenth century concept of invisible restoration. That is what it looked like originally. We should not be putting in museum cases things that never existed, and I am afraid that we are doing rather a lot of that now. MARTIN JONES I want to make two points, one of which connects, I hope, with what May [Cassar] said. An interesting theme today has been the idea of material as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. We all know that that is something that has for a long time gone down well within an academic or research community. The principal champions of a permanent monument or object have repeatedly been non- specialist members of the public. If we had time, we could take three examples: Stonehenge, Seahenge and the Rose Theatre. We would have a certain amount of humility. It is not specialists who have a passionate ownership of permanency in such things. My second point is also about non-specialist stakeholders. I want to emphasise that we have no difficulty in engaging non-specialist stakeholders in quite complex scientific endeavours in relation to heritage. We do not have time to explore the amount of money that has come from developer funding into high-level archaeological science, and that is something in which Mike [Corfield] has played a proactive role in his career. We have not had time to look at how many television hours and watcher figures are related to complex issues, and the whole interest in scientifically enriched intangible heritage will be greatly enhanced as ‘virtual worlds’ continue. ALAN WILSON Thank you. Stefan. STEFAN MICHALSKI The biggest shift in my career of 32 years is the idea of what is best that we can do for objects and the collections? The shift has been from letting science knowledge drive the agenda to the needs of the collection driving the agenda, and that has pushed us towards risk management. The shift to risk management, and people like Rob Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 57
Waller50 and Jonathan Ashley-Smith,51 who I have learned a lot from, was an example of where it was not a great man or woman who we listened to in our own field but where we were very much influenced. Our paradigms were shifted because of a willingness to expose ourselves to another perspective and body of technical or management knowledge, risk analysis and risk management. Nothing that I can say about that is novel to them, but it was very novel to us. There we will use the state of the conservation and the state of the collection as a source of information, but we will also try to have a robust use of science and statistics. We need to collect what the Dutch and others are collecting in terms of incident reports, case studies and events. What we are trying to do now is to predict the future in order to try and reduce it. What we use as guidance for decisions now is based on predictive models of the future of the loss of value. We try in risk management to minimise our predicted loss of value. We are forever using future driven perspective informed by the past, informed by the best science, but that is a big shift in perspective. Throughout my career and the area in which I work, I say that that is the biggest shift and it is heavily reliant not only on individuals I met in this field, much as they gave us things; but on learning from other bodies of knowledge, which are extremely well-developed and from whom we can borrow. CARL HERON I have two or three points to summarise. The dialogue between archaeologists and conservation scientists has been very interesting. It is always important to get out of our disciplinary straitjacket and have broader and wider discussions. There may be more differences than common ground, but it is the common ground where we can develop ideas for the future. If you think that those around the table have struggled with some of the concepts of time and how it relates in our disciplinary endeavours, I draw attention to one of the quotes that I picked out for my paper. It was by Geoff Bailey, who Martin Jones mentioned. In referring to the meeting ground between the significant advances in developing chronologies – the scientific reference scale – on the one hand, and ‘interpretations of temporality’ on the other, according to Geoff Bailey, this was ‘a large area of unexplored territory’. We are just beginning to prise and tease out some of those questions and possibilities. Finally, the idea of minimum intervention. Archaeologists do subscribe to the idea of minimal intervention. An emerging body of information underpins that, and I will go back to DNA and Egyptian mummies as the final example. If a museum receives an application to sample DNA from Egyptian mummies the museum can rely on specialised data about the likelihood of DNA survival according to the temperature of burial over the previous 2,000 to 3,000 years. We are able to model and understand change through time, and we know
50 Robert Waller, Chief, Conservation at the Canadian Museum of Nature. 51 Jonathan Ashley-Smith, V&A Museum, Scientific Officer, 1973-7, Head of Conservation Department, 1977-2002, Senior Research Fellow in Conservation Studies 2002-04. Seminar I: Concepts of Time and Change 58
so much more about the likelihood of DNA preservation in different environments. ALAN WILSON Thank you very much, Carl. We must be pretty much on time. I will certainly not attempt to summarise what has been a very rich and diverse discussion. I thank the organisers, the witnesses and all of you in the audience. It has been a really interesting morning. Thank you very much.
Witness Seminar II
How Has the Emergence of Heritage Science Come About?
Wilkins Old Refectory, University College London
Wednesday 8th December 2010 2pm to 4.45pm
Format
Seminar 2 – How Has the Emergence of Heritage Science Come About? – this witness seminar considered, among other issues, changes in our understanding of the time depth of chronology, the move from consideration of individual objects to populations of collections, and from damage to the management of material change.
The witness seminar is best considered like a group interview or conversation, led and moderated by the chair. The witness seminar was recorded and transcribed. Speakers have been asked if they wish to make any redactions to improve the clarity of their utterances. The agreed transcript of the proceedings, with speakers and their contributions identified, is being published here.
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Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 60
Participants
Chair:
PROFESSOR Professor of History of Art, University of Sussex and President MAURICE of the Society of Antiquaries of London HOWARD
Papergiver:
DR DAVID Keeper, Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, SAUNDERS The British Museum
Witnesses:
SARAH Historic Properties Director, The National Trust STANIFORTH
PROFESSOR Professor of Archaeological and Museum Conservation, Institute ELIZABETH PYE of Archaeology, UCL
DR JOHN S. MILLS Formerly Head of the Scientific Department, The National Gallery
SHARON CATHER Reader, the Conservation of Wall Painting Department, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
DR VINCENT Visiting Professor, University of the Arts and Emeritus DANIEL Researcher, The British Museum
JO KIRBY Secretary-General, International Institute for Conservation of ATKINSON Historic and Artistic Works
PROFESSOR Emeritus Professor of Archaeological Science, Research MICHAEL TITE Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford
Audience Participants:
PROFESSOR MAY Director of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage CASSAR Programme; Director of the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, University College London
Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 61
PROFESSOR DANA Professor of Architectural History, University of Southampton ARNOLD
DR PETER Formerly Keeper of the Departments of Art, Birmingham CANNON- Museum and Art Gallery (1965-78) and National Museum of BROOKES: Wales (1978-86)
MIKE CORFIELD Heritage Science and Conservation Consultant; Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University
VELSON HORIE Collection Care and Conservation Consultant
STEFAN Senior Conservation Scientist, Canadian Conservation Institute MICHALSKI
DR ANDREW Formerly Keeper of Conservation at The British Museum 1985- ODDY: 2002
DR JOYCE HILL Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of STONER Material Culture, University of Delaware and Paintings Conservator
Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 62
Chronology
1800s Significant examples of isolated analyses of both museum objects and in situ material in archaeological excavations and buildings.
Beginnings of an understanding of deterioration of paint pigments and light.
Use of X-rays towards the end of the century.
Early 1900s Successful systematic studies of the binding media.
Post-WWI Investigation into deterioration of museum objects, first by the British Museum and then (in 1930s) by the National Gallery.
1930s-40s First international conference of the International Museums Office of the League of Nations was held in Rome. Resulted in the publication of Manual of the Conservation and Restoration of Paintings and a new journal to report the work of those engaged in museum studies, Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts (publication ceased 1942).
Development of infrared and ultraviolet photography.
Parallel development of ‘scientific’ conservation treatments
1939-45 Second World War: preservation of museum objects in the face of possible war damage, etc.
1950 International Institute for Conservation (IIC) established.
1955 Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA) founded at the University of Oxford.
1957 Formation of a UK group that was later to become independent as UKIC and then evolved into the Institute for Conservation (Icon).
1958 RLAHA began publishing its Bulletin, which became the journal Archaeometry and in 1962 began the series of meetings that grew into biennial international symposia on archaeometry.
1958-83 Seminar series on the Application of Science in the Examination of Works of Art held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
1967 IIC’s third congress on Museum Climatology.
1987 IIC Jubilee Conference on ‘preventive conservation’.
Late-1980s Beginnings of a marked increase in the role played by university researchers.
1992 Conference: ‘Conservation Science in the UK’.
Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 63
1994 IIC congress dedicated to Preventive Conservation.
2002 Conference: ‘Conservation Science’.
2005-6 The Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords held an Inquiry on Science and Heritage.
2007 Conference: ‘Conservation Science’.
AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme launched.
Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 64
Introductory Paper: An Abridged History of Heritage Science in the UK
DAVID SAUNDERS The British Museum
The scientific investigation of cultural heritage has a long history within Britain. The same curiosity that led to the assembly of Wunderkabinets and the collection of antiquities in the Enlightenment was also directed to questions of materials and manufacture. Attempts to analyse objects were restricted by the range of techniques available, the need to take and destroy samples and by the understanding of the chemical and physical properties of materials. These scientific studies were rarely systematic and primarily arose from personal contacts between scientists and those who collected or curated. By the early part of the nineteenth century, there are significant examples both of isolated analyses of museum objects and in situ investigations of materials in archaeological excavations and buildings. For example, John Haslam identified a number of the pigments used in the paintings at St Stephen’s Chapel in the Palace of Westminster, Humphrey Davy analysed pigments he had collected at Rome and Pompeii (Rees-Jones, 1990) and J.G. Children made a sophisticated and accurate analysis of the Egyptian blue inlaid inscriptions in the sarcophagus of Seti I in Sir John Soane’s collection (Children, 1821). In similar studies conducted in other European countries during this period, Chaptal also examined Pompeian pigments (Chaptal, 1809) and Ciampi analysed the pigments in the sacristy at the Campo Santo in Pisa (Ciampi, 1810). These early studies of pigments and less-successful attempts to identify binding media have recently been surveyed comprehensively (Nadolny, 2003); it was not until the early twentieth century that systematic studies of the binding media showed similar success (Ostwald, 1905). A second group of objects that attracted much attention during the nineteenth and early twentieth century was ancient bronzes, with analyses of both the corrosion products and the body metal (Caley, 1951). In parallel to these investigations of ancient materials there was an increasing interest in the changes to materials over time, an interest that often focused on ensuring that the materials employed by contemporary artists would not themselves deteriorate. In the early nineteenth century George Field studied the stability of pigments (supplied by colourmen or leading artists) to the effects of light and pollution, while later in the century Russell and Abney explored the effect of light on a wide range of artists’ materials (Russell and Abney, 1888). This preoccupation with using only the most stable compounds was by no means confined to British scientists, with active research into the behaviour of traditional and modern materials by Chevreul and Lefort in France (Lefort, 1855) and in Germany, leading in the latter case to the founding of the German Society for the Promotion of Rational Painting Techniques (Kinesher, 2006). The findings of, for example, Field made it clear that it was not merely a matter of the component materials, but that their surrounding environment could adversely affect collections. This concern that the prevailing conditions in museums and galleries might contribute to deterioration led to calls for new buildings to be located away from the polluted centres of cities – for example an enquiry was held to determine a new site for the National Gallery in the early 1850s (Saunders, 2000) – and that light exposure should be moderated. Another lively topic for debate in the late nineteenth century that touched both these concerns was the potentially
Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 65 damaging effect of gas lighting in museums, Faraday having demonstrated its deleterious effect on bookbindings (Faraday, 1843). As part of the enquiry into its relocation, Michael Faraday recommended that a chemist be retained by the National Gallery (Brommelle, 1956), but it took another 80 years to establish a science department, by which time (1934) laboratories were well established in a number of museums worldwide. A museum laboratory had been established in Berlin by Dr Friedrich Rathgen as early as 1888 and by the turn of the century the newly developed technique of X- radiography was being used in a number of centres in Germany and Austria to complement standard photography in the examination of objects (Wehlte, 1932). Across the Atlantic a laboratory was set up at the Fogg Art Gallery at Harvard University, staffed by, among others, George Stout and John Gettens (Bewer, 2010). In 1926 Alan Burroughs from the Fogg travelled to major museums in Europe with a portable X-ray machine, making X-radiographs of Old Master paintings that later featured in his 1938 publication Art Criticism from a Laboratory. In Britain a laboratory was established at the British Museum not long after Alexander Scott was appointed in 1919 to investigate the causes of deterioration of museum objects that had been stored in underground tunnels to protect them from aerial bombardment during the 1914–1918 war (Plenderleith, 1998). In 1934, this was joined by the laboratory at the National Gallery under Ian Rawlins, by which time the British Museum Research Laboratory was run by Harold Plenderleith. While those working at laboratories in Europe and the United States were in communication, travel between the two continents was expensive and time-consuming. In 1930 the first international conference of the International Museums Office of the League of Nations was held in Rome, offering an opportunity for those engaged in scientific examination and analysis of objects to meet. In addition to greater collaboration between laboratories, two important outcomes from the conference were the Manual of the Conservation and Restoration of Paintings and a new journal to report the work of those engaged in museum studies, Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, which ran from 1932 to 1942. The journal reported many studies of paintings, dealing with artists’ practice, lining, relining and the taking and sectioning of samples for analysis using rather elaborate equipment. The manufacturing processes and analyses of metal artefacts was also a recurring theme. Little attention was given to the analysis of the organic components of objects, with the notable exception of a review in the journal Mouseion of the state-of-the-art in 1932 (Eibner, 1932). A number of trends emerge from this period between the Rome conference and the cessation of Technical Studies…. First, the number of photographic techniques that were adapted to examine objects increased. During this period infrared photography (Lyon, 1934) and ultraviolet photography (Rorimer, 1931) were added to X-radiography as means of examining ‘hidden’ details of objects. In 1940 Rawlins produced From the National Gallery Laboratory, showing many X-radiographs of paintings from the National Gallery collections and including a single infrared photograph. While most analyses of materials were either qualitative – based on microchemical tests, physical properties such as refractive index or crystal habit, or occasionally staining – or quantitative gravimetric assays, the use of instrumental techniques for analysis can be traced to this period. For example, by the late 1930s spectrographic analysis was being used in the laboratory of the Courtauld Institute of Art to examine, among others, pigments on pre-Dynastic ceramics and the composition of Chinese glass (Ritchie, 1936–37; Farnsworth and Ritchie, 1938). The period saw a parallel development of ‘scientific’ conservation treatments alongside, and contrasted with, traditional practices of restoration and renovation. The scientific methods were characterized by the use of chemical and particularly electrochemical cleaning methods, the application of scientific techniques to test materials before treatment and by a greater openness concerning the materials and methods used; a common complaint of those who would later
Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 66 found the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) was that conservators jealously guarded methods and materials, their ‘trade secrets’. Although Technical Studies… continued to be published in the United States for part of the 1939–1945 war, in Europe the scientists attached to museums and galleries – including both Plenderleith and Rawlins – were largely preoccupied with the safe storage of collections. Once the immediate threat of destruction had been averted by evacuating most objects from the city centres, attention was focused on avoiding the detrimental effects observed during wartime storage earlier in the century. In slate quarries and salt mines much was learnt about the beneficial effects of stable climates for hygroscopic objects – particularly paintings – and these lessons were applied when collections returned in peacetime; for good or ill, the subsequent preoccupation with air conditioning for museums had its origin in the observations made at this time. In peacetime, a group of those most closely involved in the scientific conservation of paintings and antiquities were brought together – not least as expert witnesses in the case of the Van Meegeren forgeries and to the Weaver Enquiry into the clearing of paintings at the National Gallery – and began to create the plans for an international conservation organization that led to the foundation of the IIC in 1950. The IIC sought to promote the application of scientific principles to the practice of conservation while not ignoring or superseding aesthetic considerations. By the mid-1950s the IIC’s new journal, Studies in Conservation, had been established as a successor to Technical Studies…. A number of regional groups of IIC were established over the next decade, including, in 1957, a UK group that was later to become independent as UKIC and to evolve into the present Institute for Conservation (Icon). While Studies in Conservation provided a route to publish scientific research on collections, the opportunity to meet others working in the field was finally re-established when the first IIC congress (on recent advances in conservation) was held in Rome in 1961. With Studies …, the proceedings of IIC congresses, the conferences of the Conservation Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM-CC), which also began in the 1960s, and the seminar series on the Application of Science in the Examination of Works of Art held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1958 to 1983, became the principal routes to report new conservation and scientific results for the next two decades. These publications report the increasing use of instrumental methods to examine, analyse and date works of art (in contrast to current usage the term ‘work of art’ seems then to have been applied equally to artistic and archaeological objects). In addition to a number of advances to the techniques used to analyse the inorganic components of objects, for example through neutron activation (Kühn, 1966), X-ray fluorescence (Hall, 1963), electron microprobe analysis (Young, 1963) and X-ray diffraction (Barker, 1965), the 1960s saw the first applications of infrared spectroscopy (Kühn 1960) and gas chromatography (Mills, 1966; Stolow, 1965) to the identification of organic components of works of art. A number of the reports of new analytical methods at the IIC and Boston meetings came from Edward ‘Teddy’ Hall, who had been appointed the first director of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA) at Oxford University on its foundation in 1955. In 1958 the RLAHA began publishing its Bulletin, which became the journal Archaeometry and in 1962 began the series of meetings that grew into the current biennial international symposia on archaeometry. The next 30 years saw a steady increase in the number of new techniques developed, adapted or applied to look at the materials comprising works of art. It also witnessed the emergence of the scientific aspects of preventive conservation as a discipline. As mentioned above early studies had looked at both the nature and causes of deterioration and many studies had been conducted on the susceptibility of objects – particularly paintings – to fluctuating humidity. A single article in Technical Studies… addressed this area in the 1930s, looking at the
Seminar II: The Emergence of Heritage Science 67 conditioning of cases and frames (Cursiter, 1936), but by 1967 the IIC could devote its third congress to Museum Climatology (Thomson, 1968). Thomson went on to produce a book on the subject, The Museum Environment (Thomson, 1978), and the term ‘preventive conservation’ was later adopted – a session was organized on the theme in the 1987 Jubilee Conference (Black, 1987) and the 1994 IIC congress was dedicated to Preventive Conservation (Roy and Smith, 1994). Until the late 1980s, the scientific study of objects and their deterioration, in the UK at least, remained largely the province of museum and gallery laboratories. Although examination and analysis were taught as part of university courses in archaeology and conservation, teaching was conducted primarily by museum researchers. Science sections had been established within the conservation departments of a number of other national museums and galleries, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Gallery and National Museum of Scotland. Of the papers published in the 1987 and 1988 conferences to celebrate 50 years of the Institute of Archaeology (Black, 1987) and 30 years of UKIC (Todd, 1988) respectively, fewer than 10 per cent were presented by university-based researchers, with most collections-based research conducted within museums, galleries and regional museums’ services, or by conservators in private practice. The late 1980s and 1990s saw the beginning of a marked increase in the role played by university researchers; many conservation courses appointed scientists, who not only taught students, but also carried out related research, and a number of research groups in other university departments became involved in projects related to the examination or, more frequently, deterioration of cultural heritage. University researchers became involved in collaborative projects, bringing with them not only their expertise but greater experience in applying for funding at exactly the moment when support, particularly from European Community technology programmes, became available for such research. The increasing involvement from the university sector in the UK can be charted in the three publications reporting meetings held in 1993, 2002 and 2007 respectively (Tennent, 1993; Townsend and Townsend et al, 2003). Also notable is that although the first of these meetings covered ‘Conservation Science in the UK’, the subsequent meetings were entitled simply ‘Conservation Science’ reflecting increasing international collaboration in the projects described at the meetings and in the publications. Other trends that emerge from these publications also reflect changes to the field. The work that led to the emergence of the terms ‘preventive conservation’ and ‘conservation science’ helped to define and shape the direction of much research in the 1980s and 1990s, but tended to create a distinction between those investigating the deterioration of objects and its active or passive amelioration and those applying scientific methods to answer historical, archaeological or anthropological questions of provenance, manufacture, use and significance. This contrasted with earlier decades, when scientists working in museums and galleries had moved more-or-less seamlessly between these activities. Meanwhile, the number of analytical techniques applied to the examination of objects has continued to grow apace in the last two decades, often encouraged by greater dialogue with physical and medical science departments in universities where these methods are frequently developed. The trend has been towards avoiding the need to sample whenever possible, hence the rise of non-contact, non-invasive and non-destructive techniques. Where samples must be taken there have been dual drives to reduce sample size and to maximize the amount of information obtained, subjecting the sample to analysis by a series of techniques. From the application of single analytical methods, examination has moved towards a more holistic consideration of how various complementary techniques can be used to provide a more nuanced interpretation. A natural progression from the development of non-invasive analysis has been to take equipment to the object rather than vice versa, and suites of portable analytical instruments have been developed and deployed, most notable that assembled under the EU-supported LABS-
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TECH, EU-ARTECH and CHARISMA projects (Brunetti, et.al., 2007). An exception to this has been certain highly complex analytical equipment (using, for example, synchrotron or neutron radiation), which has increasingly found use in the examination of objects as those responsible for these facilities have seen the potential value of interactions with the heritage sector. Here, the samples must be taken to the equipment, but networks and projects – particular access projects at national and international level – have helped to ensure that such equipment and expertise have been applied to questions in heritage science. One effect of the proliferation in analytical techniques and the increasingly broad base of those working in heritage science has been that it has become difficult, if not impossible, to capture the breadth of knowledge in a single text. Twenty years ago it was possible – with difficulty – to maintain a reasonably comprehensive overview of the state of scientific research in the heritage sector; there were few journals in which to publish, one or two essential conferences per year and for the less accessible literature, Art and Archaeology Technological Abstracts. Since then, the number of researchers, and the variety of places in which they report their work has burgeoned. The imperative in the academic community to publish and the ranking of journals has led to much primary research being spread across publications in many scientific disciplines and the conservation or museum studies literature. For museums and other heritage organisations, the goal is often to present this information in the context of objects and thereby to increase understanding of the collections for both specialist audiences and – increasingly – the public. The latter may not be through formal publication, but can include web site content, audiovisual material or exhibitions. Indeed exhibitions are now a recognised research outcome of grant giving bodies, including the AHRC. The great expansion in activity in the last two decades has seen extraordinary advances in the understanding of material nature of our heritage and the communication of this to the public, although the physics and mechanics of objects and their deterioration is still rather less well understood than their chemistry. However, these advances have also brought with them fragmentation that cannot easily be addressed through channels developed in the twentieth century; institutes, journals and conferences have proliferated, creating a compartmentalization. In this climate, with no umbrella body for heritage scientists in the UK or internationally, there has been little overall co-ordination of research and no obvious forum for its development. Such a pattern was clear in the reports prepared for the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords when it considered ‘Science and Heritage’ in 2006, and in the evidence offered to that committee (House of Lords, 2006). A number of the initiatives that have arisen as a result of the recommendations made by the committee are beginning to help to redress these issues: a National Heritage Science Strategy has been developed to help set future priorities and the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme has not only promoted greater cross-disciplinary research but has also encouraged greater collaboration and networking. Added to the existing challenges above, more recent concerns, such as the impact of climate change, energy conservation and changed economic circumstances, have added a new dimension to the future conservation of collections. However, it is a hugely exciting, if challenging, moment to be in this field, with increased scientific activity, growing public and academic interest and the advent of the first university course in UK specifically to address the heritage science. References Barker, H. 1965. Spectrographic and X-Ray Diffraction Methods in the Museum Laboratory. In Application of Science in the Examination of Works of Art. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, pp. 218–21. Bewer, F.G. 2010. A Laboratory for Art: Harvard’s Fogg Museum and the Emergence of Conservation in America, 1900–1950. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Black, J. (ed.) 1987. Recent Advances in the Conservation and Analysis of Artefacts: Jubilee Conservation Conference Papers. London: Summer Schools Press [for] University of London Institute of Archaeology. Brommelle, N.S. 1956. Material for a history of conservation: the 1850 and 1853 reports on the National Gallery, Studies in Conservation 2, pp. 176–88 (esp. pp.184–5). Brunetti, B.G., Matteini, M., Miliani, C., Pezzati, L. and Pinna, D. 2007. MOLAB, a Mobile Laboratory for In Situ Non-Invasive Studies in Arts and Archaeology. In J. Nimmrichter, W. Kautek, M. Schreiner, (eds.) Lasers in the Conservation of Artworks: LACONA VI proceedings : Vienna, Austria, Sept. 21-25, 2005. Berlin. New York: Springer. Volume 116, Part V, pp. 453-460. Caley, E.R. 1951. Early History and Literature of Archaeological Chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education 26, pp. 64–6. Chaptal, J-A. 1809. Sur quelques couleurs trouvées à Pompeïa. Annales de Chimie, 1st series, pp. 22–31. Children, J.G. (1821). On the Nature of the Pigment in the Hieroglyphs on the Sarcophagus, from the Tomb of Psammis. Annals of Philosophy, New Series II, pp. 389–90. Ciampi, S. 1810. Notizie inedite della Sagrestia pistoiese de' Belli Arredi del Campo Santo pisano e di altre opere di disegno dal secolo XII. al XV. raccolte ed illustrate dal professor Ciampi. Florence: Presso Molini, Landi e Compagno. Cursiter, S. 1936. Control of air in cases and frames. Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts 5, pp. 109–16. Eibner, A. 1932. L’Examen Microchimique des Aglutinants. Mouseion 20, pp. 5–22. Faraday, M. 1843. On the ventilation of lamp burners. Royal Institution lecture, London, 7 April 1843. Farnsworth, M. and Ritchie, P.D. 1938. Spectrographic Studies on Ancient Glass: Egyptian glass, mainly of the eighteenth dynasty, with special reference to its cobalt content. Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts 6, pp.155–73. Hall, E.T. 1963. Methods of Analysis (Physical and Microchemical) Applied to Paintings and Antiquities. In G. Thomson (ed.) 1963. Recent Advances in Conservation. Contributions to the IIC Rome Conference, 1961. London: Butterworths, pp. 29–32. House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee. 2006. Science and heritage: report with evidence 9th report of session 2005-06. House of Lords papers 256. London: The Stationery Office Limited. Kinesher, K. 2006. Paintings are made of paint: the exhibition of painting techniques in the Munich Glastpalast. In D. Saunders, J. Townsend and S. Woodcock (eds.) The object in context: crossing conservation boundaries: contributions to the Munich Congress, 28 August-1 September 2006. London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, pp. 41–8. Kühn, H. 1960. Detection and identification of waxes, including Punic wax, by infra-red Spectrography. Studies in Conservation 5, pp. 71–81. Kühn, H. 1966. Trace elements in white lead and their determination by emission spectrum and neutron activation analysis. Studies in Conservation 11, pp. 163–9. Lefort, J. 1855. Chimie des couleurs pour la peinture à l’eau et à l’huile comprenant l’historique, la synonyme, les propriétés physiques et chimiques, la préparation, les variétés, les falsifications, l’action toxique et l’emploi des couleurs anciennes et nouvelles. Paris: Masson. Lyon, R.A. 1934. Infra-red radiations aid examination of paintings. Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts 2, pp. 203–12. Mills, J.S. 1966. The gas chromatographic examination of paint media. Part I. Fatty acid composition and identification of dried oil films. Studies in Conservation 11, pp. 92–108. Nadolny, J. 2003. The first century of published scientific analyses of the materials of historical painting and polychromy, circa 1780–1880. Reviews in Conservation 4, pp. 1–13. Ostwald, W. 1905. Ikonoscopische Studien I: Mikroskopischer Nachweis der einfachen Bindmittel. Sitsungsberichte der Königlich Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 5, pp. 167–74. Plenderleith, H.J. 1998. A History of Conservation. Studies in Conservation Vol.43, pp. 129–43.
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Rees-Jones, S.G. 1990. Early experiments in pigment analysis. Studies in Conservation 35, pp. 93– 101. Ritchie, P.D. 1936-37. Spectrographic Studies on Ancient Glass. Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts 5, pp. 209–20. Rorimer, J.J. 1931. Ultraviolet Rays and Their Use in the Examination of Works of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Roy, A. and Smith, P. (eds.) 1994. Preventive conservation: practice, theory and research. London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Russell, W. and Abney, W de W. 1888. Action of Light on Water Colours, Report to the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education. London: HMSO. Saunders, D. 2000. Pollution and the National Gallery. National Gallery Technical Bulletin 21, pp. 77–94. Standage, H.C. 1887. The artist's manual of pigments: showing their composition, conditions of permanency, non-permanency, and adulterations, effects in combination with each other and with vehicles, and the most reliable tests of purity. London: Crosby Lockwood and Co. Stolow, N. 1965. The application of gas chromatography in the investigation of works of art. In Application of science in the examination of works of art. Seminar held at the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, pp. 172–83. Tennent, N. (ed.) 1993. Conservation Science in the UK, Preprints of the meeting held in Glasgow, May 1993. London: James & James. Thomson, G. (ed.) 1968. Contributions to the London Conference on Museum Climatology, 18-23 September, 1967. London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Thomson, G. 1978. The Museum Environment. London: Butterworth-Heinemann. Todd, V. (ed.) 1988. Conservation Today: Preprints for the UKIC 30th Anniversary Conference held in October 1988. London: UKIC. Townsend, J.H., Eremin, K. and Adriaens, A. (eds.) 2003 Conservation Science 2002: papers from the conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, 22-24 May 2002. London: Archetype Publications. Townsend, J.H., Toniolo, L. and Cappitelli, F. (eds.) 2008. Conservation Science 2007. London: Archetype Publications. Wehlte, K. 1932. Aus der Praxis der maltechnischen Röntgenographie. Technische Mitteilungen für Malerei 48, pp. 71–2. Young, W.J. 1963. Application of the Electron Microbeam Probe and Microo X-rays in Nondestructive Analysis. In Thomson G. (ed.) Recent Advances in Conservation: Contributions to the IIC Rome Conference, 1961. London: Butterworths, pp. 33-38.
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Questions for Consideration
1. Why did scientific activity grow up in the UK in individual museums and galleries rather than a national centre as is the case in, for example, France or the Netherlands? 2. How far have the interests of the individuals involved moulded the priorities for research rather than an objective need for information? 3. To what extent is heritage science a single discipline: Have we been right to emphasise this at the expense of, for example, conservation science, archaeometry or technical examination of works of art? 4. To what extent do heritage scientists answer other peoples’ research questions; is that a problem? 5. Do HEIs and museums (and galleries) really have shared objectives; has their collaboration been of benefit to either or both? 6. What do we mean by interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary research in the field of heritage science? 7. Where should heritage science be published/communicated? 8. Can there be a single voice or umbrella organisation for UK heritage sciences?
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Session One
PROFESSOR I welcome everyone to this witness seminar on how the emergence MAURICE HOWARD of Heritage Science came about. I am Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex and the University’s Culture and Heritage Director of Research. I am also the President of the Society of Antiquaries of London. I am very interested in the evidence that people will bring to the seminar today, and ways forward in this area. I welcome you on behalf of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in this Science and Heritage research Programme, and also here in London, the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s College London, to which I shall refer in future as ICBH. The seminar will be recorded, transcribed and archived by ICBH. I introduce you to our sound engineer, Harry Loughlin. I hope that you can all hear me well enough. That is just from long experience. I shall be asking all our witnesses to pick up a mic when they wish to speak, and we will try to pass one to members of the audience as we reach those questions. In the usual area of switching off mobile phones etc., I want to say that no one else attending the seminar should be recording this because it will be recorded on our behalf. I hope to get all our witnesses involved in discussion after our first speaker and also to find time for some questions from the floor. Everyone who speaks today needs to sign a consent form for the release of their contribution to the seminar. Michael Kandiah, our convenor, will have them available at the end of the session. A draft manuscript of what happens today will be put around to us all to make sure that we are happy with what will go out to a wider public. Speakers will be attributed and a full edited transcript of the seminar will be published. We will have two sessions: one until 3.15 pm, after which we shall have a short break followed by another session at 3.30pm. One of the key issues of a witness seminar of which we are all aware in cultural heritage and, having been at a university institution for 30 plus years now and charged as I am with doing a Basil Spence exhibition the summer after next to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary is that I have students scurrying around getting witnesses to the early years of my university’s history. We are living among one and two- star listed buildings, so we need to look after the fabric. We also need to look after the record of those who have passed through the place. This is one thing that witness seminars are designed to do. In the emergence of Heritage Science, what has happened? Who have been the movers and shakers? What can our speakers today tell us not only about their experience, but the ways in which those before them helped to lay the foundation of the work? We need to look at and think about issues in education, in training, research and practice as we investigate the topic. The ICBH has hosted nearly 100 witness seminars in the past, and it has been engaged with the kinds of things that record the past 60 years of post-war history: issues to do with Northern Ireland, issues of our
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joining up with Europe and what has happened to it since. We have all lived through various financial and parliamentary crises. Such times are often quite short but fundamental turning points in the way that things have happened. We hope that this witness seminar and the series currently being undertaken on Heritage Science will add to such recordings. I now turn to our speaker, Dr David Saunders from the British Museum, to give his opening address. He will résumé the paper that he has already sent round to us. DR DAVID I apologise. I have a cold, so I am a little hoarse. Thank you for the SAUNDERS invitation to participate in the proceedings, and also to prepare my introductory paper. In doing so, I have been aware that there is quite a long history for the subject and, although many of us here have been involved in the field for some years and there are those on the panel and, indeed, in the audience who have been involved for a great deal longer than I have, our collective memories will not stretch back much beyond the Second World War, if indeed that. The idea of the paper was to set some of the background for the emergence of conservation and museum science from the period around the beginning of the nineteenth century up until the present, but rather more sketchy in the area where I hope we will hear more from speakers today about their personal experiences, recollections and perspectives. A beautiful chronology has been provided. I am not sure who extracted it from my paper. It gives some idea of how things have progressed since around 1800. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, one can see the coming together of a lot more studies than had previously been produced by individuals largely working with collectors, sometimes with museums, looking at paint, pigments and other historic objects. They worked either on sites or on objects that had been collected from them. A lot of them were scientifically sound, others were really alchemical and we would not recognise them today as particularly accurate. During that period, there was also a great interest in the way that objects were deteriorating, both looking at how things were made and how they were deteriorating in collections. A second strand of research of analysing materials was to look at how the way in which they were being stored in the great national museums and galleries that were founded in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was affecting those collections. One recommendation that came out of a Government report in the mid- nineteenth century was that there ought to be scientists appointed to some museums. That did not happen immediately, and it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that museums in the United Kingdom started to establish scientific principles. Scientists were employed at museums beginning in the UK at the British Museum shortly after the First World War and then other museums established science departments in the 1930s, 1940s and beyond. At the same time in Europe there was greater collaboration between organisations conducting scientific research and probably a defining moment in that respect was a conference convened in 1930, which brought together those fledging laboratories from throughout
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Europe, but also colleagues who were working in one or two mainly east coast museums in the United States, who were beginning to conduct scientific research. A series of such conferences was held in the period between 1930 and the outbreak of the Second World War. At that time, one of the first journals to document the research being conducted on what we would now call heritage science was established. It was Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, which was published from the Fogg [Museum] in Boston. Although that continued to be published into the Second World War, much activity necessarily stopped in museums and galleries in the UK, as collections were dispersed and the staff often dispersed with them. In the period immediately after the war, those who had been involved in the conferences in the pre-war period came together and, through their determination to have greater collaboration and to establish an organisation to which they could all belong and under whose auspices information could be made more freely available than it had been in the past, they laid the foundations of what became the International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, which was founded in 1950. In the UK, museums increased their activities in the field and we can see that, as the number of people involved in the scientific activity grew, the range of techniques that were applied to the analysis of works of arts increased. We see a movement in the period leading up to the Second World War of analytical methods other than micro- chemical methods being applied – the first types of instrumental analyses being used rather than simple gravimetric and chemametric testing. After the war, the number of techniques increased again and that seems to have been largely determined by what had been brought by museums. At that stage, university involvement was fairly small in that field until perhaps the 1970s and 1980s. In 1955, the Research Laboratory for Art History and Archaeology (RLAHA) was founded at Oxford and, in 1957, the UK group of IIC was formed, which later went on to become UKIC and now, Icon. With the RLAHA formation at Oxford, we had the emergence of a second journal, which became Archaeometry in due course, and at the same time the IIC began publishing. For many years, they were the two major journals in which the respective fields published their findings. Notable also was a seminar series, which ran from the late 1950s until the early 1980s in Boston on the scientific examination of works of art. At the beginning of the 1960s, IIC and ICOM-CC began to hold regular conferences at which the results could be published. These advances really marked the beginning of the proliferation of places in which the results of such research could be published, which is something that has increased in later years to the extent that, as I said in my paper, about 20 years ago we could comfortably read the output of the profession by keeping track of a few journals and the proceedings of a few conferences. But it has become extremely difficult now to have a grasp of everything that went on, mainly because the number of journals has increased and the number of different types of journals that people working in heritage science
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publish in has increased. That is somewhat mirrored by the way in which universities have become much more involved in heritage science in that period. Let us consider the Jubilee conference held by the Institute of Archaeology and the Jubilee conference by UKIC in the late 1980s. Most of their contributors came from national museums and galleries or local museums with notable exceptions, with the University of London being one of those and the host of one of the conferences. It was contributing regularly. The majority of contributors were from museums and galleries, then suddenly in the late 1980s/1990s and into the new century, we see universities playing a much stronger role in the research in the field. Coming with that is a wish to publish in more specialised journals associated with the fields that those researchers would normally communicate in. If we track the Conservation Science publications produced as a result of the 1992, 2002 and 2007 conservation science conferences, we see not only the move towards more universities being involved, but a greater international spread of people contributing to the conferences within the UK. So again, that increases the number of different places in which we can expect to find publication of the work. Since that point, perhaps 20 years ago, we have seen a more disparate nature to the work in the field. We have found it more difficult to keep track of what is going on in every part of the profession and it has been more difficult to maintain an overview. That has not been helped by the fact that there is no real umbrella body that brings together those of us who are working in the field. Neither in the UK nor internationally is there such an organisation. Unlike other countries where all research is either run within or is closely associated with a national centre, in the UK it is conducted in a number of museums, galleries and universities. Although they are in contact with each other, they do not collaborate in terms of planning their future research so there is the risk of duplication and that perhaps some of the really big issues are not addressed because no one regards them as a particular priority for their own institution. MAURICE HOWARD Before we go forward, I want our witnesses to introduce themselves and to say a bit about how they have come to work in their fields and their own personal histories. I will then start off a series of questions to our witnesses to get a discussion going on the basis of David [Saunders]’s paper [pp.xx-x?] and the issues that arise from it. PROFESSSOR I am an archaeologist. I am not a scientist unless archaeology counts ELIZABETH PYE as a science. I think that I am here because I have an interest in training, which is a kind of subtitle of this panel. I have been involved in teaching at UCL Institute of Archaeology since the 1970s, and I am now the oldest inhabitant of that august institution. I am frequently asked for my reminiscences there, too. My interest here is that I have seen a huge amount of change and development, and I would be very interested to see how everyone else reacts. I have one question: what is heritage science? Is it as David has put forward, and really based on analysis and investigation or is it wider than that? My
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take on heritage science is wider than that. I will not say anything more now. DR JOHN S. MILLS I do not want to go on too long, but as I am the oldest witness here, I might say a bit about how I got into this field. I was not working quite as far back as the Second World War, but I started in 1951 and that came about by chance. Having done my degree at Imperial College, and being the usual aimless graduate student with little idea of what I was going to do, I occasionally, consulted the notice boards there. One day quite late in the summer, I saw a little handwritten notice about Nuffield Foundation grants to be worked on at the National Gallery. That sounded very attractive and I went for an interview there with Tony Werner1 and Ian Rawlins.2 To my amazement I was accepted. No doubt they could not find anyone else by late summer so that was how I got the job. Rawlins had been there since 1934 as Scientific Adviser, primarily working on the radiography of the paintings. Werner had come to the National Gallery from Dublin in about 1948. They had decided that there needed to be some research done on the materials used in conservation, primarily on dammar resin which was the main material used as a varnish on paintings after they had been restored. The physicist was to work on the problem of the penetration of solvents into paint films. I was appointed to do the chemistry; Ian Graham,3 an ex-student of Trinity College, Dublin, was appointed to do the physics. I must say a little more about Ian Rawlins. Things were very formal in those days and we never reached the first-name stage. Everyone was referred to by their surnames, even Joyce Plesters4 was referred to as ‘Plesters’. It was a very different situation from how things are nowadays. The facilities were extremely limited at the National Gallery. The laboratory was a single, small room with a sink and some basic chemical apparatus including a pestle and mortar. Tony Werner’s first suggestion was that we should grind up some dammar, but that was the limit of his contribution! However, in the end it all went well. What can I say about that period? Rawlins had done a lot of very good work on X-radiography of paintings and was then experimenting with a new soft X-ray tube which yielded greater detail. A lot of business and informal contacts with people were conducted at the Athenaeum in those days but the Nuffield grant had come about by their having attended a conversazione at the Royal Society which had included a demonstration of paper chromatography by its inventor Archer Martin5 (for which he later got the Nobel Prize). This seemed to be the way forward for the
1 A.E.A. Werner (1911-2006), research chemist, National Gallery, London 1946-54; Principal Scientific Officer, British Museum 1954-9, Keeper of the Research Laboratory 1959-75; President, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 1971-4. 2 F.I.G. Rawlins (1895-1969), Scientific Adviser, the National Gallery. 3 Ian Graham, later Director, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscription Project, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University, 1968-2004. 4 Joyce Plesters (1927-96), the National Gallery, 1949-87. 5 A.J.P. Martin (1910-2002). Nobel Prize, Chemistry, 1952.
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analysis of dammar and I was sent to work with him for a month at the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill before I started at the National Gallery. I then worked there for four years and it was very successful. Things were slower in those days under very different circumstances. I was often alone in the National Gallery up to 10 o’clock at night working away in the little laboratory. I sometimes have nightmares thinking how I might have set the place alight, as there were solvents around. That is how I got into the field. It sounds rather haphazard. Things were not really planned. Things were started off, and one thing led to another. I noticed from reading Rawlins’s first editorial in Studies in Conservation, of which he was editor for the first two years, that his attitude was rather similar. When they were considering the content of Studies in Conservation, whether it should be theoretical, analytical or practical, he said, ‘Little need be said now about the division of contributions into ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ categories. Equilibrium will probably be attained more naturally by constant watch and ward than by any pre-conceived planning’. SHARON CATHER I represent the academic incursion into the practice of heritage science (conservation science). From my point of view, most problematic are the challenges – or opportunities – that are presented by having to deal with cultural heritage in situ, in marked contrast to having portable objects that can be dealt with in museums. Having taught conservation at post-graduate level for 25 years, I can absolutely, unequivocally confirm that science is totally integrated in the curriculum. No one can be a conservator, no one can practice conservation, without science. The development outlined by David [Saunders] represents a certain avenue. It really focuses on research, and I think catches especially the current situation quite well. For those of us in academia, our concerns are with the future and with equipping our very talented and committed students to use conservation and heritage science. Some of them are scientists. Many of them are not. They all have to use it equally. The one other point to be made is that now in 2010, a significant amount of research into heritage science is done at the universities. Although there are issues with getting it published, it does make a significant contribution. DR VINCENT I studied chemistry at University College, Cardiff and subsequently a DANIELS PhD. A lot of friends were archaeologists. They had conservation as part of the archaeology degree. The conservation science that they were taught was extremely rudimentary and they kept coming to me for advice, even though I was not at that stage connected with the conservation field. When an advertisement came up for a job at the British Museum, it seemed that that was an area to which I could perhaps contribute. I joined in 1974. I worked for Baynes-Cope.6 It was rather an old-fashioned civil service atmosphere in those days. He called me Daniels, and I called him BC, and it remained so until he retired.
6 A.D. Baynes-Cope (1928-2003), Principal Scientific Officer, the British Museum 1960-84.
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It was not long after that I joined that Department of Conservation and Technical Services. I stayed as a conservation scientist until 2003, when I left to join the Royal College of Art. The conservation course there ceased a couple of years ago and I am now an Emeritus Researcher at the British Museum. When I joined the Museum, it was a quite remarkable place to learn how to be a conservation scientist, particularly in the paper area. We also had the British Library there, so there was the bindery, the department of manuscript conservators and the department of oriental manuscript conservators. Many of the conservators were craftsmen in those days. There were few conservation courses running and the amount of scientific input that they needed was great. Even what we regard nowadays as rather rudimentary calculations, they needed help with such things. There was a large input from scientists into conservation. The British Museum was very much a focus for conservation inquiries from all over Britain and to some extent throughout the world. It was one of the few places where people knew conservation work and science went on. It was an interesting place to be in the early days of conservation. SARAH STANIFORTH I am currently Historic Properties Director at The National Trust. Like many here today, I read chemistry. I did so at Oxford and, in those days, one had to decide whether to go the humanities route or the science route at a very early age. When I was about 14 years old and had to decide what O levels to take I had either to go the science route or the arts route. It was a great sadness for me at that age, having to give up painting, which I loved when I was at school, and get channelled into the sciences. Oxford was pretty useless at advising on a career that would enable me to use my science in any art context, but a friend at Oxford was hitchhiking one day and was picked up by Garry Thomson7 and, knowing that I was interested in the arts, arranged for me to meet him at the National Gallery. He was incredibly helpful as I am sure he has been to many other young people at giving careers advice. He introduced me to some key people who could help with my interest. They were specifically Herbert Lank8 and Stephen Rees-Jones9 who was then the Professor in the Department of Conservation Technology at the Courtauld Institute. After Oxford, I successfully got into the Courtauld Institute, where I studied paintings conservation. Professor Rees-Jones had just retired then, nevertheless we were taught many of the technical aspects of paintings conservation by Stephen Rees-Jones, which was another wonderful window into the past of the applications of science. A lot of the early work of science and paintings conservation was done at the Courtauld Institute, so it had a university route even in those days. I also worked with Professor W.D. Wright10 from Imperial
7 Garry Thomson (1925–2007), Research Chemist, National Gallery 1955-60, Scientific Adviser to the Trustees and Head of the Scientific Department 1960-85. 8 Herbert Lank (1925-), leading painting restorer and first Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge. 9 Stephen Rees-Jones (1909-97), Head of the Technology Department, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1951-76 10 W.D. Wright (1906-97), Professor of Physics, Imperial College, London, 1951-73.
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College. He was a physicist. He had built a reflection spectrophotometer at both the Courtauld Institute and the National Gallery Scientific Department to study the effect of light on paintings and the way in which colour changed. I did my three-year diploma in paintings conservation and then started a PhD on the colour measurement of paintings. I had two bits of good fortune: one was to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship, a travelling fellowship, in 1978. It took me to the United States and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where I was based in its scientific department. Bill Young11 was still working there, and he was one of the early greats of conservation and the scientific approach at the Ashmolean before he went to Boston. Ed Sayre12 had been co-opted from the Manhattan Project to look at the applications of radiochemistry and nuclear chemistry to works of art, which was a fascinating insight into the ways in which the United States was finding other ways of applying its nuclear programme. Bert van Zelst13 was the head of the lab in those days and he went on to the Smithsonian to head up its scientific department. On that trip, I also travelled around the east coast. It was my first trip to the Canadian Conservation Institute, where I met Nathan Stolow,14 who was then working for the Canadian Government’s incredible office in the centre of Ottawa. I met Robert Feller,15 who was then working in Pittsburgh and also at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and Betty Jones.16 All three wrote one of the key texts on picture varnishes and their solvents. I was lucky to have insight both into science in the American museums and an entrée into the National Gallery because, when I had done about six months of my PhD at the Courtauld, a job came up in the science department at the National Gallery, working on the colour measurement of paintings. I regret that I did not realise that we were supposed to call people by their surnames, so I am sorry Dr Mills that I called you ‘John’ right from the start, and Joyce, and Garry. I probably should have called him ‘Mr Thomson’! I will not say any more about the National Gallery, as Jo and David were there. The key influence that Garry Thomson had at the beginning of the museum environment and preventive conservation also took me into my job at the National Trust. Garry had worked at the National Trust on the development of the Manual of Housekeeping, which was its first publication relating to the care of collections. Through my time there, I worked on embedding preventive conservation into the work. I was also involved with IIC for many years on the ICOM-CC Preventive Conservation Committee, like many in this room, and I taught on the Getty Conservation Institute Preventive Conservation Course, which
11 William J. Young (1906-2000), conservator. 12 Edward Sayre (1919-2007), chemist and conservator. Served on the Manhattan Project,1942-5. 13 Bert van Zelst, Director, Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education. 14 Nathan Stolow, Director, Founding Director, Canadian Conservation Institute (CC1). 15 Robert Feller, Senior Fellow of National Gallery of Art Research Project of artists' materials; Director and then Director Emeritus of the Center for Materials of the Artist and Conservator. 16 Betty Jones, Fogg Museum.
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introduced me to many conservation scientists and other friends on the west coast of the States. Most recently, I have chaired the National Heritage Science Strategy with the Science and Heritage Programme, which we hope will have a future as the umbrella organisation to which David referred in his opening remarks. PROFESSOR I read physics at Oxford. I then stayed at the Research Laboratory MICHAEL TITE for Archaeology and the History of Art and did a DPhil in thermoluminescence dating under the supervision of Martin Aitken17 who is one of the few archaeological scientists who became an FRS.18 I then taught physics at the University of Essex for nine years when all my research was directed towards archaeological science. When the Keepership of the British Museum Research Laboratory came up when Tony Werner resigned, I applied for the post and I was fortunate because, at that time, Sir John Pope-Hennessy19 was the Director of the British Museum and he was absolutely determined to appoint people from outside as Keepers of departments rather than promote from inside. During his Directorship there were three new Keepers from outside, at the Department of Mediaeval and Later Antiquities, at the Museum of Mankind, and myself, at the Research Laboratory. I found a very good window to get into the British Museum. I said that I would stay there for 10 years, and after that time a colleague asked me when I was leaving. But it was only after 13 years that I left the BM to return to Oxford Research Laboratory, which I ran for about 15 years until I retired in 2004. Therefore, I started and finished my career at Oxford, but I did escape from Oxford for quite a long time, whereas many people spend their entire life there. I see myself as an archaeological scientist and I regard this role as one of two strands of science applied to heritage, the other one being conservation science/conservation. They are fairly distinct. The techniques used are similar, although the questions we are trying to answer are very different. During my time at the BM and at Oxford, I sat on two occasions on the science-based Archaeology Committee of SERC.20 This Committee is part of the history of the discipline, and I would like at some point to fill in that gap. I do not know when you would like me to do it, but the committee is very relevant. The present Committee on Heritage and Science is very much in the image, so I want to fill in the gap on the history if you will give the opportunity to do so. MAURICE HOWARD I will give that opportunity. JO KIRBY ATKINSON I started off at the National Gallery as well, and I arrived in 1970 with a background in chemistry, zoology and botany. I had also trained as a librarian, which I did not enjoy very much but it has turned out to be extremely useful. It means that I am not afraid of
17 Dr Martin Aitken, Deputy Director, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA), University of Oxford. 18 Fellow of the Royal Society. 19 Sir John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy (1913–1994), Director, the British Museum, 1974-6. 20 Science and Engineering Research Council, 1981-94.
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looking things up. I can look up documentary sources in any language at all until the cows come home. It is very simple. I only applied for the job at the National Gallery because my father happened to see an ad at the back of The Observer. I got my application in, I think, on the closing date. I only got an interview because someone dropped out. John can probably confirm that. JOHN S. MILLS I don’t remember! JO KIRBY ATKINSON I had an extraordinary interview with a civil service person along with John Mills, Garry Thomson and Tony Werner. The next day the civil service man rang up and said that I had the job. It was to work with Joyce Plesters on the examination of paint cross-sections and, thus, the study of the structure of the painting and the pigments that make it up. I should say that, probably throughout my career at the Gallery, my interest has been in the painting; how it came to be painted at all; the conditions under which it was made; the patronage; the questions that were asked of the paint for the painter and the history of the painting itself – so why it looks the way it does today and, thus, what has happened to it in the intervening time. It is a nice subject to study and it has occupied me for nearly 40 years. My particular interest, apart from the documentary sources, is in the history of the materials and their use from about the fourteenth century until into the nineteenth century. The project that Joyce Plesters gave me shortly after I arrived was with the examination of the dyestuffs that were used in red and yellow lake pigments. They were intractable. No one could analyse them. They are based on plant and animal raw materials, which tied in very nicely with what I had done at university. She had a plan whereby one could examine dyestuffs spectro-photometrically in cross-sections. I had a good few years making red and yellow colours, and researching all the recipes. We were successful in doing some of the analysis spectro-photometrically. After that, we were able to do it much more effectively by chromatographic methods, which we could not do at the time because we did not have the machinery and thin layer chromatography was not as effective. We have gone on with that, and it is fairly safe to say that that entire branch of the analysis of materials in paintings has been brought on considerably by the work carried out in the scientific department over the past 40 years or so. The other point that is worth mentioning is how important it is to realise that because you are working in a gallery with paintings, other people are concerned about the history of the paintings, including the conservators and the curators. It is important to draw them into your discussion and you learn from them. We have been able to research paintings very effectively with the aid of conservators and art historians. That has given us a strong way of looking at paintings, which has been very influential for other people. MAURICE HOWARD I thank all our witnesses for their introductions. Elizabeth, did you want to say something? ELIZABETH PYE I did not realise that a more detailed biography was perhaps necessary. My way in is a bit of a contrast, so I would just like to
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mention it. I come from a family of artists and makers, not a science background. Although I was very interested in the possibilities, I decided to go in the arts direction. I went to the Institute of Archaeology to find out about conservation long before I did a degree in archaeology. I was advised to get a degree before coming back again. After getting a degree in archaeology and training as a conservator at the Institute of Archaeology, I was interviewed for a job at the British Museum. It was an extraordinary interview. I was asked why, when I had a degree in archaeology, I wanted to work as a conservator! I cannot remember what I said, but I got the job so presumably I convinced them of my argument. Various other questions were rather odd. I came into the British Museum and worked with the craftsmen. Nigel Williams21 was a brilliant conservator, but had no scientific background. One of the reasons why I asked what is heritage science, is that we need the science. As Sharon said, we need it to feed into remedial conservation as well – the choice of the materials we use, the way that we approach the conservation. I then became involved in training in conservation at the Institute. To mention other names, I was employed by ICCROM when it was the Rome Centre, but employed to work in London at the Institute. One of the people I saw relatively frequently was Plenderleith,22 who was still in Rome. I was sent over there every now and again. My link with ICCROM has been immensely valuable, and through it I have worked with African projects. It has given me a much broader viewpoint. Thank you for letting me add that information about myself. MAURICE HOWARD Two big questions seem to be emerging: one being a discussion of heritage science, and what we mean by it and whether the different disciplines within that have rather different ways of cohabiting. I also want to probe whether nationally we in Britain have been disadvantaged by not having the umbrella organisations that other countries have had, or whether that has been more fruitful – I am already giving a view – different ways of going about things has set some interesting disciplines and has explored completely new disciplines. I want to get some views from around the table and the floor of whether the British way of doing things – when things do get divided up – has not been to our advantage. I want to start with an observation. People have been bringing up names of people from the past, some of whom I have met. I remember, in particular, conversations at the Courtauld with Stephen Rees-Jones. I was doing an MA in art history, but he knew all the students. We had visits to the labs. Now the Courtauld integrates far more than it was able to do in the early 1970s. David [Saunders]’s paper refers to universities. Thinking about serendipity, one of my
21 Nigel Williams (1947-94), Head of the Ceramics and Glass conservation section, the British Museum. 22 H.J. Plenderleith (1898-1997), Assistant Keeper, British Museum 1927-38, Deputy Keeper 1938-49; Keeper, Research Laboratory 1949-59; member, Honorary Scientific Advisory Committee, National Gallery 1935-81, Chairman 1944-58; Professor of Chemistry, Royal Academy of Arts 1936-58; Director, International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property 1959-71 (Emeritus); President, International Institute for the Conservation of Museum Objects, 1965-8.
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closest friends at the university in the eighties and nineties was a geographer who was one of the country’s experts in thermo- luminescence, also potentially relevant as a tool of analysis for my own researches. We went to the opera together and had all kinds of enthusiasms, but having a conversation between ourselves about what she looked at in terms of rocks, soils and things in Pakistan and my interest in Tudor buildings and what they were physically made up of was rather difficult. We talk about the universities as if they are one thing. I have also been involved in very protracted and deep ways with two other heritage organisations – a national museum and a training institute – doing things like validation, looking at their paperwork, getting involved in art historical research and, for a time, was unaware that the scientists at my university were also involved with those institutions doing research from a different angle. Universities still have work to do to bring their academic halves together. We have been encouraged in the past to apply to different kinds of grant- giving organisations and the more we can look at doing collaborative things, not only between institutions but even within them, all the better. We have all been on a long learning curve over the years not to keep the disciplines separate as they once were. My first question turns to that of Elizabeth [Pye]’s about heritage science, and the different labels we attach to it, such as conservation science, archaeometry and technical examination of works of art. In that, of course, I include buildings and the physical environment, the walls and pavements of our towns and cities that need care and conservation, and some sense of their physical matrix. Are those things best left to go their own way? Are the disciplines that have become established of a particular kind? Does the term ‘heritage science’ really have a useful umbrella title? Will you say a little more about that, Elizabeth, and then I will open it up to the other witnesses? ELIZABETH PYE I completely agreed with, and was interested by, David’s paper, but I felt that the remedial side and what science can contribute to that were missing. In some institutions, there has been a tendency for the practising-at-the-bench conservators to be working in isolation from scientists. We need to bring them together. The two need to work together. There is still a lot of empirical work going on, without enough understanding of what is happening to an object or painting and why it is deteriorating in such a way. I want the two brought together under the umbrella of heritage science much more. MAURICE HOWARD Would any of the witnesses like to comment on that from their own institutional experiences? SARAH STANIFORTH I want to say something from the point of view of working on the Heritage Science Strategy. It was absolutely recognised that there were three parts to heritage science in terms of the methodologies involved, such as the analysis: what are the materials, what environments affect the heritage in question, and how can science help to inform practice? Furthermore, there is a great concentration
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already today on archaeological science and conservation science – science, as it relates to museums and collections. The voice that has been very quiet, and we had exactly the same experience in developing the Heritage Science Strategy, is that of building science. It is interesting to note when we see the way in which science as applied to collections has grown up as largely being based in museum laboratories, the experience in the building world is completely different. We have a national laboratory, which deals with building science in the Building Research Establishment. The different approaches are quite interesting. I speak from experience of the National Trust. We are quite interested in science as it relates to the natural environment, but in museums and collections, science is not used to such an extent in our understanding of the way that buildings behave. There are pockets of good practice at UCL, for example, at the Bartlett but, on the whole, it is much less diverse than some other aspects of heritage science. SHARON CATHER I have a feeling that we have put the cart before the horse in trying to define heritage science. We need to look at our objectives, some of which have been identified already. We want to know how things are made, and how they fall apart and what we might do. That is our application. That is what we want to do. Science is merely one of many tools to do that, and trying to define science as a tool is unproductive. I have been using science for conservation practice and for teaching research for a quarter of a century, and science is changing far too quickly to be simplistic in referring to it. It is changing in its own disciplines and we keep saying ‘science’ as though it is monolithic, as though we mean a single thing. But even ‘science’ is only part of what we mean; we also mean technology, masses of technology: imaging, computer technology – all of it. It is so proliferated. It is so diverse. When searching for scientific solutions to our applications, we face a bewildering array of possibilities, possibilities that multiply before our eyes. In turning to science, we are not so much undertaking conservation science as ‘shopping’ for an appropriate technique. Therefore, to have a scientist dedicated only to conservation science she needs to be a polymath first of all, and to have quite a specific application focus. She cannot be everything. It is quite challenging for those of us who teach students, to define what their knowledge and competencies should be with respect to science. The Courtauld has always had a strong scientific focus. It works internationally, and faces ever greater challenges. The applications are being redefined continually. Our understanding pushes us to better problem definition, which pushes us to finding more complex solutions. I am not sure that we need to worry about the definition. We need to get on with it. MAURICE HOWARD I quite like the idea of shopping for techniques as introduced here. It introduces us to the notion that, across what we might broadly call the arts and humanities we know what we are looking for and we then look for the scientific applications that will help us to solve that problem. What more can I say about Tudor brickwork or eighteenth-
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century techniques in painting to involve wider audiences or to bring them in to the debate? We should think about whether that is genuinely opening up the ways in which people from different parts of our professional expertise can collaborate. One of the things raised in May Cassar’s recent paper in Scotland concentrated on the pressures as they are now. The pressures on us all in our professional jobs to indicate outcomes and results within months, not years any more, are great. The solution that will give us an answer to how a chair will be put on public display and how people will be told what we now know about the wood or the paint on the surface from scientific examination and how we have unlocked a discovery. This exerts some pressure on museum professionals and those charged with the care of objects. The shopping aspect is very useful to look at. It perhaps pulls away from the blue skies thinking, collaborations and thoughts about similar directions that we have. We have received a challenge to the notion of heritage science as a potential umbrella and whether it is, in fact, a way that we should move ahead. Would anyone like to comment on that? MICHAEL TITE The shopping list is a good idea. We should think about the questions that you are asking and how they define the various fields. If you are an archaeologist, you are asking questions of dating and ancient technology. If you are a conservator, you are asking the same sort of questions, but with a different motivation. A different paper will be produced as a result of those questions. Questions are very important, and there is obviously a range of questions building. As for conservation, the questions are: Why is an object deteriorating? How is it deteriorating? And how do you stop it deteriorating? In all cases, you go to a range of scientists for help. One of the strengths of archaeology is that you have some of your scientists in the same department as the archaeologists. Most archaeology departments have archaeological scientists in them. DAVID SAUNDERS I can see the point. It is a matter of the questions being asked, but often we can ask different questions about the same object. In the past, there has been a tendency to forget that, while you have an object and you are looking at it for one reason, you can be thinking about the other questions that might be asked. While you are looking at a ceramic to see what its component materials are, and what that tells you about its history, its method of production and what that might, in turn, tell you about the culture that made it and the technology, you can also ask the question: what is the likely future of this under particular circumstances; what might have been done to repair it and how might we best repair it in the future? Those different questions have been compartmentalised. If nothing else, heritage science just offers a convenient term as an umbrella for different ways of looking at things. I did not put it in the paper in the end, because I was becoming a bit verbose, but in other languages we have the concept of patrimony or patriomonio, in Italian, and we do not really have the equivalent of that in the English language. Heritage science may not be a perfect way of looking at all
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the questions about patrimony, but it provides a convenient umbrella. JO KIRBY ATKINSON Mike summarised what I was about to say anyway! It is important when asking the question of the object when it comes to you, you remember that, although you have only been asked one question by the conservator, you might have a question yourself for the object. Art historians have a rather perfect situation. There is the object. All its friends or nurses are round it – the curator who knows its history, the conservator who is looking after it, and the scientist who can actually tell any one of the other experts not every answer to their question, but something towards the answer. It is important that, if you are asked just one question, you bear in mind the other potential questions that might be asked at some other point or may have been asked in the past, although all you have is one opportunity to look at the object and possibly to examine one area of the painting, for example. If you then say that you have told them the answer, and that it is, ‘the blue sky is azurite’, end of story and put the sample away and forget it, you are doing yourself a disservice, them a disservice and the painting a disservice. What you could also do is remember that, later on, someone will say, ‘Well, was it in egg, was it in oil? Why is it deteriorating? What is the grey fluff that is growing on it?’ Someone could say, ‘Normally, this painter was always asked to paint in egg. You are saying that he is painting in oil. What do I learn from that?’ You need to bear in mind those various questions. The scientist who is doing the analysis might not be the correct scientist to answer all the questions. Scientists vary, and the scientist who is very firmly in the area of thermo-luminescence – an unlikely example, I accept – would not be happy answering questions about the history of materials and whether azurite was a possible thing to use in the first place. But someone else might, so it may well be that scientists have to make friends. Heritage science is perhaps an umbrella term, but it is a very good term and it allows for a much broader scope for looking at things. It also allows for the possibility of there being more than one scientist on the block. There are different questions and different scientists to answer them. MAURICE HOWARD One of the strengths or the objectives of the Programme is to capture what you are identifying Jo, such as the different times that people come together and what is the prevailing question that is being asked. We are asking different questions, as art historians, archaeologists, building historians and as scientists, from those that were being asked 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Capturing what those questions were by the people who came before us, and the people we have known is very significant. You were talking about the important business of being the diarist of the object. No one person can do that. The curator may be the person most in touch with it every day, but there is a variety of people, such as those who say, ‘I dealt with that 10 years ago. I haven’t looked at it since, but this is what we discovered then.’ I want to ask the witnesses an important question, after which I will
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hand over to the floor. Is it everyone’s experience that conservation and science are not always talking to each other in the great institutions in ways that they might most fruitfully do? Elizabeth seemed to be raising that matter earlier. ELIZABETH PYE I did not mean to paint a picture of no discussion, but – no names mentioned – I was visiting an institution only to discover that some processes that were taught to the conservator in particular, quite a long time ago, that the same materials were still in use. I felt that this was because there had not been encouragement to look more widely, to ask more questions and to work with scientists who might say, ‘Hang on. Is this really appropriate now? We have developed different ways of doing this.’ Even within universities with very strong and varied science departments, it might be difficult to identify people who are interested in heritage science. I was trying to find someone at UCL who would be interested in amber. No one in the chemistry department was interested in amber. I was astonished! JOHN S. MILLS As for the different disciplines coming together within an institution, when I was first at the National Gallery they were all very separate. What brought them together was the creation of the Technical Bulletin. We all had to work together then. There was a wonderful mix of different attitudes and results. MAURICE HOWARD Coming at it from the art historical point of view, some of the most interesting things in, say, the Burlington Magazine, were the articles where conservationists and scientists had written alongside art historians when something was going on exhibition or a painting was in focus at the National Gallery. Genuine collaboration has certainly happened. Let us have a few minutes for members of the floor to speak. We will start with May. MAY CASSAR In November, Professor Nigel Llewellyn, an art historian and Head of Research at the Tate, gave a lecture at UCL on ‘Words About Things’. He reflected on the language that art historians use in relation to objects as opposed to science. In that, he asked whether our use of ‘heritage science’ turns ‘heritage’ into an adjective rather than a noun, and therefore makes it subservient to science. I wonder whether the witnesses might wish to comment on this. MAURICE HOWARD Let us have one more question, and come back to that. MIKE CORFIELD In my last few years before I retired, I had general oversight of all conservation and science in English Heritage. I found that there was quite a degree of overlap, but that it was not often capitalised on by the different groups of people doing the conservation. Perhaps I can contradict Sarah’s comment about architectural conservation. There was quite a lot to implement scientific research to underpin that both at English Heritage and at Historic Scotland. The need for the architectural research was evidenced by one particular project: looking at the problem of death watch beetle in cathedral roofs. There had been a lot of work to eradicate that problem, started by
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the man who went on to found Rentokil. He developed a very nasty mixture to put on the timbers of Westminster Hall, which proved to be entirely useless. By then, he had started Rentokil and was making more nasty things to put on timbers to eradicate death watch beetle. A research project funded by the European Community, with English Heritage as the lead partner, looked at the problem and realised that no one had actually looked at death watch beetle as a creature, its lifecycle and how it lived. Those at the project discovered that the most potent predator for the death watch beetle was a spider, but the spiders, of course, were being killed by the nasty chemicals that were being put on to the building. The death watch beetle was able to outlive all the chemicals and find another way out so that it could breed, and the cycle went on. MAURICE HOWARD Perhaps we can return to May’s question. She has identified something that we can move on to in the second half: thinking about the diversity of experience that we are identifying and whether the sense of an umbrella organisations is a way forward for heritage science. Is it possible to collaborate, and in which way should we do that? Which organisations have so far provided good practice? May said something positive about her experience of English Heritage. Are we turning heritage into an adjective? Why are we not turning science into an adjective? Do we automatically read it that way round? SHARON CATHER It is fine. ELIZABETH PYE I agree with Sharon. It is fine. SHARON CATHER May I say something about the umbrella network. I was glad to read in May’s paper about the JPI-EU initiative for networking. All of us collaborate. We cannot exist in our positions without collaboration – a lot of collaboration. We all have considerable strains and try to keep up with developments, however narrowly we define our fields. All of us collaborate internationally and the developments are international. We have a biodeterioration problem at the moment in Malta. We have therefore been consulting with colleagues in the USA, Austria, Germany, Israel and elsewhere. So we need to keep in mind not to be parochial about such matters. There are policy issues that relate to what happens in the UK, but the scientific questions are global. They are international, and that is where we have to go for our collaborations. Perhaps we need to separate those two things out. MAURICE HOWARD Thank you. With that, I invite everyone to have a cup of tea.
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Session Two
MAURICE HOWARD Let us continue with our discussion. To give us time to collect our thoughts after tea and cake, Michael Tite would like to say a few words about archaeological science to give us a bit more background information to keep the conversation going. MICHAEL TITE There is a gap in David [Saunders]’s paper on archaeological science. He explained that he thought that Carl Heron would be filling it this morning, so I shall do so. The Oxford Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art started its research into archaeology in 1955. In the 1970s, the University of Bradford Physics Department first set up an MA in Scientific Methods in Archaeology and, later, an undergraduate degree, BTech in Archaeological Sciences, and at that point it became the Department of Archaeological Science. The real breakthrough was in 1976 when the SRC23 set up the Science-based Archaeology Committee, the members of which were some of the top archaeologists of the time, such as Grahame Clark,24 Stuart Piggott25 from Edinburgh, Richard Atkinson26 from Cardiff and one of the driving forces, Martyn Jope27 from Belfast. Professor Edward ‘Teddy’ Hall28 from Oxford was of the scientists as was Professor Gordon Brown from Bradford. I was a member of the first committee. Everyone chain smoked round the table. It would not be possible now. For the first time, if you wanted to do research in archaeological science, you could actually admit that you wanted to apply your technique to archaeology. Otherwise, you applied for a grant in luminescence dating and, as an afterthought, said that it could be used for archaeology. The significance was that it had ring-fenced money in 1976 of about 50K. By 1994, it was spending about £1 million a year. In many ways, it had the same role as the current Science and Heritage Programme. After about 1995, it lost its ring- fencing and got subsumed by NERC29 and was competing with geologists and others for money. Its impact therefore became progressively less, but when the money was ring-fenced, the Committee had a major impact. The other breakthrough came in 1989, when the University Grants Committee (UGC) started funding archaeology in some universities as a science-based subject. If you had students in archaeology, you got more money per student if it was a science-based subject. One of the results of that was that more and more archaeological
23 Science Research Council, 1965-81. 24 Sir Grahame Clark (1907–1995), Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge University, 1952–74. 25 Stuart Piggott (1910–1996), archaeologist. 26 Richard Atkinson (1920–94), Professor of Archaeology, University College of Wales, Cardiff, 1958-83. 27 Martyn Jope (1915–96), founder and Head of the Archaeology Department, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1949-81. 28 Edward Hall (1924-2001), Director, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University, 1955- 89; Professor 1975-89. 29 Natural Environment Research Council.
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departments at universities appointed archaeological scientists to be members of staff, so archaeological science and archaeology got fully integrated. That was something very unique to Britain. There is not that integration of science and archaeology in other countries in Europe, whereas all archaeological departments in Britain have at least one or two scientists and nearly all archaeological courses have an archaeological science component. Although things are never perfect, the fact that we have scientists in with the archaeologists leads to a much more effective collaboration and an answering of questions that are of interest to both sides. The important thing of any collaboration in archaeology is that you start right at the beginning with the scientist on the archaeological site involved in the excavation, and if material from the site is going to be examined, in the taking of samples. The science-based archaeology committee on UCG funding achieved very effective integration between archaeology and archaeological science. As I said, it was not perfect, but a lot better than in other fields. We hope that the heritage and science funding could have the same impact since it is ring-fenced. This is a major advantage, but what will happen in five years’ time? MAURICE HOWARD Thank you. Following on from the issues raised in the first half of the session, we arrived at some agreement and disagreement on the definition of terms, and that we can return to if necessary. However, I thought that we could now address the questions that were raised in David’s paper and which May’s Edinburgh paper raised about things now within this country, and internationally to see what good practice there might be out there in ways of taking the discipline forward and seeing that it flourishes in its various forms. What clearly emerged from some of the earlier comments was that heritage science has flourished most effectively and easily when it is dealing with specific objects, buildings and in those places where it has a duty of care to look after them, such as museums and galleries. We heard about how only in the past 20 years or so have universities and other places of learning come on board and have investigated such things. Are there any further thoughts on whether our heritage sector, the places where we look at things and do things, and the institutes, education and science departments associated with them, are still the most likely places that investigations and new research will happen? Will having the object on site always lead the way and push the discipline forward? JO KIRBY ATKINSON An interesting thing has recently arisen in France. It is the intention that the Louvre Laboratory and the Ancient Monuments Laboratory be moved to the northern extremities of Paris out in the sticks, about as far away as they can possibly be from the vast collection at the Louvre. The Louvre is extremely unhappy about that because it means that the scientists will be separated from the objects. They will also be separated indeed from the curators of the objects. The organisation in France is different. The conservators are mainly freelance, but there will be a separation there as well. It has been very distressing for the scientists and I think that we are lucky in this
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country that, so far, such a situation is fairly rare. Scientific and conservation departments being decanted out away from the object is a retrograde step. Jerry Podany, the President of IIC, who is in the audience, wrote to various people in the French Government to say that he thought that it was a bad plan for the future of the Louvre Laboratory and for the objects in its care, and that the separation between the various branches of expertise would not be good in the long run, but I doubt whether anything has happened. I know that people think that it is a nice idea to put a laboratory in a suburb. It sort of works, but it is never so good because it means that the objects will have to travel about or the scientists will have to travel about. MAURICE HOWARD Yes, for those of us who work in museums and institutions that have collections, it is extremely convenient that we have easy access to the collections, and easy access not only to the objects as scientists, but the expertise of conservators and curators – as has already been touched on by other members of the panel. For many in the audience and on the panel, they do not have collections and they will always be working remotely. I see Sharon smiling. She has to go to the ends of the earth to work on the objects with which she is engaged. Even in the museums, we do not often have the capacity to do as much work on the collections as we would like. A system by which not only we can work on the collections, but others from the university sector and other institutions can, is an important factor. Many major collections have such facilities. There is a means by which external researchers can apply to work on collections, and those collections can be a greater shared resource. VINCENT DANIELS As for the different approaches of universities working on an object and those of the museum sector, when a conservator goes to someone in the university sector, there is a great tendency for the university people to have a big machine that they really want to use. They want to show how wonderful it is, and justify its existence. The work will tend to be directed towards that method to produce a solution, whereas a museum specialist is often someone who knows the best method to be used for such a problem. Whether or not it is high tech, a selection of methods can be used and such a way often produces a more satisfactory result. SHARON CATHER Picking up from David’s comments, a critical issue is not ownership, but access to conservation research. Our miniscule department is currently undertaking major field work projects in six countries, including the Gobi Desert, as David mentioned. On the site at Dunhuang in Western China, there are 500 painted caves, 45,000 square metres of wall painting and that is just one site. We have a lot of stuff in museums, and the British Museum has seven million things in it, which is a lot of things! Even though that is a very large number, the vast majority and the most important part of our cultural heritage is still out there where it belongs. We therefore need to find solutions when we do not have the scientists, curators or whoever else all in one place with the portable
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object to conserve it. We have to find better ways of conserving in situ. In a way, the question could be re-phrased to ‘skills, competencies, access and good liaison with the local people.’ Many people we work with have never done conservation before. We just finished a project in Petra. They had never done wall painting conservation there. Working without any existing infrastructure is a separate challenge. ELIZABETH PYE I want to pick up on Vincent [Daniels]’s point about universities having large machines that they always want to use, regardless of the question. One of the problems with universities at the moment is the need for us all to justify ourselves on the basis of our research and not collaborative research. It is individual research. It is single papers. We have to keep going with our own line of research. One of the things that I found really interesting with May [Cassar]’s scheme was the trip that we took to Daresbury.30 Scientists there were actually telling us to bring them our problems. We need such collaboration. We need the ability to take questions to scientists and not only at universities. MAURICE HOWARD It might or might not be the case that the increased emphasis on impact – we all know how that is happening – will depend more on collaboration. You will be able to show and document how your research has impacted on a wide range of audiences and people if you have collaborated with other institutions across the heritage sector or wherever. One of the positive things about that focus that is very much on our minds at universities is that it will be useful for the next REF. ELIZABETH PYE Let us hope so. SARAH STANIFORTH I just want to carry on with another observation about how universities have changed as collaborators over the past 20 years or so. It is to do with a move away from thinking that pure theoretical science was what universities should do, to having much more recognition of the need for applied science. That is driven by the Government as much as anything else. It does not just apply to our sector, but throughout the country and the way in which knowledge is transferred from universities to industries of all descriptions. Related to that are publications and they remain a challenge for universities. There is a huge wealth of conservation-related literature, but the majority of the publications are not peer review recognised by universities and that inhibits their wanting to publish conservation literature, and thus do conservation-related research. MICHAEL TITE In the archaeological science field, a lot of papers are now published in mainstream science journals because they have a high impact factor. It is interesting that papers that were rejected by the journal Archaeometry and the Journal of Archaeological Science get published quite regularly in science journals because their science is okay, but the
30 The Art of Hard Science. A workshop jointly organised by the Science and Heritage Programme and the Science and Technology Facilities Council, Daresbury Laboratories, 12th Feb 2008.
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archaeological story they are answering is inept, repeated or trivial. It always surprises me that a lot of information about new techniques gain their publicity in hard-core science journals. I know that I would reject them for Archaeometry. Archaeological science journals are losing quite a lot of literature in that way. I do not know what the answer is. It is even more of a problem on the continent than in England, where the impact factor of journals is more important. MAURICE HOWARD I want to go to the floor if I may. Issues of publication and dissemination of information are usefully something that we can come back to because that is very much about where we are going. A hand was raised. VELSON HORIE To go back to what David [Saunders] was saying about museums and art galleries; can only the biggest and most over-resourced museums and galleries employ conservation scientists? Going back to Sharon [Cather]’s point, people do not have access to the resources. If the policy on conservation and conservation scientists is to be heavily influenced by those institutions that already have those resources, the future of the subject of conservation science will be distorted by those inputs. It needs to be far more broadly based on the huge collections. You can go to the ends of the earth in north London and find that you do not have access to conservation science. You do not have to go to the Gobi Desert not to find it. MAURICE HOWARD That is a point well taken. It was pointed out in May [Cassar]’s paper [above, pp.10-16] that we have an infrastructure within this country of local museums and galleries, which is very viable. Often in social terms, bringing people together and community engagement, it has worked rather well, but very few of those places out of the larger metropolitan centres have access to the scientific research that we would like. That is perhaps where institutions, such as universities, could be doing more. Some are already doing things to make sure that their local museums and galleries have some of those spectacular machines available to them. I was working with West Dean College on validation and conservation courses, while the scientists were doing their own thing. We have only really met up in the past few years, and that partnership has been fruitful precisely because West Dean, albeit a high-quality conservation institute, does not have the space or resources to have huge machinery on board even though one of its principle concerns is with conservation science. It is getting up to speed now, so there are ways in which we can help local institutions including museums and galleries. JOHN S. MILLS I regularly read Chemistry World, the publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and it often has little snippets about a piece of research such as paintings or archaeology that they put in to give its rather dreary journal a bit of colour. They are of the most trivial nature and about a bit of work done within a university, which somehow has managed to get publicity in that publication. Yet the sort of things that occur in conservation journals are never mentioned. Far better work is published in those journals. That makes me a bit doubtful
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about the idea of there being a lot of work on heritage sites at universities. Universities have their own needs and publications. A lot of the work that is done by PhD students is not really of first-rate quality. They have to finish it in three years, and they do, whether or not it has resulted in a good piece of research. MAURICE HOWARD I will take one question from the floor, after which I shall move the discussion on to something slightly different. DR PETER I come to the disastrous decline in the numbers of curatorial staff CANNON-BROOKES and standards in non-national museums. It has been little short of catastrophic. The main line of communication between conservation scientists and conservators is through the curators. The curators barely exist now in many museums. That is one of the breakdowns in the whole damn system. MAURICE HOWARD Thank you for that robust comment, Peter. I want to say something that follows on from it and ask questions around the table. One of the things on all our minds is the funding of heritage and structural reorganisation across the sector. As an art historian, I often go to exhibitions in London and know from colleagues in the field of conservation and allies in museums that they have had to rush things for particular moments in the calendar of the museum. Sometimes, it can be interesting but, sometimes, it is clearly a half-finished job. Things that are halfway to being cleaned or conserved go on display because that is the stage that has been reached at the time, although it can be an interesting opportunity for public enjoyment and education to see such things at that stage. Other things might be going on across the heritage sector that are now governed by the diary and the need to do the next event that is getting in the way of thoroughgoing scientific investigation of objects. Can we share a few examples and say what we should be doing about it? ELIZABETH PYE Can I come back to the point that I made about remedial conservation. New treatments are difficult to research in short, finite periods. In universities, we have the research assessment or whatever it happens to be called at the time, and deadlines that we have to work to. Meanwhile, we have to find out how an adhesive will behave over the long term. That does not fit into that tight period. JO KIRBY ATKINSON You are right, of course. Often something has to be done in a hurry. You will not find that the conservation is skimped or anything like that in time for an exhibition, because exhibitions are planned quite a long way ahead. The only time that you would have a problem would be if something untoward happened during the conservation treatment, which sometimes happens. You and the general public would not see any sign of that. If you were to come to the conservation department, you might find a lot of hair torn out all over the year! The problem is that we do not get the time to do the research to answer the questions from the scientific analysis point of view. People think that, if they just had another three weeks, they could
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look at it more deeply and study the sample by another technique, ask others for their opinion and compare with other things that have been done. It is that time that is missed. Someone says, ‘No, no. You have to get it out, publish it and do a catalogue entry’. Not only has the time to do more been lost, so has the impetus. The chances of being able to get back to re-examine the sample and for the research question to come round again are what you would like to happen. It is very hard to keep the research question on the back burner, at the back of your mind, because the next thing will then come along. It is worth saying that, on a great many occasions, that little research question keeps raising its head. When someone has an odd half hour, it comes back to the foreground and they will do a little more. But the pressure to publish and the pressure for an analysis is not conducive to thorough work. What causes thorough work is the fact that people are dedicated and go on long into the night on things, when they should be going home and doing other things. SHARON CATHER I read your question as one of resources. We have always worked with scarce resources in the field of preserving cultural heritage and they are set to get more scarce. For years, I have sat on the Church of England’s conservation committees on paintings, sculpture, monuments and so on. I have dealt with a plethora of applications for grant aid for conservation. There is never enough money, so we send the applicants away. In many cases, we must tell them their monument will probably not fall off the wall, but if it does to take good care of it. The resources question forces us into an area of ethics. What should we be spending our money on? I have already wittered on about our issues with the wider cultural heritage. In terms of grasping the thorn and allocating scarce resources, I have great admiration for the National Trust, its internal management and articulation of the tensions between needs and resources. Did it not just win a prize for that, or was it for something else? MAURICE HOWARD That is good to hear. Can I have a question from the floor? DR JOYCE We are so jealous of the ‘Making and Meaning Series’ that has come HILL STONER out of the National Gallery. Presumably, that was an exhibition- driven deadline, but it was superb. I wish a US museum could do something like that. It is a wonderful example of exhibition-driven research, publication, movies and things we can hand our art historians in the USA. It can be absorbed and enjoyed. How can we make more resources available in that way? Was it just the foresight of Esso that supported it so much, and your administration who approached Esso? How can that agar be created to grow such an exhibition more often? JO KIRBY ATKINSON I do not know. I was not privy to the internal discussions that led to the development of those exhibitions. Perhaps you know, John. There was ‘Art in the Making’ before that, as well. There was one on Rembrandt (1988), one on Italian painting before 1400 (1989) and one on Impressionism (1990). They involved the same group of people. There was one each year, and they were sponsored by Esso.
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It meant that you had to switch your brain from seventeenth-century Amsterdam into fourteenth-century Florence, and then to nineteenth-century Paris. That requires quite a lot of brain-switching, I can tell you. Yes, the deadlines were horrendous. But you just do it. You get carried along by what you are doing. Everyone – the curators, conservators, scientists, photographers and exhibition designers – concentrated on that, and we just got on with it. I cannot say whose idea it was, but it requires being driven from the top. When you have a sympathetic director, as we had then in Neil MacGregor,31 and as we have now, that helps. It also helps when the director is good on the television. Neil is good on the television, and on the radio. ELIZABETH PYE We need more of that sort of synergy between the groups involved. You were very fortunate to have it within one institution. I would like to see this heritage science project leading to that kind of synergy happening more widely, at least identifying people whom we can bring in to particular projects even if they are not in the same institution. MAURICE HOWARD One of the things coming out from the discussion is that our comment about the ‘Making and Meaning’ exhibitions is about getting the objective right in terms of scale. One restored room and one restored picture with ancillary objects might be enough to make the point rather than opening a whole house, which will take 10 years and millions of pounds, although there are stages at which that can be done. Equally, it can be done by focusing on one picture with things that naturally come towards it from the collection. I sometimes found some exhibitions where you are forced to use things that are in your collections are ways in which to focus on their strengths rather than saying, ‘We can’t do this without such and such from The Getty, and such and such from Melbourne.’ As for creating the right sort of team, concerning a project on the science of the physical state of an object, getting that object to a condition in which it can be exhibited is the first priority. Then interpretation is about the bringing together of a group of people to make that work accessible, and to research on it. Are there good practices or examples that we could bring together to answer Jo [Kirby Atkinson]’s point about the pressure she might sometimes have felt under. Let us consider the circumstances if she had a paid researcher at doctoral level for, say, three months who she could have sent off to the British Library, and a scientist who will look at matters and has a specific task. Does an ideal team of experts need to come together for each project? Do people have examples of that, or can they think of an ideal way in which that could come together? MICHAEL TITE I can quote two archaeological examples. The first is an excavation which has been undertaken by Bradford University in the Orkneys or the Hebrides for many years. They have had an extended time on the excavation, and they bring up scientists from their department and other scientists who work on the site with the archaeologists through
31 Robert MacGregor, Director, the National Gallery, 1987-2002; Director, the British Museum, 2002-.
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the one month season. The other example is much more international. It is an excavation organised by Ian Hodder32 at Çatalhöyük, in Turkey. He has been there for probably 10 years, a couple of months each year, bringing in a wide range of scientists from all over Europe and America. They work on the site with the archaeologists over an extended period. One outcome of that has been some fairly major local exhibitions. There must be other examples from the archaeological world where university departments work for an extended period on one site. SARAH STANIFORTH I want to return to Sharon [Cather]’s point about resources. In the case of the National Gallery, we are talking about an extremely well- resourced national museum. Unfortunately, that applies to the minority of museums and heritage organisations in this country. The lack is how we make scarce resources go as far as possible. Part of that is absolutely making the value of what we do recognised by society. That is not just with the motive of the Government noticing and ploughing lots of money into what we do because there are huge merits in not being dependent on the vagaries of Government policy for the funding of either heritage conservation or heritage science, but being much more self-determined. Public support is vital. One way to get public support is by making apparent what we do, so the ‘Making and Meaning’ Exhibition at the National Gallery is a good example of bringing the value of science into the public eye. Other ways are the general principle of doing conservation in front of the public. The award to which Sharon referred was for wall paintings conservation that was done at Hanbury Hall in Worcestershire over many years. It was not a matter of closing the house and, with a brouhaha, re-opening £10 million later, but carrying on with the work and showing the science that was related to the work as part of the visitor experience. The other thing that we have not mentioned is the use of volunteers, and how we bring volunteers into such activities. That is more difficult when it comes to hard science, but using volunteers in surveying work particularly students on work experience as part of their degrees is a valuable way not only of making our work valued, but building capacity. That is what it is all about: getting more people involved in heritage and heritage science, not just through education, but volunteering. MAURICE HOWARD The history of volunteering has been very much about room stewarding and that sort of thing but, as May pointed out in her paper, 8 per-cent of all volunteering in this country is in the heritage sector. It is a huge number of people, and we should not foreclose on the notion that there are volunteers out there with extremely high degrees of expertise and experience in retirement or before who we could call on, if they could be adequately supervised. We are obviously all concerned about the care of objects and buildings in that sense. Does anyone have anything to say about team building
32 Ian Hodder, Director, Çatalhöyük Archaeological Project; Dunlevie Family Professor, Stanford University, 2002-.
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and the different categories of expertise we might not be bringing together in quite the most effective way that we have previously? ELIZABETH PYE I want to follow up on the point about Çatalhöyük, where I have been leading the conservation team for the past seven years and draw on something that Sarah [Staniforth] was saying. There had been conservation at the site, but it had been rather low key. When we joined as a team, the idea of what heritage science or conservation could offer to the project was really not clearly understood. It has taken us quite a long time to work with all the other members of the team to show that we have a significant contribution to make towards supporting their work as well as developing our own research. Making the value of heritage science more generally known is an important point. VINCENT DANIELS Retired people in the conservation profession have a great deal to offer, but I wish to encourage people who organise such events to introduce a retired members’ fee. One often sees students’ much reduced fee, but I have never seen a retired person’s fee. Please remember that we are on much reduced incomes and payments for membership of professional organisations do not attract income tax relief, as they did before. IIC does not have reduced members’ rate. JOHN S. MILLS Hear, hear! SHARON CATHER IIC needs every penny it can get. VINCENT DANIELS So do I. MAY CASSAR Will the witnesses reflect further on the perceived dichotomy between science performed in cultural institutions and heritage science that is performed in universities? One of the successes the Science and Heritage Programme has had in its short time is that as many universities as cultural institutions are involved in Programme- funded research projects. There is a lot of common ground. Even if cultural institutions and conservation scientists in, say, the National Gallery or the British Museum are very close to the objects in their care, I agree with Sharon that it is access to the objects that really is important in research. Many of the pre-eminent cultural institutions in the UK have sought to be recognised by the research councils that fund research. They have been recognised as independent research organisations (IROs) with obligations to publish similar to universities. Both need to show that any research money that they receive from the public purse delivers knowledge and wider public benefit. I want to see how the witnesses here today see the emergence of heritage science. It is very recent, and was first mentioned officially in the report from the inquiry on Science and Heritage by the House of Lords published in 2006. Do we have more in common than seems to be suggested by the discussions this afternoon? MAURICE HOWARD I am sure that you are right. In all my involvement with collaborations, I have seen it very much as the responsibility of the university, perhaps because I am tasked by the university to organise
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such things in the first place, to offer the expertise to help IROs to get up to speed in what they are doing in terms of accountability. That is often just to do with size because universities are of a size that they are working with huge numbers of operations and therefore need common systems. Sometimes they are rather bureaucratic things, but red mats can be rolled out. Big organisations such as the National Trust in collaboration with a local museum, such as Charleston, often have different kinds of expertise in terms of organising the reporting and accounting of that. I am mindful of Jo’s point about getting the expertise in the right place and the different sorts of things you need when a project is running. Two of us in the room had the first collaborative PhDs with the National Trust. We are supervising art historians to work with archives. Our colleague at the National Trust, who is in the room, prompted the scientific investigation that those students needed. You put the task of actually getting things going in heritage science to the people to have their finger on the button and who have the resources and money to do it. That is what genuine collaboration can be about and concerns identifying where your skills lie and sharing them as well as the information and research procedures that will go ahead. MAY CASSAR The Science and Heritage Programme has distributed £8 million for research over five years. The money has been committed. Come 2012-13, the current economic climate will not be any better so what will we have got? We have mutuality. We have been able to build collaborations among equal partners and to share expertise, and not expect anything other than expertise back in return. This is knowledge exchange. How do we build it to make sure that what universities have to offer is valued by the cultural heritage sector, and what the cultural heritage sector has is valued back by universities? Will the emergence of heritage science help that or hinder that? MAURICE HOWARD The sort of thing that we ask at the end of all grant-awarded projects is how do we self-motivate and keep such things going when the pump-priming funding is not there any longer? As you say, it is about identifying what we have achieved and how it will be ongoing. PROFESSOR I hold one of the collaborative doctoral awards that the Chair was DANA ARNOLD talking about. I am on the advisory panel for the Science and Heritage Programme. I would like to add something to what May [Cassar] has said, and something that has been absent from the discussion this afternoon. I am interested in our collective memory about the emergence of heritage science and the relationship between science and heritage, but it seems that we have now a group of post- doctoral students, researchers and PhD students who are being trained in something that, if I have followed the descriptions of the witnesses correctly, came about almost by accident rather than design. I am interested to know what the younger members of the group have to say about where they feel their heritage and science sit, because they are the future. Part of the legacy that May Cassar is talking about vis-à-vis the Programme itself come 2012-13 is that a
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group of people have been trained to think in a specific way, which is actually quite different. It is to do with collaboration between different university departments and different institutions, which is very new and novel in terms of how we train the next generation of researchers, conservators or academics, whatever career paths they choose to take. MICHAEL TITE May said that ‘heritage science’ only started in the past five years – MAY CASSAR The term. MICHAEL TITE Okay. The same applies to DPhils and PostDocs. There are a large number of them who have come up through archaeological science for 30 or more years. Thus, there is already a big pool of genuine archaeological scientists, and the new generation of heritage scientists is not especially novel. It is just that a new term to describe them has been introduced. It sounds as though you are neglecting archaeological science in your statement that heritage science was very new. I see archaeological science as a precursor to, and now part of, heritage science. MAY CASSAR You are absolutely right. The term ‘Heritage Science’ is novel. The purpose of the witness seminars is to demonstrate to the young PhDs and PostDocs here today, who are funded by the Science and Heritage Programme that we have a very distinguished history and David’s paper illustrates that. In fact, 1947 was the nominal start date for the witness seminars, but heritage science goes back further. DR ANDREW ODDY I am glad that we have now come back to ‘pre-history’. From my point of view we have become bogged down in the present and I am more interested in the past. Liz [Pye] or Sharon [Cather] said that when resources for conservation are scare we need to go to the universities that have got them. That is how it all started. In the nineteenth century, the British Museum and the National Gallery repeatedly used Michael Faraday33 as a consultant. There are several reports by Faraday on topics from paintings to light, to the cleaning of marble. David [Saunders] mentions the fact that a number of scientists were doing ad hoc analyses, and it is true that axe heads and coins were being analysed from the very early nineteenth century. We now call this ‘archaeometry’. Before Michael Faraday, even Humphry Davey34 got involved in work on papyri from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum. Sadly, the UK lost its way towards the end of the nineteenth century and pre-eminence was in Germany when research was established in a laboratory attached to the Royal Museums. The first real book – no one has mentioned it – on conservation science was written by the scientist, Rathgen35 in Germany.36 It was translated into English in 1905. That was the inspiration for people like Harold Plenderleith. If you want a name to conjure with, you
33 Michael Faraday (1791–25), chemist and physicist. 34 Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), chemist. 35 Friedrich Rathgen (1862–1942), chemist. 36 Rathgen F. (1905), The Preservation of Antiquities (Cambridge).
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could not do better than Plenderleith who started at the British Museum in 1924. Without him, we would not be where we are now. He was the last great polymath who wrote about everything from the cleaning of paintings to the cleaning of bronzes. However, by the time the second edition of Plenderleith’s book came out in 1972,37 it has to be said that it was anachronistic. It was a sort of personal story of what he had done and, by that time, we needed specialist monographs. We have to remember that the IIC is based in the UK because the Americans insisted it was here. The idea of founding the IIC was an American initiative at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard with people like George Stout and others. They wanted to carry on where Technical Studies in the Field of Fine Arts had left off when it ceased publication in 1942. They approached Ian Rawlins, and when he was on a visit to America, he said, ‘Look, we need an international institution, but we don’t want it in the USA. It has to be in the UK.’ Rawlins came back, talked to Plenderleith and the rest is history. One other thing that no-one has mentioned is that, in the 1930s, there was an initiative called the Sumerian Copper Committee. People wanted to know what early bronze metalwork was made of, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science set up the Sumerian Copper Committee. No one knows about it now, and I am sorry to say that the British Museum’s Conservation Department has thrown away all the Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science that contained the reports of the committee. MAURICE HOWARD We all look back to the past. In the history of the visual arts in terms of those periods, people were competent at saying and doing things in many different fields. Has that been replaced by the teams we have talking about? Is the specialisation now so great that those people now collectively represent that polymathic attitude that we shall never find again. We never have the time or education opportunities to become that sort of Faraday person again. SHARON CATHER It is impossible. There is too much to know. You study Tudor buildings. Why do you not study all buildings? MAURICE HOWARD I do study all buildings, but I had to do the PhD. The point is well taken. You have to start from the specialism and work outwards. SHARON CATHER May I take up May [Cassar]’s question, which is the critical one for all of us who will be here after 2012. How do we demonstrate the success, the investment return from the £8 million for heritage science? I am sure that lots of good science can be done. Lots of good PhDs will be done. We can demonstrate a certain amount of impact, but there are some impediments that need to be recognised. One is the diversity of expectations and requirements – particularly for advancement – between the universities and the museums sector. All of us have been working with one another for decades. Let us consider the wonderful people from the National Gallery who used to do organic analysis for us. It became utterly impossible to ask
37 Plenderlieth, J.H. and Werner, A.E.A. (1972), The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art (2nd edn) (Oxford).
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someone at the National Gallery to do even a single GC-MS38 analysis about 15 or 20 years ago. Similarly, at that time at universities our priorities were not dictated or scrutinised but they have since been reassessed. We now have the two sectors pulling us in different directions. Whether that can be resolved is clearly an issue. Perhaps you can put it on your list. STEFAN MICHALSKI I am from the Canadian Conservation Institute. My question relates to several of the last comments. I worked out that your £8 million over five years provides you with an annual budget of about half the annual budget of my institute. We are now 40 years old within the Canadian system. I have been there for 31 of those years. We were asked how we guarantee heritage science that is not just universities justifying their big new machines. You make a national agency, which has heritage science as its mandate. We all applaud the series that came out from the National Gallery, but the discussion here was on how we guarantee that that function, that 10 per-cent or 20 per-cent of the resources of the National Gallery will always go into that kind of research and not depend on an individual staffer saying, ‘I will add the extra 20 per-cent value because I have the time to do it.’ It is human behaviour. You create an organisation whose mandate is to do that, and then it gets rather more simple for management and everyone else to make that mandate unroll. But if your mandate is to be a major display museum of paintings or to be a university graduating PhD students, you will never get that explicitly as a primary mandate. You have to make a separate agency whose mandate is something roughly on the idea of heritage science. That is what we have been for 40 years. It has not been heritage science only. We have typically had about 30 scientists and 30 conservators, plus or minus five, for the last 40 years and about 20 support staff. I believe we are actually larger than similar national agencies elsewhere such as ICN (Instituut Collectie Nederland), IRPA (The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage) and the GCI (Getty Conservation Institute). That is the reason why we managed to get a good reputation. We have a critical mass, and we have been doing it for a long time. But it has not been cheap on a per capita basis. We have been through some politically tight spots. We have been almost erased by the Government’s cut back programmes at least two or three times in those 40 years. We most recently survived cascading 15 percent cuts over two to three years. What has happened is that we have had an A[ssistant] D[eputy] M[inister] responsible for the agency that we operate within, who has actually been sympathetic to what we do. I do not know whether you can do this, but when I think about what actually has made us survive places when we almost became extinct – our particular bottlenecks within the Federal Government [of Canada] – it was not demonstrable management things. One person from the department who worked for us on policy writing for a while said, ‘Gosh, you know what? You people are doing God’s work. This is really important stuff, helping to save heritage…’ and so on. It drives our scientists nuts that the
38 Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.
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kinds of stories that make the press and make us knowable to our political masters are the more emotional stories such as the fake Shakespeare portrait. Is it real? Is it not? From our perspective, this was relatively trivial stuff, not the serious stuff we do, but if you are talking about living and dying politically, that is what you live and die on. It is not whether it would be accepted into a learned journal. I come now to what I see as my scientific role. Polymath is a flexible term. I see myself as a polymath, not in a Goethean ‘I know everything there is to know’ way, but as being somewhat broad, not too shallow but rather more shallow than someone at the front edge. The National Agency provides a middle-man role. The universities can contribute to Canadian national heritage science through us. I might go to an expert in light bulbs at the National Research Council on a lamp detail, and our microscopist will go on a particular issue to a mineralogist at a university studying geology. We play a polymath role. We are middle men and women heritage scientists. I think that is how you keep the universities connected. There is a huge learning curve. When we work with a new academic, sometimes it is hopeless and you just give up. They have the expertise, but unless you shepherd their information, they want to take off in a completely pointless direction. Those were my comments on how to set up something that can live. It is not cheap, and it seems to survive on emotional and political strategies not something that you can pin down with nice monitored results. It brings us back to comments I have seen in publications the last few years by outside agencies like Demos (Demos.co.uk) and the RAND Corporation (rand.org) who looked at whether conventional economic models were the best way for museums to justify their existence politically: ‘Forget the willingness to pay. Go back to your strengths. That is what people want you to do. Build on your public good.’ It is irrational. It is emotional, but that is where the defences are. They are not going to be number crunching and auditing. It has worked for us so far. MAURICE HOWARD That has certainly hit an emotional button with all of us in the room because the saddest thing about the whole fees issue at the moment is the ratcheting up of fees is important, but it is equally important that we have lost any sense of discussing higher education for the public good. It is all about people earning more money, so how much can we screw them for. We do not talk about why higher education is necessary for the public good, and therefore what the contribution of the nation collectively should be. That is certainly an issue for us, and very much in all our thoughts. SARAH STANIFORTH I am really beguiled by the idea of multidisciplinary teams replacing the polymath. That is a really interesting thought, which I want to reflect on more – not this afternoon, but after today. One of the things that I firmly believe that heritage science can do is that it is one of those very rare disciplines that dances between the two cultures. It encourages people. It interests people who are interested in arts, humanities and science. In that way, it could have a great impact on our education system both for schoolchildren and for
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those at university. I know that we are probably not representative of all the people involved in heritage science, but we need to think about succession planning. One of the great things about the Science and Heritage Programme has been that capacity building and those PhDs and PostDocs who are waiting in the wings for us lot to drop off our perches. The impact of the Programme can go further than that in helping with the broader education of people in this country and elsewhere, not to have us in our silos, as I was as a teenager: ‘You are a scientist. You are going to do science.’ But more like international baccalaureate, and keeping education broader. The use of heritage science in schoolteaching is one of the ways in which teachers could link the two cultures. PETER Can I remind you that we had the Gulbenkian Committee in the CANNON-BROOKES 1970s. It was founded in 1969 actually under Sir Colin Anderson.39 The Report, The Training in the Conservation of Paintings was published in 1972.40 I chaired the Goldsmiths Committee on training and an attempt to move towards a central institution of conservation. Our report came out and I have a mass of copies here, so I can give them to anyone who wants them. We entitled our report, After Gulbenkian, A Study Paper Towards The Training of Conservators and Curators of Works of Art, the idea being that we really must look towards training both the people who know about objects from the scientific and technological view point with those who know about them from the historical and contextual view point, and bring them together and give them the same basic training. If anyone wants a copy, I will be delighted to provide them with it. ELIZABETH PYE You quite rightly reminded me earlier about the fact that we have to demonstrate the impact of what we are doing in terms of research at universities. Perhaps what we need to do now is to demonstrate that, by being collaborative, that will have impact. We ought to sell Sarah [Staniforth]’s idea of collaborative teams as a way in which we can work together, but that universities can still achieve what our masters expect us to achieve. JOHN S. MILLS We have not discussed how heritage science will be published. MAURICE HOWARD I had hoped to allow time for that, but I thought that the other issues were rather more over-arching. After the meeting we could certainly share with each other ways in which we feel what is happening is inadequate. I have been at meetings in the past when people have volunteered to go away and found a new journal. We do these things on line, whatever, but there are ways forward on that. I did not want to foreclose discussion on the broader issues today because that was how the conversation seemed to be going. What we have achieved has been quite useful in terms of identifying a history of heritage science under its new name, and something that has been in existence for a long time.
39 Sir Colin Anderson (1904-80), Museum trustee. 40 http://www.gulbenkian.org.uk/publications/publications/37-TRAINING-IN-THE-CONSERVATION-OF-PAINTINGS.html
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We have discussed the way in which different institutions have behaved vis-à-vis each other and the changing nature of the universities in David [Saunder]’s paper. What has emerged also is how we keep things going beyond current funding arrangements, with lesser sums allocated to those individuals. On behalf of those people who have spent many years in one place, I can say that for those of us who have worked in places consistently and have moved out from those to work for and alongside other institutions, such dialogue becomes something that you can build up over a number of years. What worries me about many of our younger colleagues is that things are now so project-driven, three years here and three years there, and there are such small amounts of grant funding that the ability to build up the network of things that I very much recognise among older colleagues becomes more difficult. The pressures to produce and keep on the move are much greater. That is a challenge for those people, whether from the scientific investigation side or from curatorial and other ways in which we look after valuable things of the past. I do not envy them that challenge, in terms of being able to pick up the phone and know that person whom you have known for a long time at a certain place will help you get the thing down to the exhibition that Jo talked about earlier. Thank you all very much for coming, and I thank May [Cassar] and her colleagues for inviting us here today.
Witness Seminar III
How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed?
Wilkins Old Refectory, University College London
Thursday 9th December 2010 10am to 12.45pm
Format
Seminar 3 – How has our use of evidence changed? – considered among other issues the application of natural science to the use of archival and personal records, the emergence of interdisciplinary research and evidence-based policy.
The witness seminar is best considered like a group interview or conversation, led and moderated by the chair. The witness seminar was recorded and transcribed. Speakers have been asked if they wish to make any redactions to improve the clarity of their utterances. The agreed transcript of the proceedings, with speakers and their contributions identified, is being published here.
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Participants
Chair:
PHILIP BALL Prize-winning author of a number of popular books on science including Critical Mass (2004).
Papergiver:
NANCY BELL Head of Collection Care, The National Archives
Witnesses:
PROFESSOR Consultant JONATHAN ASHLEY-SMITH
DR BEN COWELL Acting External Affairs Director, The National Trust
DR PETER Formerly Keeper of the Departments of Art, Birmingham CANNON- Museum and Art Gallery (1965-78) and National Museum of BROOKES Wales (1978-86)
ALISON Chief Executive, Institute of Conservation (Icon) RICHMOND
BARONESS SHARP Liberal Democrat Member of House of Lords; Chair of the OF GUILDFORD Science and Heritage Programme Advisory Group
CRISPIN PAINE Museums & Heritage Consultant
Audience Participants:
PROFESSOR MAY Director of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme; CASSAR Director of the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, University College London
MIKE CORFIELD Heritage Science and Conservation Consultant; Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University
JOHN FIDLER Staff Consultant/Practice Leader Preservation Technology, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc Consulting Engineers, Los Angeles, California, USA Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 108
DR DAVID LEIGH Formerly Secretary-General, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC)
STEFAN Senior Conservation Scientist, Canadian Conservation Institute MICHALSKI
JERRY PODANY Senior Conservator of Antiquities, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
DR JOYCE HILL Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of STONER Material Culture, University of Delaware and Paintings Conservator Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 109
Chronology
Pre-1947 There are many examples of developments prior to 1947 that have significantly shaped the heritage science research base, and by extension the kind of evidence available to cultural heritage. A few are worthy of mention.
1915 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was established at the National Gallery, London in response to the perceived need for scientific evidence to inform our understanding of works of art. Other research institutes were established in Europe prior to this date.
1920 Edward Waldo Forbes, director of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, called for the United States of America to ‘apply chemistry to the study of paintings to understand material constructions and to help preserve the physical evidence of the past.’
1930 International Conference, Rome, at which ‘the scientific methods for the examination and conservation of paintings’ were discussed (International Museums Office 1940).
1932-42 Forbes, Stout and Gettens (a Fogg chemist) published Technical Studies in the Fields of Fine Arts with an international board of editors. This was a significant step in the dissemination of scientific analysis and the application of what was termed ‘a rational scientific’ approach applied to cultural heritage.
1945 The wholesale movement of the UK’s national art collections to remote storage for protection during the war, focused attention on the problems of environmental control needed for collections. Anecdotal evidence indicated that damage could be prevented or minimized by maintaining a constant, moderate relative humidity (RH). This ‘experiment’ provided justification for installing mechanical climate control equipment in the National Gallery, London.
1948 A commercial mercury excitation source was produced, which led to the eventual development of Raman spectroscopy to analyse materials.
1949 Solubility parameters first elucidated.
1950 The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) was founded; two years later Studies in Conservation was published ‘to co- ordinate and improve the knowledge, methods and working standards needed to protect and preserve precious materials of all kinds.’
1950s Introduction of polypropylene, polycarbonate and other plastics - materials that were to transform preservation practice some 20 years later.
1959 International Centre for the Study of Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Property (ICCROM) established.
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1963 Museums Conservation Institute of the Smithsonian Museum was established ‘to increase and disseminate scientific knowledge that improves care and contextual interpretation of collections.’ National research institutes were founded in Canada and the Netherlands to extend the science research base.
1964 International Congress of Architects in Venice in 1964 promulgated the Venice Charter stating: ‘The conservation and restoration of monuments must have recourse to all the sciences and techniques which can contribute to the study and safeguarding of the architectural heritage.’
1965 The Cooley and Tukeys algorithm (first written in 1805) was rewritten for use with computer programs to allow a fast Fourier transformation calculation. The algorithm enabled instruments to be created for detection of nuclear-weapon tests in the Soviet Union, but is considered responsible for the massive upsurge in computers and detectors for analytical equipment. Three of the most notable examples of instrumentation benefiting from the use of this algorithm are microscopy, spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, which have been applied extensively to cultural heritage. While these techniques were first developed prior to 1947, major advances did not occur until the 1950s.
1965 International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) was set up in 1965 to deal with archaeological, architectural and town planning questions and monitor legislation.
1966 The devastating effects of the Florence flood focused public attention on the preservation of cultural heritage.
1967 Central Advisory Council for Science and Technology was established in the UK, bringing together the interests of the Department of Education and Science with those of the Ministry of Technology.
1967 IIC London Conference on Museum Climatology: a seminal conference in advancing understanding of how the environment in museums ‘affects its contents.’
1971 The 1918 Haldane Report suggested separating research required by government departments from more general research under the autonomous control of UK Research Councils. This principle has been heavily criticised and modified over the years. A major revision to the application of the Haldane Principle in British research funding came in the early 1970s with the 1971 Rothschild Report and its implementation. About 25 per-cent of Research Council funds were transferred back to government departments, together with responsibility for decisions on the research to be funded. In consequence, basic scientific research programmes were diluted for some years.
1972 End of the US National Museum Act, which provided core funding for conservation science research.
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1978 The Museum Environment, published by Garry Thomson. The environmental guidance offered has underpinned the development of environmental guidelines for the last 30 years.
1988-90 Robert Wolbers published work on cleaning solvents and gels 40 years after solubility parameters were first published.
1992 The results of a 12-year project to clean the Sistine Chapel ceiling were subject to extensive criticism by art historians. The conservation documentation maintained throughout the project was rigorously scrutinised by specialists internationally.
1995 Indoor Environment Symposium (USA) on ‘What are appropriate standards for the indoor environment?’ This symposium aimed to re-evaluate environmental recommendations (allowable ranges of temperature and relative humidity) in response to published research by the Smithsonian’s Conservation Analytical Laboratory in 1995.
1999 The White Paper on Modernising Government set out a significant agenda for reforming how government in the UK works. The White Paper indicated that policymaking should be a continuous learning process and that policy- makers should make better use of evidence and research in policy-making. The RCUK has been subject to the demands of government science policy that views academic research as a means to economic and social development. This has led to an upsurge in evidence to inform policies and practices in RCUK programmes.
2002 Cross-Cutting Review of Science and Research, DCMS: Final Report published. The Government’s Chief Scientific Officer recommended ‘improving communication to ensure that the right science and scientific advice are identified and available’ to develop policy and practices in DCMS.
2003 Cultural Property Risk Analysis Model, published by Dr Robert Waller. This multidisciplinary work applies the study of risk analysis to cultural heritage. Waller’s work, along with Conservation Risk Assessment for Museum Objects by Jonathan Ashley-Smith, is considered a milestone in collection management as it offers a system (model) for analysis of complex systems.
2004 Evidence and UK Politics: Does it matter? A speech delivered by Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, calling for an evidence- based approach to inform the policy process, rather than aiming to affect the eventual goals of the policy directly. It advocates a more rational, rigorous and systematic approach. The pursuit of evidence-based policy-making is based on the premise that policy decisions should be informed by the available evidence and should include rational analysis, in the interests of producing better outcomes.
2006 House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee Report on Science and Heritage was published.
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2007 Launch of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme, a 5-year, £8.1 million strategic interdisciplinary research programme. The aim was to engage a broad spectrum of heritage organisations, libraries, archives and museums and academic communities to bring together heritage science across arts and humanities, science, engineering and technology. This programme will deliver a WHOOSHHHH of evidence!
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Introductory Paper: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed?
NANCY BELL The National Archives
We have to tell stories to explain ourselves, although we can never in however many tellings ever get it right.’ The Revenge of Literature: A History of History, L. Orr (1986:13)
Context For well over a century science and research has been bound rather than tightly knitted to the study and interpretation of cultural heritage. The reasons for this idiosyncratic relationship are various. The take-up of science in the context of cultural heritage has been affected by many factors, for example cultural bias, political focus and academic fashions. These influences have shaped the relationship between cultural heritage and science communities, as have economic and professional pressures. As a result, a plurality of evidence has emerged, which has been selectively interpreted by a broad church of professionals. There are also more subtle, unconscious sociological factors at play that have shaped the form and methods of the research carried out. Notable among these is the tradition of Anglo- Saxon scholarship, with its emphasis on the lone humanities scholar, working within distinct disciplinary boundaries. This contrasts with the Annales School that moved toward rigorous, often statistical, analysis of resources and social science methods based on a team approach (Moss, 1997). The early pioneers and champions of science - Gettens, Stout, Plenderleith et al – were formed within this team approach, thus adding an additional facet to the evidence-base from which we draw. What were we seeking to understand? What kind of evidence is needed? Science in various forms and disciplines has been applied to cultural heritage to address questions from academic researchers, conservation professionals, archaeologists, building specialists, the public and more recently, artists themselves. For example, academic researchers have sought to address questions of authenticity, artistry and connoisseurship, as well as to extend historical and contextual understanding. Conservators, who have traditionally addressed a wide variety of problems presented by the deteriorating objects they treat, routinely draw from a wider research-base to understand the effects on objects – biological, chemical and physical. The long-term effects of treatments, and the stability of materials used in conjunction with treatments, require evidence from material science and product information. Evidence has also been used to improve our understanding of the cultural context within which collections are situated. More recently, artists too have been extending their own knowledge of the materials used in creating and preserving their work. Research is only one way of developing evidence. Knowledge based on expertise, judgement and habit adds significantly to the empirical rather than experimental evidence-base, and these are set within a wider context of ideology, values and available resources. A broader range of historic, photographic and graphic resources are increasingly adding richness to the diverse evidence-base on which the cultural heritage sector draws. So too does the enormous corpus of data from environmental monitoring, archaeometric and geological data-sets which have become available in recent years. One of the richest sources of evidence is presented by the Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 114 collections themselves, so often overlooked in preference to the offerings of instrumental analysis that have received so much attention in the post-war period. This paper will consider how the use of evidence as applied to cultural heritage has changed in the last 60 years through examination of the evidence presented in selected published research outcomes and their critical reception. Three different contexts will be examined: the development of environmental guidelines, technical art history and the work of the conservator. While too often it is easy to ignore the literature on these subjects, literature is viewed and ‘implicated by history’ (Orr, 1986) and therefore gives a powerful insight into the changes in how evidence has been used in the last 60 years. I. Evidence in support of environmental management While the relationship between environmental conditions and the preservation of collections has been recognised for some time, defining appropriate environmental standards for the moveable heritage continues to be a subject of debate. What kind of evidence is presented?
1978 Garry Thomson’s The Museum Environment (1978), has informed environmental standards for over 30 years, in particular the recommendations for appropriate levels of temperature and relative humidity. Thomson’s book sets out the environmental requirements for a range of materials found in collections, although these are largely based on studies of the movement of wood and canvas in paintings in the National Gallery’s collections. The evidence-base is somewhat anecdotal, and draws almost exclusively on conservation literature related to the decay of paint films and technical standards for air-conditioning, published in Studies in Conservation and conservation conference proceedings in the late 1960s. Contemporary reaction to this work was mixed, as it was viewed as highly technical. As one reviewer stated, ‘I fear many will find an initial look at the book intimidating and that they will not read far enough to realise its importance’ (Beal, 1979).
1990-95 Some 20 years later the appropriateness of environmental standards came to international attention once again. An ambitious research project to study material change for a broad range of materials found in cultural heritage collections was undertaken at the Conservation Analytical Laboratory, CAL (Smithsonian Institution). The aim of CAL’s environmental research was to investigate whether all RH fluctuations, no matter how small, could cause damage, or was there a threshold of allowable RH fluctuations below which there would be no damage? If some fluctuation is allowable, how much is acceptable? Experiments on the mechanisms of damage were also examined by investigating changes in a range of material properties. A broad range of materials were subject to temperature and relative humidity changes and were explained using stress- strain curves, primarily for cottonwood. Dimensional changes, mechanical changes, rates of change and the effects of temperature on glass transition temperatures on a range of materials were considered. The research demonstrated the usefulness of stress-strain curves in determining allowable fluctuations and concluded that most museum objects can tolerate, without any mechanical damage, larger fluctuations that previously thought. This led to a recommendation of +/- 25 per-cent RH. This research underlined that mechanical damage due to RH changes is not the only consideration in determining appropriate environmental conditions. Other factors such as chemical reactivity, corrosion processes, hygroscopic salts etc. also come into play. It was Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 115 emphasised that this was not an excuse to abandon climate control. It recognised that the picture was more complex, and standard approaches are not the complete answer. Other published research examined RH requirements for a variety of art materials in relation to chemically induced reactions. Photographic scientists at CAL published work on the high cost of RH controls associated with low temperature storage chambers and offered low- cost solutions. These CAL released research outcomes (1995) prompted vigorous debate in the conservation literature. ‘The basis for CAL’s environmental recommendations ‘seems too narrow’ and lacks consideration for objects with variations in construction materials, workmanship, material composition, and state of conservation. Also risks of damage may increase as the requirements for environmental conditions relax.’ It was also noted that the fundamental objection to the Smithsonian’s work was that real objects are much more complex than the single materials tested (Maekawa, 1995:20).
1995 Indoor Environmental Symposium to re-evaluate recent environmental recommendations (allowable ranges of temperature and relative humidity) In response to the CAL research, a symposium was convened to evaluate recently published research evidence related to environmental management, new environmental recommendations as well other evidence emerging at the time that could usefully inform the appropriate environmental guidance debate. The symposium included evidence such as:
Cost-benefit analysis to assess the operational costs of maintaining climate control for different buildings. In-depth studies of the effects low temperature and relative humidity on photographic materials. Modelling tools such as isoperms as a collection management tool to allow the estimation of chemical damage to paper. ‘Twenty years of National Environmental Guidelines and Their Implementation in Canada’ was presented by S. Michalski. This recommended a 20 per cent RH range, based on swelling factors of wood as presented and published in the wood industry’s Handbook. The data were measured in experiments and research carried out in the 1930s. Despite the evidence presented by the scientific community considerable scepticism remained, with one reviewer calling for ‘the critical research evidence underpinning the claims made by the Smithsonian ‘to be made more transparent.
2000 BS5454:2000 BSI Standard for the Storage and Display of Archival Records (2000). While BS5454:2000 gave ranges for T and RH, unfortunately there are no normative references or explicit references to the scientific evidence used to support the (often criticised) tight specifications set out in these recommendations. 2007 On-site acoustic emission (AE) monitoring of a wooden altarpiece in an historic church further confirmed the usefulness of the technique in tracing climate- induced stress in wood. The development of practical monitoring of AE has allowed direct tracing of the fracturing intensity in wooden cultural objects exposed to variations in temperature and relative humidity. II. Evidence to drive technical art history The field that is now ‘technical art history’ is rooted in late nineteenth century schools of connoisseurship and served initially to address questions of authenticity. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 116
To achieve this aim, technical studies evolved incrementally. To understand how works of art have been constructed, research focused on the close examination of the historic objects themselves. Materials characterisation including pigment analysis was made possible by post-war developments in instrumental analysis (XRD, SIMS, Ramen etc.). Analysis was mostly carried out by conservation scientists and conservators. The evidence underpins material characterisation in order to inform art historical questions of artists’ techniques and working methods.
1990s Technical evidence was presented in the National Gallery series, Making and Meaning, and other catalogued exhibitions, which has brought to the public eye the value of science in broadening the understanding of art. 2000 The application of documentary evidence is exemplified in Hinterding’s study of Rembrandt’s prints. The prints and the watermarks found in them formed an ‘archive’ of documentary evidence which served as the principal source of evidence for this study. Comparative analysis of watermarks present in the artists’ prints re-positioned the narrative of Rembrandt’s working methods (Hilding, 2001).1 2007 More recently historic evidence, documentary evidence, letters, accounts, critical and theoretical writings, technical analysis and close visual examination of the works themselves formed complementary evidence exemplified in The Invention of Pastel Painting (Burns, 2007). Increased interest in technical studies has given rise to the development of the Art Technical Sources and Methods, a newly formed IIC working group to establish a forum for research on historical sources for artists' materials and techniques; to systematise appropriate methodologies for this type of research; and to provide an international platform for the dissemination of information and research. III. Evidence to inform conservation treatments Evaluating and maintaining cultural heritage collections as well as facilitating the presentation of collections have traditionally fallen to the charge of conservators. Decisions on how on best to treat objects are based on a broad base of qualitative evidence – traditionally, visual analysis and conservation literature. Routine use of analytical testing and instrumental analysis was limited since few have had access to major research centres or analytical equipment. Conservators have drawn upon the expertise of conservation scientists for a range of ‘data’ often to validate rather than drive decision-making. The need to explain how science and research fit into a broader conservation perspective has divided the science and conservation communities. ‘Scientists already doing research know what topics they are interested in pursuing, but these may not be seen by conservators as high priorities for research’ (Hansen and Reedy, 1994). Robert Feller called for third party interpreters, since ‘scientists often are not compelled to express their efforts in the light of broader contexts… [or] to popularize what he or she is trying to do’ (1995: 19). Evidence has been selectively used for debate or as in the case of some conservation controversies, act as a catalyst to draw upon new uses of evidence. Technological innovation and changing aesthetic and cultural influences have sometimes given rise to public controversies such as the picture cleaning discussions in the 1970s at The National Galleries of Washington. In another example, the treatment used to remove soot from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel came under close scrutiny by academic researchers, in particular art historians, who examined the extensive documentary and photographic evidence produced by the project team. It was felt the
1 I am grateful to my colleague Thea Burns for bringing this work to my attention’ Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 117
‘restorers’ took a universal approach to cleaning based on their belief that the artist painted using a single technique. References Ashley-Smith, J. 1999. Risk Assessment for Museum Objects. London: Butterworth Heinemann. British Standards Institution, 2000. BS5454: 2000 Recommendations for the Storage and Exhibition of Archival Documents. London: British Standards Institution. Burns, T. 2007. The Invention of Pastel Painting. London: Archetype Publications. Carrier, D. 1994. Restoration as interpretation: A philosopher’s viewpoint. In W.M. Watson. 1994. Altered States: Conservation, Analysis and the Interpretation of Works of Art. South Hadley: Trustees of Mount Holyoke College. Pp. 19-27 Erhardt, D., Mecklenburg, M., Tumosa C. and McCormick-Goodhardt, M. 1997.The Determination of Appropriate Museum Environments. In S. Bradley, (ed.) The Interface Between Science and Conservation, British Museum Occasional Paper 116. London: The British Museum. Erhardt, D. and Mecklenburg, M. 1994. Relative Humidity Reconsidered. In: Preventive Conservation: Practice, Theory and Research, Preprints of the contribution to the Ottawa Conference, 12-16 September 1994. London: The International Institute of Historic and Artistic Works, pp. 32-38. Feller, R. 1995. Letter to the Editor, American Institute for Conservation News, p.19. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Cotemporary Societies. London: Sage Hansen, E.F. and Reedy, C.L. (eds.) 1994. Research priorities in Art and Architectural Conservation: A report of an AIC membership survey. Washington: The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Hargrave T.J. & Van de Ven A.H. 2006. A Collective Action Model of Institutional Innovation, Academy of Management Review, Vol 31, no.4, pp.864-888. Hilding, E. et al. 2001. Rembrandt the Print-maker. London: British Museum Press. Maekawa, S. 1995. Symposium: What are Appropriate Standards for Indoor Environment? Western Art Association Newsletter, Vol.17 No.3, p.20. Moss. M. 1997. Archives, the Historian and the Future. In M. Bentley. 1997. Companion to Historiography. New York: Routledge pp.960-973 Orr, L. 1986. The Revenge of Literature: A History of History. New Literary History, Vol.18 No.1 Studies in Historical Change (Autumn 1986), pp. 1-22. Thomson, G. 1978. The Museum Environment. London: Butterworth-Heinemann. Tumosa, S.C., Mecklenburg, M. Erhardt, D. and McCormick-Goodhart, H.M. 1996. A discussion of research on the effects of temperature and relative humidity on museum objects. WAAC Newsletter, 10 (3), pp.19-20. Watson, W.M. 1994. Altered States: Conservation, Analysis and the Interpretation of Works of Art. South Hadley: Trustees of Mount Holyoke College. Whitmore, P. 2002. Contributions to Conservation Science: A Collection of Robert Feller’s Published Studies on Artists’ Paints, Paper, and Varnishes. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press.
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Questions for Consideration
1. Do all forms of evidence have equal validity?
2. Highly developed bodies of knowledge and evidence are often well-established in other disciplines, e.g. risk analysis, yet there appears to be a reluctance or scepticism about expert advice unless it is interpreted by conservation professionals.
3. It has been argued that outmoded disciplinary structures have been replaced by inter- disciplinary problem-solving approaches (Gibbons et al 1994). Should this be the norm for conservation science research?
4. It has been said that innovations occur at a faster rate when technical feasibility is allied with cultural acceptance (Hargrave and Van de Ven, 2006). Does this notion apply to cultural heritage? Does this explain what seems to be a significant time-lag between technological innovation and the transfer to practice? Why is this so?
5. Given that evidence-based policy requires a multidisciplinary approach to decision- making, should this approach be rigorously applied to cultural heritage?
6. Could one argue that evidence is used selectively, particularly in response to controversial issues?
7. Technical art history offers the art historical community a rich body of evidence, yet sometimes technical analysis is presented in appendices, an optional extra, rather than as central to a multi-disciplinary approach.
8. While the conservator largely relies on traditional forms of evidence, the conservator’s expertise seldom drives for example, new technologies and their potential application for cultural heritage. Why is this so?
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Session One
PHILIP BALL Good morning. Welcome to this witness seminar on behalf of the AHRC and EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme, and also the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s College London, which has jointly organised this event. It is a witness seminar, which means that we will call on the memories of the folks who we have convened as witnesses to talk about this issue. Specifically, we will be discussing how our use of evidence has changed. That is the question that I would like everybody, particularly the witnesses, to bear in mind. The emphasis is particularly on change. The aim is to obtain a historical record from the memories of people, many of whom have worked in this area for a long time, and will remember events that will be long since past for others. Please try to remember that historical perspective in your contributions. This seminar is going to be recorded, transcribed and archived by the ICBH. With that in mind, it is important that everybody identifies themselves when they make contributions. We will begin by introducing the witnesses, but when there are contributions from the floor, please identify yourself before you speak. If you forget to do that, I will have to interrupt you and ask you to do so before continuing. The full edited transcript of this seminar will be drawn up and published. It will include attributions for all the contributions that are made today. In the first session, we will let the witnesses speak and discuss the issue among themselves, and after the break, we will invite – positively encourage – contributions from the floor. Let us begin by asking each of the witnesses to identify themselves. Please give your name and take perhaps 60 seconds to say why you are here and what your interests are. PROFESSOR I can answer that last question most easily by saying, ‘I’ve no idea.’ I JONATHAN was trained as a chemist and I studied chemistry through to post- ASHLEY-SMITH doctoral level. I then spent the years from 1973 to 2004 employed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in various capacities. For 25 of those years, I was Head of the Department of Conservation. In terms of this seminar, I am a very obedient person, and therefore I have done no preparation because we were told not to. I am very reactive, and therefore I have never done anything original – I can react to the questions, but not necessarily in a positive way. I am also a bit of a bitchy queen but I don’t think this is allowable in such a seminar – ’Jesus that guy knew nothing!’ I have written papers on theory follows practice and policy follows practice, so I will not find it difficult to answer some of the questions you have proposed.2
2 Theory follows practice. in Basile, G. (ed.) 2008. Il pensiero di Cesare Brandi dalla teoria alla practica (Atti dei Seminari di München, Hildesheim, Valencia, Lisboa, London, Warszawa, Bruxelles, Paris) (Associazione Amici di Cesare Brandi; Associazione Giovanni Secco Suardo; Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali-Istituto Centrale per il Restauro with Il Prato Editore: Saonara), pp 189-193 Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 120
ALISON RICHMOND I am currently Chief Executive of Icon – the Institute of Conservation, which is the UK professional body for conservators of movable cultural heritage. My training is in art history as a first degree, and then I trained as a conservator. I worked as a conservator for 20 years at the Victoria & Albert Museum. I worked as the deputy head of the Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum joint postgraduate course in conservation for about 11 years. My interests are in the history of the profession and the development of what we know as ethics in conservation. My most recent publication is as joint editor of a book called Conservation: Principles, Dilemmas and Uncomfortable Truths. My interest here is in contribution to the discussion from the perspective of conservation and from some of the ideas that I have come across in my career regarding the principles of conservation. BARONESS SHARP I am Margaret Sharp. I am a member of the House of Lords on the OF GUILDFORD Liberal Democrat Benches. I chaired the House of Lords Committee that looked into science and heritage. At that time I was a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee in the House of Lords, and my background is as an economist. As such, the latter part of my career was spent at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, where I did a lot of work on science policy. Therefore, the concept of evidence-based policy and of Governments using evidence was something that I tried hard to use during my period there, so I am quite interested in this whole exercise. Equally, I am a complete newcomer to heritage and science. We coined the phrase during our Select Committee proceedings, and as a result of chairing that Committee, I have continued to have an interest in that area. I am in no sense a technician, or even a scientist. My understanding of some of the technicalities of it all is extremely limited, but I am interested in the process. PHILIP BALL I did not introduce myself, which was very rude of me, so let me at least tell you who I am. My name is Philip Ball, and for about 20 years I was one of the editors of Nature magazine. I was trained as a physicist and chemist; I am essentially a science writer. NANCY BELL I am currently Head of Collection Care at The National Archives. Prior to that appointment, I was a conservator for many years, so I understand the potential of heritage science from different perspectives. More recently, I have been very much involved as an advisor to the Science and Heritage Programme. My passion for science and its application to cultural heritage has certainly grown over the past few years, although I have always had a great interest in history and science. As a result of that collective experience, I am probably here today to look at more prompt discussion so that we can collectively look more carefully at evidence and how we use it. CRISPIN PAINE I have been freelancing for a good many years, but once I was involved principally with smaller, local museums with the area museum councils – I was Director of the Area Museum Service for South Eastern England for 10 years or so. During and after that time, Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 121
I became involved in editing a series of standards published by the old Museums and Galleries Commission on the care of collections – Standards in the Museum Care of … Collections.3 That is probably why I am here today. DR PETER I read natural sciences at Cambridge, and then went on to the CANNON-BROOKES Courtauld Institute where I took my PhD. I was appointed Keeper of Art in Birmingham in 1964 – rather a long time ago. I worked closely with Herbert Lank4 and Paul Levy5 – I notice that you particularly want to know the contacts. Also Anthony Werner,6 Henry Hodges7, Westby Percival Prescott8 – I was very heavily involved in the conservation field from my arrival there. I worked with Nathan Stolow9on the transportation of works of art, and took over as chairman of the ICOM Working Group on the Transportation of Works of Art. I have done something like three quarters of a million miles as an escort and courier. I taught at ICCROM with Garry Thomson10 and others on the conservation course there. In 1978 I became Keeper of Art at the National Museum of Wales. Before that, from 1975 to 1976, I had chaired the ad hoc Goldsmith’s Committee on the conservation of requirements in the United Kingdom, which included people like Professor Edward ‘Teddy’ Hall.11 That work fed into this document , After Gulbenkian: A study paper towards the Training of Conservators and Curators of Works of Art, with a Foreword by Sir Norman Ried12 [holds up leaflet] – I have brought copies if anybody wants one. In 1981, I founded Museum Management and Curatorship, which my wife and I edited for 20 years. Today I am Curator of Manchester University’s no. 2 art collection at Tabley House,13 and involved with private collections in the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States. My conservation contributions have not always been particularly well received, not least my work on the Elgin Marbles. More of that anon. On the use of evidence – I would love to follow that up. BEN COWELL I am acting Director of External Affairs for the National Trust and I have had that role for the past two years. Prior to that I was a civil servant at the Department of Culture, and my last job was as Head of Museums. In that role, I was advising Ministers in their response to the Select Committee on Science and Heritage. I come to this from two sides, if you like. I have a research background, primarily in
3 Available on Collections Link: http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/ 4 Herbert Lank, leading painting restorer and first Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge. 5 Paul Levy (1919-2008), leading picture framer and historic picture frame scholar. 6 See footnote Seminar II p.X above. 7 See footnote Seminar I p.45 above. 8 See footnote Seminar I p.47 above. 9 Nathan Stolow, Director, Founding Director, Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI). 10 See footnote Seminar I p.47 above. 11 See footnote Seminar II p.X above. 12 Peter Cannon-Brookes (June 1976), After Gulbenkian: A study paper towards the Training of Conservators and Curators of Works of Art, with a Foreword by Sir Norman Reid (Birmingham). 13 http://www.tableyhouse.co.uk Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 122
history, and a research interest in the history of heritage, on which I have written. PHILIP BALL Thank you. I have a small housekeeping point, which you are all pretty much doing anyway. If you can direct what you say towards the microphone, rather than out towards the audience, everyone will hear it better and the sound will be picked up more clearly for the recording. There is an air-conditioning system that makes things a little difficult. Nancy has prepared a paper to get the discussion rolling. She will deliver that for five or 10 minutes to kick things off. I am sure that that will raise questions automatically, but there are some particular questions that Nancy has suggested on the basis of this, and perhaps we will use those to get the discussion going. NANCY BELL In very few minutes, I have tried to pull out a few main themes of my thinking on this subject. I was asked to consider how scientific evidence applied to cultural heritage has changed over the past 60 years. As you can imagine, that is an enormous topic, and I hope that we can continue to revisit it over and over again in the future. At the outset, in reading and thinking about this I can come up only with the words ‘idiosyncratic relationship’ to describe science as part of cultural heritage. I also thought about ‘organic’ but that didn’t quite work. The important point is that it is not a linear relationship or one where we can obviously see cause and effect, although there are instances where that occurs. I presented a timeline which is an amalgam of all sorts of different things. It tried to demonstrate or illustrate where our evidence base is coming from and how it grew, particularly with our professional organisations that provide evidence through professional literature. I have also tried to present the chronological relationship between those developments. Sprinkled in there, are a few scientific events or technological developments that I think were significant and eventually led to innovation in the Science Heritage sector. One could come up with a timeline just around those elements, which would be quite interesting. I also felt that it was important to consider the reception and other factors that gave rise to changes in how evidence has been used, and I will touch on that a little further on. Based on the notion that we have an idiosyncratic relationship with science, I also wanted to emphasise that science does not operate in isolation or in a vacuum, and therefore, evidence does not operate independently. I wanted to bring out some factors that are often forgotten. There is always a cultural frame around what we do, and there are political imperatives that inform and drive innovation and changes, and science is not immune from that. There are also economic imperatives that will drive change and innovation, or pick up the reception and transformation of science to heritage. I also feel that we cannot ignore sociological factors that set our foundations and, to some extent, explain where we are today. The education of certain pioneers took place in a particular period of history and with a particular attitude towards science and innovation, Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 123 and they had a particular discipline – I mean that literally – in their approach to science. Again, we should always remember the filter through which those pioneers were viewing the world. Given that this was such a huge subject, I elected just to try and tease out three specific areas, as within the frame I was given for this paper I could only provide a light touch. I have chosen environmental management, because that topic is near and dear to all of our hearts. It is probably one area where there has been more than 60 years of published literature about how best to manage environmental conditions. That is drawn from both material science and a range of other sciences. It also gives us an opportunity to look critically at the reception of those works which, in turn, is another point worthy of discussion among the group. The second area I have chosen is technical art history. That area tries a bit harder to be interdisciplinary. More recently, it has also been pulling in documentary sources for the collections themselves, as well as scientific evidence. It offers strands of a curatorial world, as well as other disciplines such as conservation and material science. I thought that that would be a useful case history of how evidence would be used. Thirdly, you cannot ignore conservation practice. How do conservators, and those faced with problem solving on a day-to-day basis use scientific evidence to inform their work? I make the point that there is a range of evidence on which we draw, not just science. We use the collections and the documentation generated by conservators. Increasingly, we use new sociological evidence – in other words, we draw from a wealth of available evidence. We could all agree that there is a shortfall in the willingness to engineer things – to take science and transform it to our everyday practice. All of us have heard many of the reasons why that is so – there is a difference in vocabulary and educational backgrounds, and the divide between arts and science is an argument that has been rolled out many times. We have the opportunity to look more carefully at the selective use of evidence in response to controversies, for example. An event will make the news, and we go out and find evidence to support our position – that is not unique to the heritage world. The conservation world is more comfortable with using evidence that has been interpreted by our own profession. Where would we be if we did not have our colleagues and a whole range of people out there who interpret things and bring that back to our profession? Why are we more comfortable listening to our own? Lastly, I want to end up with a prospective view. I am very excited by the trends that for many years – at least 12 to 15 years – are happening with the potential of evidence to inform policy and practice. That is very much here to stay, and it will gain ground and hold sway in the future. One way that it will continue to drive how we work is that increasingly, funding bodies and research council funding is championing – and to some extent requiring – that the outcomes of research must inform policy and practice. That is a prospective view of research and evidence for the future. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 124
PHILIP BALL Thank you, Nancy. I guess the aim now is to ask each of you to respond to some of the points raised, or to raise points of your own. As an utter outsider to this area, I wonder whether I might begin with a question from the perspective of someone like me. It seems that a lot of the discussion that we may have here is about what status scientific evidence has been given. Before that, there is really the question of what the evidence is being collected and used for. From what Nancy said, it seems to reinforce my impression that there might be two general issues, for which one might wish to collect scientific evidence for cultural heritage. One is to understand the work, the provenance, materials and the art- historical context, and the other is for preservation and conservation. Those do not seem to be mutually exclusive but they are certainly different and have different priorities and agendas. Perhaps I could ask you to begin by giving your views on whether those priorities have changed over the past several decades, and in what way. JONATHAN While Nancy was speaking, I was writing a list of things that I ASHLEY-SMITH thought had changed the nature of conservation and which, at the time they were introduced, would have been seen as scientific but are now just seen as conservation. The computer, especially the laptop computer, the digital camera, the binocular microscope, risk thinking around health and safety – there are a whole load of things that on their introduction look strange, possibly because they are scientific, but are now accepted. A conservator would use a pH meter without thinking, ‘this is science.’ A lot of data, information and evidence are used that we would not think of as ‘science’. They are just new ways of looking at things, or the way we look at things now. I don’t come to any conclusion, except to say that in the whole of this discussion, the words ‘conservation’ and ‘science’ are used as if they are easily definable, discrete units and that one can say, ‘this bit has moved from here to here.’ In fact they both grow. The mobile phone is now part of everyday life, as a result so are stopwatches, cameras, calculators or whatever. Is that science, or is it everyday life? NANCY BELL I think you raise a point about the breadth of evidence, which I did not go into in depth. Risk assessment is a good example of how we draw from other disciplines. That body of knowledge has been there for 20 or 30 years, but it takes someone to interpret it and translate it to practice to make it real. I don’t know if it is science or not, but a whole range of technological advances have changed our thinking and approach. PHILIP BALL Are the technological advances that come along perceived as being responses to a particular need of the conservation and heritage community, or is it that science throws out possibilities that are then somehow slotted into the range of tools that you have? To what extent is there a consensus on what is needed for conservation and heritage, and if there is a consensus, to what extent is it ever heard and met by the scientific community? Are you just reliant on what they produce? Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 125
JONATHAN The evidence is that at the level of practising, conservators are not ASHLEY-SMITH very good at discovering problems that need to be solved. For the most part, they are very happy with the way they are doing things at that time. It takes individuals suddenly to say, ‘There are these things called lasers; we may be able to use them in some way.’ That leads to the first experiments with laser cleaning and the use of holography for duplicating objects being done by one or two enthusiasts. That has not taken off in a great way – it is a niche market within conservation. BARONESS SHARP My observation from the work that we did in the Select Committee was that it was a serendipitous process. There was a problem about conserving something, and the conservator would be looking around. They might go and talk to some of his or her science colleagues in the department, and serendipitously, some new process would arise. Similarly, we were much impressed when we went to the National Gallery at the degrees to which the equipment had been obtained partly from Hewlett Packard, but also salvaged from hospitals (spectrometry equipment, for instance). It is very serendipitous regarding what arrives and what is used. PHILIP BALL I presume that would be an argument for increasing the cross- disciplinarity of the whole area. If you rely on serendipity – it seems to happen all the time in science, and I am sure that it happens all the time in this area that techniques and possibilities are available that people simply don’t know or find out about. The people who develop those techniques don’t realise that they have particular application and will meet a need that is out there. That argues for the importance of that sort of dialogue. BARONESS SHARP A multidisciplinary dialogue. Absolutely – the whole notion of doctoral students and post-docs is that those who have a scientific background are brought into this area and, in terms of the masters courses, people who are interested in art are taken on but also given some background into the science. As much as anything else, it is a matter of being able to talk to each other. If you have some training in science, you will understand what others are doing. It’s a question of translating what is going on. You get that even within sciences. One of the arguments that we have constantly with the Treasury is about what the value of basic science is. Since 95 per cent of basic science is done outside the UK – we produce something like 8 per cent of the number of published journals and so forth – there is the notion that we need people who are at the leading edge of science in order to understand what others are doing and bring that back into the UK science base for their application. It is called the ‘absorptive capacity’. Part of the absorptive capacity of the UK is to ensure that enough young scientists come forward who are working at the broad leading edge and can act as translators. This is the same business. We must have a generation of people who can talk across the disciplinary barriers. PHILIP BALL Nancy, you raised the question of whether sometimes scientific evidence has been used selectively, particularly in controversial cases. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 126
Does anyone have any views on specific instances where that may have at least been a point for debate? NANCY BELL Or if it’s true. PHILIP BALL Or if is true at all. The first of the questions was about whether all forms of evidence have equal validity. From a scientific point of view, that could be seen as a surprising question. Different sorts of evidence are commonly accorded different weight scientifically, but I guess it is not transparently the case that that will always happen. Do you feel that scientific evidence is used to defend particular points of view, or is it used more openly that that? JONATHAN A point I want to make is that there is evidence from looking at ASHLEY-SMITH things – that used to be a scientific technique and you get the magnifying glass or the microscope or whatever. However, you do not necessarily get more information in that way. There is a scientific view that because we can look at things in a detailed and small way, that we will be gaining additional information. That is not necessarily the case. You can tell things by looking at something and that can be verified through science, but in terms of everyday life in conservation, you do not need a lot of those techniques because they do not add things. There are examples of people trying to enter into the field of conservation from a scientific angle – it can be unbelievably painful when a scientist comes in and says, ‘We’ve got this technique and we can do these things’, but they have not understood the context. They can use millions of pounds to discover that a pigment is blue, and you think, ‘Yes!’ Obviously, the next stage is that conservators should talk to them and say, ‘You’re a bit wrong there and I could use this’, but that stage does not necessarily happen. From that story, there is a need for better co-operation. CRISPIN PAINE This may be a red herring, but it perhaps picks up on comments about interdisciplinarity, and the remark Nancy made about sociological evidence. There is a change going on at the moment in the increasing use of social science techniques – I’m not sure whether we’re allowed to talk about those. As I understand, curators and conservators alike are taking more and more interest in the meanings that originate in communities and impute to, impose on, draw from – or whatever the phrase may be – the object. Correct me if I am wrong, but increasingly, curators and conservators ask not only what are the physical attributes of the object on their bench, but also what is the – I am trying to avoid the word spiritual – perhaps metaphysical understandings that have been attributed to that object by different peoples at different stages in its biography. BARONESS SHARP It is really the cultural context. CRISPIN PAINE That is a simpler way of putting it. Thank you. PHILIP BALL Do you find that there are conflicts between what is perceived culturally about an object, and what is shown from the point of view of scientific analysis? Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 127
CRISPIN PAINE I am sure that must be right. I am no conservator so it is for others to answer that. However, as any object goes through a whole succession of different cultural contexts, it will be understood differently by different groups of people. The way it is understood when it is put in a show case in the museum is likely to be very different to the way it was understood when it was first made or when it was sold. There is a huge literature about changes in value and meaning of that sort. I am sorry, perhaps that is not central to the discussion. NANCY BELL It is because it is another kind of evidence that is applied to heritage. CRISPIN PAINE At the moment, when people think in those terms, I don’t think that they take a terribly scientific approach. I don’t think they are drawing on established social science techniques to examine the meanings that the object has accrued over its life. That will probably come, and it will be interesting to watch that develop. PHILIP BALL Could you say anything about how it has developed so far? When and how did that perspective arise? CRISPIN PAINE It has been beaten into us by originating communities in the ‘settler’ countries in North America and Australasia complaining about the misuse of their heritage. But it is far from limited to that context; it is a worldwide phenomenon and very important in Russia at the moment. ALISON RICHMOND I think it is part of the post-modern cultural context where people are able to accept different viewpoints about the same cultural object. In conservation, ethics and ethical codes, we used to use the words ‘true nature’, but that literally disappeared from the codes of ethics once we began to understand that there was not a true nature. I wonder how much that has an impact on how we view science. If there is no ‘true nature’, does that mean that we are more sceptical about scientific evidence? I don’t think I can answer that question, but there has to be a paradigm shift to suggest that scientific evidence is not the truth but something that you interpret and try to understand, although there are different points of view. PHILIP BALL That sounded as though when scientific evidence first began to be used, it was met with some degree of scepticism or at least caution. It was a new thing. You are suggesting that perhaps now it has swung the other way and that scientific evidence is too much the arbiter of truth – PETER It is the reverse. CANNON-BROOKES ALISON RICHMOND It is the other way round. JONATHAN I don’t know. It goes through two stages doesn’t it? Think about the ASHLEY-SMITH 1930s through to the 1960s. Science and the scientific view dominated and authenticity was determined by scientific techniques. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, people never adopted that point of view and thought authenticity was something to do with Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 128
continuing spiritual values, or the continuing appearance and use of something. As steam has run out of the use of science, we’ve done everything we can, and as other things became more apparent through the Nara Declaration of Authenticity,14 we suddenly had Japanese saying, ‘We want to define authenticity our way’, and the Koreans have more recently joined in. All along, there have been the values and the living national treasures and the people who carry the skills with them. Those skills are used to maintain the object as an original, authentic object, rather than what the scientist would think of as an original object. They have never been concerned with the original molecular structure, or even the macrostructure. It is to do with the object’s use, spiritual values and the preservation of skills so that those things can be maintained. There are very different views. That now comes into the thinking of Western conservators. It is a change for Western conservators, but not a change in the values of conservation globally. It is just a shift in what people pay attention to. BARONESS SHARP One of the features of what are called social studies of science over the past 30 years has been to point out that people approach what they do from a particular cultural background that influences and colours their whole perception. Far from there being an ultimate truth, the evidence that scientists seek and present to some extent reflects the way in which they approach the problem, and that reflects the cultural background. There is no ultimate right or wrong in science. ALISON RICHMOND It is about the maturity of the conservation profession. One aspect of a maturing profession is the ability to accept uncertainty, rather than having to be certain about things. Science was used in the past to help us be certain and to help us justify what we do and feel that that was the right thing to do. We are now in a position where we are using science more to help us make decisions and understand that there is a wide variety of possible choices to make. Science can inform those choices, rather than just give a right or a wrong answer. JONATHAN A specific example was an object that was to be treated at the V&A. ASHLEY-SMITH It was a Buddhist sculpture in bronze. It was known that there were bits of paper in there with useful information on the inside, and any red-blooded conservator, scientist or curator of my age would say, ‘Let’s get them out and have a look at them.’ But the conservator to who the job was given had trained in New Zealand and was therefore aware of the spiritual nature of the object, and knew that it was wrong to withdraw those bits of paper. The interesting thing is that she was quite happy to X-ray them, which would be quite invasive as the X-rays have to go right through the object and out the other side. She was happy to clean the outside with abrasive and interventive treatments, but she was unwilling to poke through a little hole with a pair of tweezers and pull out the pieces of paper.15 That was the imbalance in my view between scientific inquiry and
14 http://www.international.icomos.org/charters/nara_e.htm 15 Hall, A. 2004. A case study on the ethical considerations for an intervention upon a Tibetan religious sculpture. The Conservator, No 28, pp.66-73. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 129
spiritual respect. There are a lot of things in the nature of conservation where the easy way out has been chosen so as not to do anything: ‘Let’s not go poking in this object because there are spiritual things there. Let’s do the minimum intervention because we no longer have the skills.’ There are a whole range of things that alter the face of conservation, but science hasn’t recently been one of those. PHILIP BALL It sounds as though in that case, the available scientific techniques incurred some ambiguity about what was right or wrong in a cultural context. Should X-raying been seen as invasive or not? JONATHAN The interesting thing is that when seeking evidence, this particular ASHLEY-SMITH conservator found one Buddhist monk somewhere in London and said, ‘Should I do this?’ He said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ This is just anecdotal, I was in Korea about a month ago and we were taken first to their Central Lab (NRICH, National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, Daejeon, Korea), which is a scientific research centre that has a Department of Intangible Heritage in it – that was interesting. We were shown some nice gold trinkets that had been dug out from the bottom of a Stupa that was being restored (Mireuksa Temple). The Stupa is the Buddha, and the stuff inside the gold trinkets was physically some part of Buddha. They dug the things out, and I said, ‘When you restore the Stupa, are you going to put that back where it was found under this huge stone, never to be touched again?’ They said ‘Good Lord, no!’ – these are Buddhists talking – ‘there is far too much public interest in these objects to allow us to put them back in the ground again’. Even with spiritual evidence you can pick and choose to whom you want to listen. In that case, there was one Buddhist monk who said, ‘You can’t do this, you’ve got to bury the objects again’. The others replied, ‘Do you want some money?’ He said, ‘Yes’, and went away. NANCY BELL So that is supporting a view that we are very selective. JONATHAN We are very selective. ASHLEY-SMITH PHILIP BALL Has that selectivity extended to withholding scientific investigation in cases where it seems likely that strongly-held cultural views could be challenged? I am thinking perhaps of dating? I do not know, Peter, if you found that with the Elgin Marbles at all. PETER My problem with the Elgin Marbles was to do with empirical CANNON-BROOKES research [holds up magnifying glass]. I bought that in 1957 when I started to study geology at Cambridge, and I have carried it ever since. I have even trained the CID in how to use a powerful lens, and what to look for and what not to do. I have a very high regard for empirical evidence. I did some research on slabs from the Parthenon in the Louvre which have not been cleaned quite so much. I succeeded in demonstrating that with the Elgin Marbles, what you are looking at is almost entirely the carcasses, and not the original surfaces at all. There has been an amazing amount of bullshit in this and I am sorry to say that my colleagues at the British Museum are the ones who Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 130
dislike me most of all. Somehow they thought I was downgrading the Elgin Marbles. I am not. What you are looking at are the carcasses of those sculptures, not the top surfaces. I am a scholar-curator, and I am proud of it. I see my scientific training as part and parcel of the tools used by the scholar-curator. I am acutely aware – Jonathan [Ashley-Smith] has alluded to this – of the limitations of the scientific method and the pushing of scientific evidence way beyond what is justified by the methodology. There is a marked reluctance to give proper credence to empirical evidence. I will give an example that extends from the historic past to the present. I, Garry Thomson and Nathan Stolow were responsible for the principle of transporting works of art on edge in the direction of travel. Scientific colleagues tell me that vibration analysis shows that it does not matter which way something travels. However, if you extend that to near-catastrophic conditions, you have pushed it beyond that allowed by the methodology. The reason Garry Thomson, Nathan and I laid down that rule in about 1970, was because I received a picture back from loan to Australia that had burst out of its rebate on three of its four sides, and was hanging out the front. That led us to analyse what was the weakest part of the structure of a painting and its frame – scientists don’t like looking at frames – particularly if it is glazed, so that considerable mass is involved. If you have a near-catastrophic condition, the picture may burst out through the rebate because that is the weakest part of the structure. I was escorting a painting from Princeton University to Kennedy Airport, and we hit a huge pothole outside the airport. The frame was mangled, but the picture was undamaged because it was travelling in the correct direction and the strongest part of the structure protected the picture. There is now a dispute in the conservation field. Shippers are saying that you can pack a picture on a pallet any old way, but increasing numbers of couriers are saying, ‘I don’t give a damn whether it’s a myth or not, my orders are that it is jolly well going in the direction of travel.’ My orders! On the question of practical, heritage conservation, when I was teaching, I used the transportation pyramid. That is a triangular-based pyramid, and there are four components: the means of transport, the packing specification, the insurance or indemnity applied to it, and the use of a courier or escort. You cannot settle any one of those without regard for the remaining three. In other words, if you are going to have a courier, you can probably pack more lightly, and so on. The problem now is that museums have increasingly become filled with specialist departments, and each component is in a different department. You cannot trade between the different items to get the most efficient result. As a scholar-curator, I find that misuse of the scientific method particularly upsetting. There is the terrible attitude of scientists that if you cannot measure something, you can ignore it. I have strong objections to that. PHILIP BALL I have occasionally heard – I suppose this is in an ethical framework – that accepted practice tends to lag considerably behind new scientific evidence. Is that true and if so, is it a problem? Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 131
PETER Accepted practice becomes very constraining because there are CANNON-BROOKES contractual liabilities and, as with risk management, the insurance contract is extremely conservative. A lot of the time, you are being pushed back. Yesterday, I was explaining to somebody that I really thought that we were packing things the wrong way round, and that we should have the soft layer on the outside of the packing cases and the hard on the inside. They said, ‘Oh yes, but try insuring one for a test run.’ Fortunately, when I was head of department, I was able to experiment to a considerable extent, and I was occasionally able to try using Russian packing techniques and such things. There are many ways of skinning a cat, and they have not all been explored in the West. PHILIP BALL Are things getting tougher to change? PETER Yes, because people are more and more nervous. Professional CANNON-BROOKES colleagues are human beings, and they need the security of their jobs. You dare not make a mistake. You may then be out, let alone having your promotion prospects blighted. ALISON RICHMOND On the subject of making a mistake, what has been interesting since the middle of the 1990s is that we are reviewing what we thought. I am not the person to talk about environmental parameters because I don’t know all the details, but there was a real watershed moment in the middle of the 1990s when the relative humidity fluctuations and a better understanding of the relationship of the deterioration of the objects to those fluctuations meant that attitudes changed. Presumably – I don’t know, because I can’t remember the paper – they were changed either by new evidence or by old evidence that was reinterpreted. We admitted that we had been wrong before. The phrase Jonathan used was, ‘Let’s be honest.’ As conservators, we are allowing ourselves, in our relationship with scientific evidence, to say that we can review evidence and change our approach, and that we can be wrong. That is a significant moment in history. I do not think we did that before. CRISPIN PAINE The problem is that in the small museums, none of that is understood. People simply want to be told what to do. In Little Tiddlypom Museum with its one paid curator and 15 volunteers, there was a time when they were told exactly what relative humidity every object should be kept in. Then their reaction was, ‘We ain’t got a hope, so forget it.’ Now the reaction to the more liberal noises coming out of the conservation profession is, ‘They still haven’t made up their minds, so we don’t need to worry.’ What people need is to be told exactly what to do and how to do it. PHILIP BALL Do you think that is the right message? JONATHAN Well, when these people are allowed to talk – there are a lot of people ASHLEY-SMITH who know a lot more about this matter than some of us. It is unlikely that the very tight specifications were ever based on scientific evidence. They were built around the idea that fluctuations have been shown to be bad, and therefore if we can really get that down, then Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 132
the tighter we can get the better. It was not evidence based. My contribution in 1994 was a paper called, ‘Let’s Be Honest.’16 My attitude was not based on scientific evidence either but on my own observation that I had never seen anything damaged at the V&A, in humidity fluctuating between 40 per cent and 60 per cent. A lot of objects got damaged at the V&A when being brought in from historic houses where the humidity was higher, then stuffed into the air-conditioned galleries. Then they cracked up and fell apart. That was visual observation, and the only scientific evidence used was the wind-up thermo-hygrograph charts that tell me roughly what the humidity had been. My ‘Let’s Be honest’ was based entirely on a gut feeling and unrecorded observations. Work was going on that tended to substantiate that there was a gradation of risk linked to the fluctuations. However, in the time span needed to worry about making decisions, a much broader range of fluctuations is allowed because the risk of damage is so slight. PETER I think Jonathan arrived at the V&A after Sir John Pope-Hennessy17 CANNON-BROOKES laid down the linoleum on the upper floor galleries. Perhaps not everybody here realises this. Sir John laid down linoleum, and the result was that the special detail of the warders who came in to wash the floors twice a week ceased to do so. People did not realise that the floors were rotten, and full of water. The impact of putting down linoleum was cataclysmic on the furniture collection. That is true, is it not? JONATHAN My feeling as a scientist is that that story cannot be true because the ASHLEY-SMITH furniture was not kept in those galleries – I hear you… PHILIP BALL It seems that this is a question about the distinction between measuring something and having information and evidence that is used to formulate into policy. Can you say anything about that? What does it imply about what evidence is and how information should be used? How do you turn information into useful evidence? The fact that you can clearly monitor humidity is as clear as you like. How do you turn something like that into an evidence-based guideline or policy? CRISPIN PAINE This is what we tried to do when the Museums and Galleries Commission produced its series of standards documents.18 I think it produced about 10 before it ran out of steam, or the MGC was abolished or whatever. Essentially, we gathered around the table for three, four or five meetings with people with different perspectives on photographic collections, for example, or archaeological collections, textiles, costumes and so on. We took them through an agenda of the different aspects of caring for that kind of material. It was a fascinating process – huge arguments, of course but, eventually, out of those huge arguments came some sort of reasonably agreed consensus. The Standards documents were divided
16 http://cool.conservation-us.org/byauth/ashley-smith/honest.html 17 Sir John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy (1913–1994), Director, the British Museum, 1974-6. 18See http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 133
into three sections. First, what you jolly well ought to do, secondly what you should do your best to do and why, and thirdly, advice, sources, hints and useful information. They were criticised from all sorts of directions, but in particular the actual standards section – this is what you jolly well ought to do – was criticised as being over-prescriptive. People on the whole much preferred the second guidance sections. I and others argued that those who really have no specialist knowledge in the field need firm advice on what they should be seeking to achieve, particularly in terms of environmental conditions and things like handling procedures, storage materials and so on. They also need advice on how they should achieve that and where they can buy the most appropriate materials and so on. That was an example of how we tried to draw on the expertise of the broad heritage profession, particularly its scientific arm. In turn, it had drawn on a wider scientific examination. PHILIP BALL Have there been changes in who participates in that process and in the kind of result that comes out of it? Is there a preference for increased standards over optional guidelines, for example? What are the trends? CRISPIN PAINE We are talking about the first half of the 1990s. Since then, I have not been involved in this field. I hope someone else will know what is going on. PETER Perhaps you need the National Trust Housekeeping Manual. It CANNON-BROOKES would be relevant to this debate. BEN COWELL Let us go back to what you were saying earlier, Crispin, about the more significance-based approaches to what we call heritage these days, and what the effect of that is on people’s attitudes towards following strict conservation standards, as opposed to a more commonsensical approach. We have plenty of volunteers involved in day-to-day activity in relation to objects in National Trust collections. It is the sort of commonsensical approaches and guidance laid down yesterday by Sarah [Staniforth] about The National Trust’s take on all this. I wonder if we can say that that is now a more widespread approach. There is a slightly more relaxed attitude and we are concerned about the conservation of the significance of the object. What we call heritage is a point that is completely germane to this discussion. What gets constituted as something that is so precious and worthy of ongoing care and maintenance that it ends up in a collection and subject to these rigorous, scientific standards of care? That is a pure cultural process. In the past 20 years, we have seen more and more things falling into what we might call heritage, but it is actually a different set of standards being applied. NANCY BELL You are in a particularly unique position. You have been in government. Do you have any views about the changing nature of evidence to inform policy over the past 10 years? BEN COWELL What is of interest to me is the way that the scientific knowledge that has been collected over the period we are talking about has or has Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 134
not impacted on decisions made by Governments or funders of heritage. Do we know more now about the needs of collective heritage and where funding should be directed? Do policy makers take that into account? I am not convinced that they do. That evidence is not reaching the ears of those who make the decisions. This is a fairly closed world to most people in positions of Government authority. PHILIP BALL Has that always been the case? BEN COWELL Certainly in my living experience, but I do not know beyond that. BARONESS SHARP I very much go along with Ben. Who takes the decisions within a Government Department? Ministers are advised by their civil servants but they often come along with prejudices – ideas that they have. Over the past 10 years I have been involved in the area of education, and there has been a host of research about what works and what does not work. We also had a series of Ministers and Secretaries of State for Education who all come in with their own ideas of what they think works and what does not work. They are very selective in the evidence they use, and we find that policy changes constantly according to who is at the top. If you take the equivalent of those running the little museum as being the head of a small rural primary school, to some extent, an advantage of the national curriculum was that it told people what they had to do and teach. That was distinct from the head and staff having autonomy. It is a useful thing for some people; it means that they don’t have to think too hard about what they do. Now, you suggest that we relax the national curriculum a bit but some people come along and say, ‘Oh don’t do that. We like to know what we’ve got to do. We like to have clarity.’ On the whole – certainly in the larger schools – the heads are only too delighted to be given more chances and more autonomy. Having gone through the process of being a policy analyst and producing recommendations on policy in a starry-eyed way, thinking that things would get through because they were obviously rational and logical, I find myself becoming very cynical about it all. I move in the world of politicians, and so many people are so prejudiced. JONATHAN The same is true elsewhere – a new director of a national museum ASHLEY-SMITH will come in and everyone will roll over and say, ‘Please change everything.’ I have had the privilege to work with five directors of the V&A, and not one has ever used any information to guide their decision making. They are not interested in that. They come in with their policy and their one goal to achieve in that time, and nothing like, ‘It works already’ or ‘You don’t need to do that’ stands in the way. They will just do it. PETER In the late-1960s the conservation revolution in provincial museums CANNON-BROOKES owed a great deal to what went on in Birmingham. That went back to a lunch that I had with my Director, Sir Martin Davies19 who was
19 Sir Martin Davies (1908–1975), Director, National Gallery, 1968-73. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 135
director of the National Gallery, and the Chairman of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery Committee. During this lunch, the subject of the state of the collections came up, and I explained to Martin just how bad they were. The Chairman of the Committee turned on me and said, ‘Nobody will believe you.’ I said, ‘Madam Chairman, do I take that as an instruction to obtain professional reports?’, and she said ‘Yes’. By God she regretted that. We got the full panoply – the BMA, British Museum specialists looking at sections of the collections. It was devastating. The report went through the Committee, and the horrified administrator got a telephone call from the local press before the meeting to say that a copy of it was on his desk and he was going to serialise it. The eruption was such that two things happened. First, the General Purposes Committee was informed by the External Auditors of the City of Birmingham that their advice would be verbal this year and in writing the following year and that the assets were being neglected. Secondly, the budget of the museum went up from £440,000 to £650,000 in one year. We got a Conservation Department with Stephen Rees-Jones20 and things started moving. That explosion was one of the things that moved things in the provincial museums. PHILIP BALL We are going to have to stop to get some refreshments.
20 Stephen Rees Jones (1909-97), Head of the Technology Department, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1951-76. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 136
Session Two
PHILIP BALL We will invite contributions from the floor, but I wanted to begin again with some of those here. Before the break we were beginning to discuss policy and how policy is affected. Ben, you have had experience in this area. In your experience, what do you feel effects policy? Does evidence of any sort – not just scientific but from a range of disciplines – seem to have an effect on policy? Do you have to accumulate evidence until your case is overwhelming, or is it lobbying, personality or something else that makes change happen? BEN COWELL It is all of those things. There has been a more concerted emphasis on evidence-based policy making over the past 20 or 30 years. That is manifest in things like the Treasury Green Book,21 which is a clear method by which public servants ought to make decisions or recommendations to their political masters. That is a structured approach to how you pull together different options for solving certain problems or things that Governments deem to be problems. It is about how you then differentiate between those options from a value for money perspective. That is often the front line for people in the position of making or advising on policy. That is a roundabout way of saying that I think more evidence is used these days than before, but I suspect that the evidence does not lead to inevitable conclusions. Although the Department for Culture has a participation survey that shows the historic environment is the most popular thing of all the things that receive funding, that does not mean that the historic environment does well out of the spending review – quite the contrary. There is no automatic line to the money purely on the strength of evidence. There will always be the human factors of politics and personalities, strength of argument and the fact that politicians want to leave their mark on history in whatever way. They invariably do not think of the world of heritage as being a route to that – that hasn’t been the case for the past 15 years. PHILIP BALL Do you feel that there is a suggestion that evidence can change minds, or is it used to justify positions? BEN COWELL You would probably need to look at a wide range of areas. Evidence can change minds – I am trying to think of an example. Changes in policy positions come about as a consequence of the application of evidence – I am sure that my colleagues can name any number of cases where that has happened. BARONESS SHARP There has to be a receptive mind. If you take the change in penal policy that was announced this week, you have a receptive mind, in the terms of Kenneth Clarke,22 ‘Prison doesn’t work’. With another
21 http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/data_greenbook_index.htm 22 Kenneth Clarke, Conservative politician, Lord Chancellor, 2010-. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 137
politician, however, in spite of all the evidence that prison doesn’t work, we are told that prison works. BEN COWELL I suppose drugs policy would be another area. The Committee that was advising on the medical effects of drugs and so on dared to suggest that some things were possibly less damaging in totality than other things. People were struck off. JONATHAN The whole inclusive stakeholder consensus thing diminishes the ASHLEY-SMITH power of the individual specialist expert anyway. You are asking everybody what they think about something, rather than asking people who might actually know and give you hard and fast evidence. PETER Could we look at lighting levels as a useful area? It has not been CANNON-BROOKES mentioned here at all in terms of conservation. Between fixed levels – the 150 lux, 50 lux, set for different types of material – against total dosage. The National Trust has developed good policies that have been driven by evidence. JONATHAN That is an example of where Garry Thomson was impressed by a bit ASHLEY-SMITH of research that suggested that people enjoy paintings more when they can see them better. He said, ‘Okay. We’ll move it from 150 lux to 250 lux.’ That is evidence-based, but not particularly scientific evidence. PHILIP BALL Margaret, are there procedures that one could use to make the most of evidence? If you are an expert who believes that he or she has evidence to support a particular case, given the political imponderables that we have heard about, how can you make the most of that evidence in shaping policy? BARONESS SHARP It is a question of lobbying the right people. Back in the 1990s, we were desperately trying to influence the Treasury to recognise that the core of basic science and technology was important to the whole innovation process – you couldn’t just do applied research, you needed to have a core of basic research going on. It was about trying to get at and influence the civil servants in the Treasury who were working in that area of science policy and, to some extent, the Ministers concerned. You still remain dependent on the receptiveness of personalities. In a sense, policy changed very dramatically when David Sainsbury23 became Minister for Science. He knew the work that had been going on and we’d had a lot of links with him and his Gatsby Charitable Foundation. When he became Minister for Science, one saw a total change in Treasury policy. I don’t know whether Ben would go along with this, but I find that the Treasury is dominant in Whitehall. That is very frustrating because you can have a Department that has absorbed the evidence and wants to go in a particular direction, but it can be completely stymied by the Treasury, which takes the final
23 David Sainsbury (Lord Sainsbury of Turville), Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, 1998- 2006. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 138
decisions. It is very much about value for money and crude cost benefit. BEN COWELL Yes, but the Treasury uses evidence as a weapon to push Departments back. For example, on the issue of VAT on repairs to historic buildings there was a long-running campaign that always ends at the doors of the Treasury. The Treasury says that there is no evidence that the measure would be revenue neutral or do anything other than subsidise people who should not be unfairly getting a subsidy. Although plenty of evidence has built up about the benefits of harmonising VAT across new construction and repairs, the evidence factor will be used – the Treasury will say that there is no definitive evidence or that the evidence is not good enough, and that people should go away and get some more evidence. That argument will be used time and time again. The Treasury is selective. JONATHAN It is selective in how it interprets the available evidence. The Green ASHLEY-SMITH Book suggests ways of valuing the different options. Last time I looked, it was based on commercial discount rates rather than the special discount rate for heritage. Therefore, nothing has any value after 20 years using that, which is not a basic tenet of heritage. At the time, I argued with the DCMS statisticians and economists. They said, ‘We are too small a Department; we cannot try to ask for a special discount rate.’ It would have been sensible to increase the power of arguments about investing in heritage. PETER When I dealt with it the Treasury had a marvellous attitude. It used CANNON-BROOKES to say, ‘Yes, this is absolutely necessary but there is no evidence that the Government should have anything to do with it.’ The ball would be kicked firmly back into the heritage court. It was an excellent idea: ‘It’s totally necessary, but don’t ask us. There is no reason why we should do it’. ALISON RICHMOND I have a question about evidence. Is there any evidence to suggest that if we found more evidence about the economic benefit of conservation and heritage science, it would do any good? As I understand it, we do not have much evidence about the economic benefit of the value added by conservation or conservation science. Is there any evidence that we should be trying to gather more information on that, or should we just forget about it because the Treasury and so on are not going to listen? BEN COWELL If you are competing on those terms, you will never win. There will always be other things that have a higher economic impact. If you try to compete on those terms, you will invariably lose out. I suspect that the answer is no. It is about using what you have got in a powerful way – it is about advocacy rather than evidence. CRISPIN PAINE The atmosphere has changed over the past generation. There was a period in the Thatcherite era when studies of the economic impact of arts and heritage were terribly fashionable. All of that seems to have gone and been replaced by ‘It’s quality of life, chaps.’ Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 139
JONATHAN It was novel, but it wasn’t very influential. When the national ASHLEY-SMITH museum directors finally got hold of that argument and could say, ‘We are great for tourism’ and so on, the response was, ‘Well, you can earn money. You have said that you’re a centre of attention. Therefore you can earn money and why should we pay you more?’
BARONESS SHARP That’s the Treasury for you. Interestingly, when our Report24 was published it was at the peaking of the economic cycle, just before the crash. Climate change and sustainability was high on the agenda, and at the time, there was a concept of, ‘We do not inherit the earth: we hold it in trust for our successors’, which was something that appealed; and people listened to that argument. We wrote that into our Report, and I feel very strongly about it. With the recession, that longer-term perspective has tended to recede, particularly given the huge budget deficit that we now face. The imperative is now to reduce that deficit, and we are back to the crude economics. The longer-term issues get lost. I have always felt that the Treasury was the hive of short-termism. It is always about the current cost and anything 20 years hence is completely written off because it is not worth doing. Combined with the political horizon of four to five years, that is pretty deadly. BEN COWELL In that regard, the Prime Minister’s25 recent request that the Office for National Statistics undertakes an investigation into what constitutes happiness and well-being is heartening and of interest. That seems to be an indication that politicians are looking beyond those time frames. There is something more than the here and now and the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves. JONATHAN The answer is that we can all individually own this problem and ASHLEY-SMITH participate as volunteers in heritage. The Demos Report which was meant to save expertise in conservation started with a sentence that was more or less, ‘Volunteers are good’.26 The ‘Big Society’ is about the Government not being involved in anything at all, although people who are concerned and interested can get involved. The conservation profession as a whole has taken to the idea that we must go down to the level of the public and explain how easy to understand it is. That is rather than taking the view that this is incredibly difficult and important; it takes a long time to train for it, and therefore we are the experts who should be consulted. The whole thing has gone in the wrong direction from being in praise of expertise down to, ‘Anyone can do it’. PHILIP BALL Let me bring in Nancy. NANCY BELL Returning to the question of evidence and policy, Jonathan [Ashley- Smith]’s comments were important, and I agree with them wholeheartedly. We have heard a lot about the ways that evidence is generated and how we want to move towards exploiting the richness
24 House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee, 2006. Science and Heritage: report with evidence. 9th report of Session 2005-6. House of Lords Papers 256. London: The Stationery Office Ltd. 25 David Cameron, Prime Minister, 2010-. 26 http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/materialworld Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 140
of interdisciplinarity and so on. One of the impediments to this might be about how we get access to, utilise and interpret evidence when we are often faced with quick responses – a tight timetable, the telephone, Ministers wanting this, the Treasury wanting that. Margaret, from your perspective do you think given time constraints it is possible to use evidence to influence policy? BARONESS SHARP Sometimes it’s a question of timeliness. Often, Ministers use gathering more evidence as a way of putting off decisions as much as for taking them. BEN COWELL It is about who the people advising the Ministers are. There is the tradition of the civil service being non-expert. They are generalist – they can advise on any topic under the sun because they know where to get the information and present it in the timeliest way. Expert advisers are used within Departments and decision-making organisations, and civil servants working in those places are exposed to deeper sets of knowledge. Institutional knowledge is transferred at a time when we are losing lots of posts in the public sector. PETER A much bigger subject is the impact of global warming on CANNON-BROOKES conservation policy in the future. Are we guilty of fiddling while Rome burns? I wrote to Richard Dorment27 some months ago and said that I was becoming profoundly disquieted by the way that our traditional parameters for long-term conservation were in conflict with the projections of the impact of global warming. In the shorter term – I am being provocative now – should we be spending any money on conservation of material that is five metres above sea level? The whole damn lot is going under. We are not going to stop the rise of sea levels; it will be a huge problem. We are looking to the short term or possibly the middle term, but we are not looking at the long-term prospects from the point of view of conservation. Global warming is of fundamental importance to the conservation and curatorial world, and it is not being addressed. NANCY BELL There are a lot of people in the audience with a wide range of expertise It seems a good time to ask for some audience participation. I can see a number of people who have been involved in these questions. MIKE CORFIELD I am Mike Corfield and I would like to comment on the issue of climate change that was raised by Peter Cannon-Brookes. When I was at English Heritage, I commissioned May [Cassar]’s organisation to carry out a study of the likely impacts of climate change on cultural heritage, archaeology, buildings and corrections. That started a process that led to an EPSRC funded programme, and ultimately to a European funded programme. We have been looking closely at that issue and at how things can be mitigated. There are still a lot of unknowns in what the outcome might be, which comes back to the need for more evidence on the likely impacts of climate change. In some respects, we have fairly clear evidence. We can see the changes
27 Richard Dorment, art critic of the Daily Telegraph. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 141
in sea level and in climate patterns. As an archaeologist, it concerns me greatly that sites around the coast will be lost in too great a quantity to properly assess what is happening. On the other hand, inland sites will be affected by changes to the parameters that have resulted in the preservation of evidence within those sites to a degree that we cannot really be clear on. That is stimulated by the impact of PPG 16,28 which was directed to mitigate the impact of developments on archaeological sites. That policy was based on fairly scant scientific evidence. We instituted a programme of conferences on the preservation of archaeological sites in situ – the fourth one will be next year in Copenhagen. A body of information is being generated about burial environments and how they change and are impacted on by developments. It is a big experiment. Things might work out or they might not. PHILIP BALL In view of that and having engaged in that process, were you able to draw any conclusions about how to develop policy or guidelines in the face of inevitable big uncertainties? MIKE CORFIELD We have done a certain amount of research in that area. The site that I have been particularly involved with is the Rose Theatre, where some of the theatre is preserved in a soggy, wet environment on the South Bank. English Heritage has been monitoring that continuously for the past 20 years. There are reams of data that have to be analysed to ensure that if the theatre is sealed up, as is intended, that the natural hydrology will be sufficient to maintain those conditions. Elsewhere, a lot of research is going on in the Netherlands and Scandinavia to look at the way that hydrology affects the preservation of evidence in the ground. JOHN FIDLER My name is John Fidler. I am an architect by training. Until 2006, I was the Conservation Director of English Heritage, and I worked for that organisation for 20 years. I have a couple of examples to tease out the evidence-based issues. First, the interface between us (the professional technical experts) and politicians are the senior civil servants. A whole series of blockages get in the way of evidence being utilised. I had a fascinating (and drunken) train ride with Jennie Page,29 who was then my Chief Executive at English Heritage. She said, ‘You, Fidler, are a very dangerous man. We were taught to guard Ministers against people like you because you are a one-man lobbying organisation. Politicians have to be guarded from the professional classes who are articulate and bring evidence that can throw the train off the rails.’ She cited actual courses at Civil Service College that were designed to protect Ministers. She said, ‘You professionals think there is an answer to everything, but sometimes the Government does not want an answer at all, if ever. You take a problem and find a solution or a series of options, but civil servants give Ministers the option to boot the problem into the long grass.’ We must bear that in
28 Planning Policy Guidance 16: Archaeology and Planning (1990). 29 Jennifer Page, Chief Executive, English Heritage, 1989-95. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 142
mind when trying to use evidence to persuade politicians. When Ministers are in urgent need of evidence but it doesn’t exist, they make it up and repeat it parrot-fashion. When English Heritage started its ‘Heritage Counts’ activities, there was a problem in trying to articulate how many listed buildings there were in the country, and what the proportion of those buildings were in relation to the total building stock. The problem was twofold. First, data collected since 1947 on listing were not very consistent. Whole terraces were counted as one building, for example. Secondly, there were differences of opinion about the total building stock in the country – was it 25 million, 28 million, 22 million? On the basis of that problem, I made up a figure. I cited many times in publications and lectures that historic buildings constituted about 6 per-cent of total building stock. I knew I had hit the jackpot when Lady Blatch30 started repeating my statistics when she was the Minister. Where, by rote, we use standards, we assume that they are built off evidence. An example of that are the building regulations in England where in the adaptation of historic buildings to new uses, changes have to be made to buildings for regulations on Health and Safety. Sometimes, that has an aesthetic impact on the architectural features – a Georgian house converted to office use, for example. Fire regulations come into play. The regulations used to say that all doorways into spaces had to be protected from smoke by applying oak stops to the door frames. If they were Georgian doors, they had to be panelled over with fireproof material and intumescent paints had to be used on top of that. The hinges of the doors had to be changed to British standard half-hour fire-resistant hinges. I wondered where those rules came from. We sent a historian to the building regulation archives in the Home Office, and found in about 1948, a committee had mused over the conversion of old buildings to new uses and put down ideas based on no evidence whatsoever that they would have any effect. Millions of buildings in the 1970s and 1980s had all those regulations applied to them thanks to the guesswork of a committee. I decided to commission research and fire tests at the Building Research Establishment to see what effects that type of improvement made to the buildings. The timber stops round the doors shrank in the fire and let smoke in quickly and the intumescent paint caught fire. The British standard half-hour hinges melted in 20 minutes and the fireproof board exploded in 10 minutes. The Chief Fire Officer from the Home Office sat on the ground, crying with his head between his knees. PHILIP BALL What happened then? JOHN FIDLER The regulations were, in fact, changed and the fire resistant measures were adapted to show what the evidence had proven – that many of those things were not possible. We changed to having intumescent strips laid on the edges of doors and so on. I do not see much activity on behalf of the conservation and science community in
30 Baroness Blatch (Emily Blatch, 1937–2005), Conservative Minister of State for the Home Office, 1994-7. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 143
revisiting some norms from the past in the way I have described. That is a problem. Sometimes we are confronted by crises where evidence is needed as a safety net for the politicians when fast responses are needed. A case in point was the foot and mouth epizootic where farmers were ringing English Heritage and saying, ‘The ministry is spraying my listed barn with a chemical, and it’s fizzing.’ It turned out that the chemical of choice for disinfection was citric acid, which was not good for lots of limestone buildings around the country. I proposed an alternative to the Chief Veterinary Officer, which was limewash (calcium hydroxide). That has been used on buildings since Roman times and has a pH of about 13 – that will crack any cell wall on a virus. He asked about its European pesticide registration number and I said that it didn’t have one. He said, ‘Is it made by any of the licensed authorities for the use of disinfectants on farms?’ I said that it didn’t have a licence number. He then said that he could not authorise its use. I had to ring Plum Island in New York State,31 where there are American experts on foot and mouth. I repeated my distress and they said, ‘Send us a note, and if you’ve got a friendly lime wash manufacturer who can measure the pH decay for a week, we will send a note to the Ministry.’ They did that, and I got a phone call from the Chief Veterinary Officer who said, ‘I see you have got second opinions from elsewhere. I’ll allow it to be used, but I’m not going to issue an edict.’ He had a safety net – a second opinion from elsewhere. Sometimes evidence is hard to get through the system. PHILIP BALL I wonder whether that raises the question of whose responsibility it is to gather the evidence. I have heard that said for architects who want to use new materials, but they do not have the health and safety data on it – the materials manufacturers do not consider it their duty to research that. I presume the same things happen in cultural heritage. Does anyone have anything to say about that issue? Where do you get the evidence from? PETER Ventilated roof spaces – the idea of having raised ridges and having CANNON-BROOKES to ventilate the roof space below by putting these plastic things in it. They have already abandoned that. If you go round, you will see them all popped out and on to the ground. It just doesn’t work. NANCY BELL John – do you want to respond? JOHN FIDLER My anecdote for this is anthrax in buildings. The break-up of British railways caused the safety unit in British Rail to look for a job and a home. The Thatcherite policies had scattered the organisations to the winds, and the safety unit did not really have a home or a job. They commissioned a poor piece of work from a medical research unit at Birmingham University. They sampled 100 Victorian buildings and found a limited number of anthrax spores in the plaster work. They said, ‘QED, all Victorian buildings are potentially a health risk, and demolitions and alterations in those building should be controlled.
31 US Department of Agriculture’s animal disease centre, located in Long Island, New York. www.ars.usda.gov Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 144
We as a safety organisation will go in wearing safety suits to assess and measure the impacts on the buildings.’ English Heritage thought that was nonsense (we had never heard of anyone contracting anthrax from buildings). The anthrax came from the use of animal hairs for reinforcement in the plaster. I wondered who had more clout in the anthrax world than the Health and Safety Executive and the Railways Safety Board, so I went to Porton Down to the biological defence (warfare) establishment. I asked how you can kill people with anthrax, and they said, ‘Come on down; we’ll show you.’ They were marvellous. They had all the evidence you would require for entry routes, amounts of material and so forth. I dutifully gathered that, and took it to the Health and Safety Executive. I then published a famous English Heritage pamphlet called, Anthrax In Buildings,32 which is still available on the website. That caused a great deal of turmoil in the Government because I was countering advice that came from the Safety Executive. They never spoke to me again. The answer to the question is that I sought a higher authority. JONATHAN A lot of the argument about the use of evidence centres round the ASHLEY-SMITH use of the precautionary principle, which has become very popular as a way of moving things forward. You don’t have to seek scientific evidence to go forward in a precautionary way. It is the person proposing something dangerous who has to prove that it is not dangerous. In cultural heritage in general, dangerous things are proposed by museum directors, exhibition designers or whatever. Yet in cultural heritage it is the people who say ‘that is dangerous’ who have to prove it. That is not what the principle suggests. That attitude has not been taken up by the heritage sector. The heritage sector does not want complainers, and insists that those complainers seek the evidence themselves, rather than the people making the proposal. NANCY BELL Do you have any suggestions about how that might change? JONATHAN I don’t know. You are back to powerplay. The conservation lobby ASHLEY-SMITH needs to be more powerful than the museum directors. That is unlikely to happen. CRISPIN PAINE This is an example of the continuing theme of all heritage work – it is about balancing preservation against use now and in the future. Someone at some stage has to make a decision about that balance. If you are trying to argue that a new display technique is dangerous, for example, then it is correctly down to the conservator, or whoever makes that argument, to show that it is dangerous. If I were the director, I would assume that it was not dangerous, until you showed me otherwise. The balance should be on the side that you complain it is on. JONATHAN I do not complain about anything. I was making a remark, but for ASHLEY-SMITH whatever reason, heritage has chosen not to go with what it could rely on in terms of European legislation and who has to prove what.
32 http://www.helm.org.uk/guidance-library/anthrax-and-historic-plaster/ Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 145
PETER We have a wonderful record of degassing problems. Some people at CANNON-BROOKES Harvard once had to strip out an entire storage area and start again because of the formaldehyde resins were degassing into the atmosphere spreading bronze disease as a consequence. There is plenty of literature on that. JONATHAN There is plenty of evidence, but that does not stop people re- ASHLEY-SMITH proposing it or just doing it. DAVID LEIGH I am David Leigh – I will say more about myself later. I wanted to pick up on one or two of John Fidler’s points. I was glad that he started talking about buildings as that is an area we need to reflect on. A lot of evidence in buildings still gets destroyed by uninformed work. You touched on standards for electrical work, health and safety, plumbing and so on, but there is no standard for interventions on historic buildings. That is an evidence-based stand that we should think of introducing. It is something that has to be taken into account when a contractor does damage to evidence in what they think is a useful way. PETER That could be applied only to listed buildings if you wanted statutory CANNON-BROOKES control. DAVID LEIGH I am not saying statutory. A requirement could be made that in any work done on a historic building, listed or not, the person commissioning the work could specify the standard to which it should be done. They would be legally obliged to meet electrical standards, but you could specify the other ones. I was asked to think about things and to comment, and I have a few ideas emerging from this morning in slightly random order. On the point about DCMS, evidence and influence, I understand that heritage science is terribly far down the food chain for influencing anybody. It is part of heritage, and heritage does not get much of a look in. It may be all right for penal reform which is a big public issue, but heritage has little ‘traction’ in DCMS. We had a few good anecdotes earlier. My anecdote is from about 10 years ago when I phoned up DCMS because I wanted to talk to someone about conservation science. I did the trail round of telephone calls – you probably weren’t there at the time, Ben – and I eventually found the person who had the brief for national museums. I started talking about conservation science, and I met a complete blank. That person did not know that their clients and organisations such as national museums did anything like conservation science. I gave up but that has stuck in my mind. I do not blame anyone – the appointments and the breadth of people’s responsibilities are so vast – but working at that level of government is pretty disheartening. I would like to pick up on a point made by May Cassar in her excellent paper. She talked about the possibility of getting champions. That brings me to another area that we have not covered – archaeology. May pointed out that there is an archaeology pressure group within Parliament. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 146
MAY CASSAR The All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group.33 DAVID LEIGH I am not quite sure what influence and success that has, but it is a voice in Parliament. Perhaps heritage science would qualify for something like that – perhaps Icon could lead on that. It is certainly worth thinking about as a way of getting evidence in somewhere at some level that might have an effect, and getting some champions within Parliament. BARONESS SHARP The Archaeology Group has the great advantage of having Lord Renfrew34 in the House of Lords. It’s his group, really; he has brought all his chums in and they have quite interesting speakers and do interesting tours. Rupert Redesdale35 is another colleague who is active in it. My advice would be to try and infiltrate the archaeology group, rather than necessarily start a new group. There are so many APPGs – there are probably 600 or 700. Every disease has its own APPG. Basically, you can only meet on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings. Monday is no good because a lot of MPs do not come from their constituencies and Monday evening has relatively few meetings. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are when the MPs are around and people want to lobby them. They are crowded out. There must be six or seven meetings simultaneously for every hour slot on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and lunchtimes as well. Given that you have an established group, you would do better to infiltrate and work your way into that group. DAVID LEIGH There may also be some champions – you yourself might be around to champion it. BARONESS SHARP There are a number of champions around. You are right – champions are very important. In your midst you have May, who has championed this cause. Very little would have been done post the Select Committee report. Most Select Committee reports are published, there is a Government response which is usually somewhat half-hearted saying, ‘Yes, you’ve got some good points and so on’, and then it sits on a shelf. Nothing happens unless you’ve got somebody who is prepared to take it up and follow it through. My main activity has been as spokesperson on education, and I confess that I would not have followed these things through if I had not had May to push me. We have seen all kinds of activities. On the one hand, there is the joint programme with the AHRC and the EPSRC and we have seen the National Heritage Science Strategy. The one thing my Committee would have followed through would be about the DCMS getting a Chief Scientist. They wanted a proper scientist, and ended up with Anita Charlesworth36 who was a social scientist. DCMS had always wanted that anyhow, as they said that given digital and cultural
33 The All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group, www.appag.org.uk. 34 Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn. Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge University, 1981–2004. 35 The 6th Lord Redesdale. 36 Anita Charlesworth, Chief Analyst and Chief Scientist Adviser, DCMS, 2007-10. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 147
matters, it was more appropriate to have a social scientist rather than a scientist. Now we have lost her because in slimming down, the Department said that the first thing to go would be the chief scientist. Such is life. People came to me and said, ‘Help, we’ve got an economist but we haven’t got a proper scientist.’ I said, ‘Don’t regard that as being so awful.’ I’ve got an economics background, and if I’d been sitting in the science policy research unit and this job came up, I might think it was quite a nice job to do. I could have done quite a good job there as a social scientist. I said to May [Cassar], ‘Go and introduce yourself to Anita and tell her all about what we have done’ and in a sense, that was important. She became a champion for heritage science in the Department. One of the points made was about why we trust evidence from people we know rather than from people we do not know. It is the whole business of trust. One looks at evidence produced from one’s own community because you speak the same language and trust people. The business of building communities that know each other – networking and building trust – is an important aspect of all that. PETER We have been looking at the historic aspect of this as well as the CANNON-BROOKES current one. One of our great losses – I hesitate to say this – is the loss of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords, because they had enormous expertise. People such as Lord Cottesloe,37 David Crawford and Balcarres,38 and Lord Perth,39 and others, had given their lives to this sector. I hope I am not maligning anyone – it is a serious loss. BARONESS SHARP Many of them had the problem of the preservation of their own historic heritage, and therefore they lived with that whole problem. In terms of its broad scrutiny role, the House of Lords has been improved, but in terms of this particular area, I understand what you are saying. DAVID LEIGH An area we have neglected – Mike Corfield touched on it – is that of archaeological science. That is a significant part of so-called heritage science. It is interesting because there is a community that is dealing with things as evidence. Things are dug up because they are evidence. In many ways, that has taken off much better than conservation science, looking at changes over the years. You have the Oxford laboratory, and what is called archaeometry. From a historical perspective that has done extremely well over many years – I don’t know how it is doing now. Perhaps we in conservation science should look harder at why that has worked so well. I want to say a word or two about technique of history as opposed to
37 The 4th Baron Cottesloe (J.W.H. Fremantle, 1900-94), Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, 1960-5. 38 The 28th Earl of Crawford and 11th Earl of Balcarres (D.A.R. Lindsay,1900–75), trustee: Tate Gallery, 1932-7; the National Gallery, 1935-41, 1945-52 and 1953-60; the British Museum, 1940-73; member, Standing Commission of Museums and Galleries, 1937-52; chairman: Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 1952-72, and the Royal Fine Arts Commission, 1943-57. 39 The 17th Earl of Perth (J.D. Drummond, 1907-2002), Chairman of the Reviewing Committee on Export of Works of Art from 1972-6. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 148
conservation needs. Things have changed and in some places, there is more sense of teamwork and togetherness between curators, scholars and conservators. There is more teamwork in the sense of storytelling. That is what we’re doing with the objects. We have matured in that way, and to bring science into that requires substantial investment in staff and so on. Wonderful things are happening in the National Gallery, the British Museum and the V&A, where they have a sufficient body, a quantum of people, who can combine their forces and intellects and talk over tea and so on, often within the same department. It is not always about having science over here, and conservation here. In the British Museum, it is more or less one department. There are examples, but they operate in relatively few, large-funded bodies. We need to focus on why that works. Going back to evidence from practice, we have largely failed to collect enough evidence systematically as a result of conservation practice. Conservators are still too rooted in doing what they were told you do with a particular problem. It is a sort of recipe approach, and we have not been good enough at collecting the evidence of the results of interventions over the decades. That goes back to condition reporting to some extent, and tying that in with good records of what was done. We need to be much better about that as we have not got as far as we should. I like to refer to the condition reporting work done by Joel Taylor.40 He introduced the idea of indices for condition reporting. That is an important area that needs touching on. Another area we have not touched on is the private sector. More than 50 per-cent of conservation work is done in the private sector. That applies here and in the States. I suspect that evidence collecting in the private sector is not a very high priority. We’ve been talking largely about public institutions, but let us remember that an awful lot of the heritage gets dealt with in the private sector. Perhaps we should look at some stage at what access private conservators have to evidence gathering and scientific analysis. JOYCE HILL STONER I wanted to mention the wonderful conference that happened here in England a year and two months ago put on by ICOM-CC on the use of what you were mentioning earlier – technology with collaboration and record keeping and so forth. The Mellon Foundation has put together a marvellous project linking Boston, London, Amsterdam and Rome through what they call, in one case, the 24-hour Rijksmuseum. Normally, if you are researching an object you have to go to the curatorial file and get the provenance and history. You have to go to the registrar’s file and the scientific laboratory file, and go to the conservation department file to get all the different sets of information hidden in these corner locations. The Mellon Foundation is taking these silos of data and putting them together on a digital database so that anybody, any member of the public, any private conservator, can, at any hour of the day, have access to these important caches of data. Often in the museum you
40 Joel Taylor, Course Director, MSc Built Environment: Sustainable Heritage at the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, University College London. Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 149
would need to go to at least four places, and the four sets of people may not be communicating with each other as regularly as they might. Much of the information has never been published: it’s in folders. Therefore, we can use new technology to digitise that information and make it available not only to people in the museums but to those outside who can use the databases. I thought that was a highly optimistic future wave, which answers your question about the use of new technology and collaboration across disciplines. NANCY BELL That is a really good point. It looks like a fantastic resource for the future. DAVID LEIGH I have one more point about the National Trust’s bringing properties alive. Great things have been happening, but as Ben was saying, you can only bring properties alive more than they already do – the National Trust has been bringing properties alive for years, but this is a headline initiative. That can only be done responsibly if those doing it have the evidence of what will and will not do harm, and how far you can go in getting access to the public and using and handling objects. That puts the focus firmly back with the conservators and scientists to support them, before they can take that leap forward. PHILIP BALL David, you promised to introduce yourself. DAVID LEIGH I was going to do that this afternoon. PHILIP BALL Just say who you are for the record. DAVID LEIGH That is a good question! MAY CASSAR Start with your name. DAVID LEIGH I trained in physics – my name is David Leigh. NANCY BELL I want to bring an international perspective to all this. I am looking around the room and I see several people who have worked in institutions and have long experience in that field. We have touched on points of access to evidence, using evidence to inform practice, the translation of science and evidence, the different kinds of evidence, advocacy and so on. I would like to encourage those who work outside the UK to comment from your own perspective on any of those big topics. JERRY PODANY I am Jerry Podany, President of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) and Senior Conservator of Antiquities for the Getty Museum. Since I do not live or work in the UK I cannot directly speak of the history of modern conservation practice in the UK. But I will at least make a stab at an international perspective on the issues at hand. Listening to the discussion yesterday and today, one of the most interesting concepts has been that presented by Baroness Sharp, the idea of ‘absorptive capacity’. When you take that concept and try to apply it to our field – (and we are now speaking of the application of science to heritage conservation) – it seems to me that we have absorbed the trappings of science to try to gain a sense of legitimacy. There are of course Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 150
exceptions, and certainly there are giants in the field worldwide who have brought us to an advanced point. However, as a whole, our use of science has been inadequate. I have daughter who is very close to graduating university in neuroscience. When I told her I was coming to London to talk about ‘science’ in conservation, she asked, ‘What do you mean by saying ‘science’?’ The word presents such astonishing diversity and yet for a day and a half I have heard colleagues here refer to ‘science’ as if it were a monolithic thing. We must learn to take better advantage of the diversity and the complexities of science, and we must also be sure that we are doing so through talented and capable translators. Heritage conservation is a different field from that of 60 years ago. The problems and the answers are far more nuanced and complex. From an international perspective the professions remain lacking, are far behind where we should be. We have not yet fully and successfully integrated advances in the sciences to heritage preservation efforts. STEFAN MICHALSKI I am Stefan Michalski from the Canadian Conservation Institute. I have been scribbling notes this morning, and I will try to string them together in the right order. The word ‘evidence’ is comforting but it is loaded in the way that it has traditionally been used. Within the judicial association, evidence conjures up a notion of blood on the floor, fingerprints, a motive, witness X, therefore someone is a killer. In the judicial system, evidence is data that uses straightforward deductive logic to lead to an almost certain conclusion. It is a specific kind of data with specific judicial systems for ensuring that it is reliable. The logic is usually straightforward. The courtroom tries to establish whether the data are reliable and the logic that follows is generally inevitable. DNA put a bit of a wrinkle in when statisticians came along and said, ‘There’s still a one in a billion chance that this is not the killer’, and people said, ‘Okay, that is certain enough for us.’ The medical industry started talking about evidence-based medicine about 20 years ago. It tried to borrow the notion that evidence will emerge, like in a murder trial, to show that vitamin C is good for stopping colds, preventing cancer or whatever. We have 30 years of data on many scientific issues, but it does not behave like evidence in a courtroom drama. The leap from interpreting the evidence is a wandering path. It is not three steps of basic logic that common sense has hardwired into a jury of 12 men just and true. That is the problem. We are trying to pretend that what we call data will somehow behave like evidence. If we think of the words – evidence is stuff that become evident and if it is acceptable, the logic follows. Our data are never self-evident except in primitive cases. We have the illusion that by calling something evidence, it will behave like evidence. It is piles of data. I read a lot on decision making, which has led me to the psychological literature in our decision making and the notion of fast and frugal heuristics, which is a nice term for common sense. There is a lot of research into how that does or does not work. Why do we trust or follow certain people? One of the points about heuristics, is Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 151 that if you are familiar with that situation or person, then we are wired to say, ‘I should probably trust my near relative rather than the stranger from across the hill.’ That applies politically and is incredibly powerful. We now know two things. We are wired to do that, but mathematicians are admitting that in decision making, two or three steps of fast and frugal heuristics can be more cost effective than a huge brute force computer approach to a decision. That is relatively recent, and took the decision-making theorists by surprise. That essentially means that one million years of evolution is not to be sneezed at in its logic. I read some books on politics and how things work. A recent book was focused on why evidence is not so powerful. Why will voters suddenly switch opinion on a referendum on an issue that was presented five years ago with identical evidence? The word used was ‘framing’. That is an important word in decision-making psychology literature, and comes down to what we know about how to write questionnaires. How you ‘frame’ the question is more important than the evidence that people bring to bear. We have to learn how to do framing and championing. The reality of people who research human decision making and politics is that those things are much more important. That brings me to the examples mentioned by John. I know of examples where evidence has been powerful in buildings, mainly to do with fire regulations. What does the evidence need to be, to be politically powerful? Not scientifically or logically powerful, but emotionally and (fast and frugal) heuristically powerful, and especially important to come from someone you trust. Fire issues are the only things that I have seen get replied to powerfully in the building literature in the USA. There was a very nice building restoration project in New York where they got the fire commissioner to reconsider things. If you are dealing with life and death, politically that starts to get interesting. Voters understand life and death, and if you can actually demonstrate that if it gets out in a few years that you didn’t support an increase in life safety issues when you started building, you will be fried politically. I have never seen that happen with anything else. It is always about health and safety – arsenic and fire. It is not random coincidence. So – fast and frugal heuristics that help people to make decisions, framing, and health and safety. The issue of whether or not a piece of furniture cracks will never become a life or death issue, so it is an illusion to think that politicians will ever take much interest in the prevention of cracking of a piece of furniture. They are interested in the life or death of 10,000 voters. I wouldn’t want them to see those risks as equivalent either. That brings me to Jonathan [Ashley-Smith]’s point about why this precautionary attitude – another kind of heuristic that humans use – gets used fairly often. I think that it does. Whoever has a trump precautionary card tends to use it – curators are not asking, ‘What is my danger zone?’ That is a different thing. They are looking for complete safety, but risk management is trying to make them rational about avoiding danger. Avoiding the extremes of danger, and finding Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 152
complete safety, are not the same. But we are hardwired as humans to have an instinct to look for safety, not say, ‘Oh gosh, if I move away from that part of the forest I won’t get eaten.’ Instead it is, ‘Once I am inside my walls, I know I am safe.’ The curator says, ‘My danger zone is that if I don’t display these paintings, I am going to get toasted by the public and politicians for not displaying paintings under enough light for people to see them.’ We all use the precautionary thing, and we are ticked off because their precautionary attitude trumps ours. That is fair enough. It is not that we are not consistently using precautionary measures; it is that they have it more powerfully and politically. Those are my comments. Fifty per-cent of my success in my career has not been through material science, but by learning what succeeds in committees. How do you get the end result of the committee to be in your favour? It is about things that I now understand better from the science of decision making. I am not sure how we can begin to use that, but if we can learn from some of the science of the humanities and how people make decisions, we might be able to understand more how to be politically influential. The flip side of that coin will be the recognition that we have limited scope. That is as it should be within the grand human process. PHILIP BALL That is very useful. We have just under five minutes left, so if anybody has any point they want to make, this is the last chance. Please don’t feel that they have to be any grand synthesis, just anything that you want to get on the record. JERRY PODANY I have a quick comment about evidence. Would the conservation scientists here agree that if we were to gather all of the recognised heritage scientists internationally their number would fit comfortably in this relatively small room? I think this would be the case. It is an astonishingly small group for such an important task, and a small group given our claim to hold so much evidence. It makes one wonder how well tested our evidence really is. The discussion about standards for museum environment for example is based on the work of perhaps five or six professionals. That must be seen as insufficient research to base significant decisions on. It would seem to me that expansion is necessary to make that evidence deeper, broader and more convincing, so that the field can agree and move forward. JONATHAN All of us in this room feel it is self-evident that heritage matters. That ASHLEY-SMITH is a huge assumption, and going back to Stefan’s thing about a million years of evolution can’t be wrong, I can see no evolutionary benefit in hanging on to things. PHILIP BALL Presumably, history underlines that. JONATHAN Yes. ASHLEY-SMITH LAURA DRYSDALE I am Laura Drysdale. I would like to counter that. I think that conservation is a profound human impulse and that the desire to preserve is matched by the desire to destroy. Conservators are Seminar III: How Has Our Use of Evidence Changed? 153
performing a function on behalf of their communities, which is to preserve objects. That is important, because the preservation of objects is a metaphor for the preservation of ourselves. The connection to medicine is interesting. Conservation is a ‘social good’ because it manifests the fact that what we have is worth preserving, and the act of carefulness is an important bulwark against the parallel desire for destruction. PHILIP BALL Is the issue there about changes in what is deemed worth preserving, and what is not? We will have to wrap up the discussion but we can have two more points. MIKE CORFIELD I would like to make the point that evidence is subjective. We do not know what will be useful evidence in the future. Who would have dreamt that charcoal on the inside of a Bronze Age pot could eventually be analysed, and the contents of that pot identified, be it bits of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, beef stew or whatever? Countless numbers of pots must have been scrubbed clean over the years and that evidence lost. We have got to be cautious about what we do and how we consider what might be useful evidence in the future. PHILIP BALL May, you should have the last word. That seems appropriate. MAY CASSAR To give a different context to Jerry [Podany]’s assertion that there are not enough heritage scientists to fill this room. If we take on board those heritage scientists or those involved in cultural heritage research from non-English speaking countries, in Italy alone there are at least 500 who are active in that field. How inclusively or exclusively we define the term ‘heritage science’ is important. If we want to grow our capacity, we need to be open and as inclusive as possible. PHILIP BALL That is a good point on which to stop. This discussion could go on and I hope it will in some form. Thank you for coming, particularly the witnesses and all those who have contributed. There will be a record of this event, and I am pleased that is the case.
Witness Seminar IV
How Has the Way We Work Been Transformed?
Wilkins Old Refectory, University College London
Thursday 9th December 2010 2pm to 4.45pm
Format
Seminar 4 – How Has the Way We Work Been Transformed? – considered among other issues changes in organisations, technology, management and risk-based decision-making.
The witness seminar is best considered like a group interview or conversation, led and moderated by the chair. The witness seminar was recorded and transcribed. Speakers have been asked if they wish to make any redactions to improve the clarity of their utterances. The agreed transcript of the proceedings, with speakers and their contributions identified, is being published here.
Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 155
Participants
Chair:
DR ROBERT BUD Principal Curator of Medicine at the Science Museum and Visiting Professorial Fellow, Queen Mary, University of London
Papergiver:
JOHN FIDLER Staff Consultant / Practice Leader Preservation Technology, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc Consulting Engineers, Los Angeles, California, USA
Witnesses:
LAURA DRYSDALE Consultant
KATE FRAME Head of Conservation and Collection Care, Historic Royal Palaces
SIR DONALD Founder and Director of Donald Insall Associates Ltd INSALL
DR SUZANNE Reader Emeritus in Museum Studies, University College London KEENE
DR DAVID LEIGH Formerly Secretary-General, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC)
INGVAL MAXWELL Consultant in Architectural Conservation, former Director of the Division for Technical Conservation, Research and Education, Historic Scotland
JERRY PODANY Senior Conservator of Antiquities, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
DR JOYCE HILL Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of STONER Material Culture, University of Delaware and Paintings Conservator
Audience Participants:
PROFESSOR Consultant JONATHAN ASHLEY-SMITH Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 156
DR PETER Formerly Keeper of the Departments of Art, Birmingham CANNON- Museum and Art Gallery (1965-78) and National Museum of BROOKES: Wales (1978-86)
PROFESSOR MAY Director of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme; CASSAR Director of the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, University College London
STEFAN Senior Conservation Scientist, Canadian Conservation Institute MICHALSKI Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 157
Chronology
1947 Town and Country Planning Act sets up statutory listing process for buildings of special architectural or historic interest and limited powers of protection.
1950 Ancient Monuments Laboratory established in the Ministry of Works (remnant now within English Heritage’s Centre for Archaeology) with single scientist, chemist Leo Biek. Archaeological finds treatment drifts into analysis and research but much work undertaken for the Superintending Architect on deterioration of cast iron roofing sheets at Houses of Parliament and other problems. First course on the Preservation and Restoration of Historical Buildings run by John Harvey at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.
1951 Establishment of Ministry of Works studio in Regents Park as base for murals and easel painting restoration team under F.S. Jack.
1953 Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act – grants programme established. Council for the Care of Churches (CCC) / Society for the protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) Work Group established on Wall Painting Conservation impacts (studies published 1959).
1955 Inspection of Churches Measure enacted for the Church of England.
1957 Founding of the Civic Trust.
1958 Oxford Conference on architectural education – shift to universities, combined faculties including building science (but not generally with engineering). Founding of the Victorian Society.
1959 Conference on Training Architects in Conservation (COTAC) formed. Establishment of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (later known as ICCROM) at the behest of UNESCO and the Italian Government. First Director General Dr H.J. Plenderleith formerly Keeper of the Research Laboratory, British Museum.
1963 Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL) sets up one of the UK’s first Diploma Courses in Building Conservation.
Corinne Wilson ARIBA appointed as the first research architect in the Special Services Branch of the Directorate of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings (DAMHB), Ministry of Public Building and Works (MPBW).
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1964 T.A. Bailey (Wilson’s boss) at DAMHB, MPBW and R.J. Schaeffer of the Building Research Station (BRS) publish ‘Stone Preservation Experiments,’ BRS Digest 128 (first series).
1966 Venice in Peril Fund created to respond to floods. Ken Hemple (V&A) works on stone conservation projects and starts to publish results.
1967 Civic Amenities Act – development of conservation areas and their protection.
Founding of the International Scientific Committee on Stone (ISCS) of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).
1968 Town & Country Planning Act - need for listed building consent. Redundant Churches Fund established (since 1994 called the Churches Conservation Trust).
Closure of UCL Institute of Archaeology Building Conservation Diploma Course
Founding of the Association for Studies in the Conservation of Historic Buildings (ASCHB).
First meeting of the Murals, Stone and Rock-Art Working Group of the International Council of Museums Committee for Conservation (ICOM- CC).
1969 First Bologna Conference of the International Scientific Committee on Stone (ISCS) of ICOMOS and thereafter in 1971, 1975, 1981 and 1989 with regular meetings elsewhere continuing and published proceedings.
John Ashurst ARIBA joins DAMHB, MPBW as replacement for Corinne Wilson and continues stone conservation research.
1970 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution identifies threats posed to historic stone and glass by acid rain.
1971 BRS publishes ‘Colourless Treatments for Masonry.’
1972 Department of the Environment (DOE) created.
Consolidation of the DAMHB, MPBW into Savile Row, London: creation of new laboratories.
MA and short technical courses in building conservation start at the new Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York University (merged into Department of Archaeology in 1997)
Building Research Station becomes the Building Research Establishment.
Ashurst and Clarke publication for BRE on stone preservatives. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 159
1975 European Architectural Heritage Year (EAHY).
Wells Cathedral West Front Programme starts (1975-1984) under Alban and Martin Caroë RIBA.
1976 Setting up of the Diploma Course at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture, London.
1979 CCC Symposium on Wall Paintings Conservation.
1981 Founding of the Association of Conservation Officers (now IHBC).
1983 Establishment of English Heritage.
1984 Concern about the effects of acid rain on building materials was raised in a House of Commons Select Committee on the Environment report.
1985 Courtauld Wall Paintings Conservation course starts with funding from the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and English Heritage.
Building Effects Review Group (BERG) created by Government in response to the House of Commons Select Committee report on acid deposition. BERG reported in 1989.
1986 EC Research Directorate DGXII, Environment Programme, Cultural Heritage research projects starts – 120 projects, 500 research teams – since 1986 spent at least €200m (£150m).
1990 Bishops have tea with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: extra funding to repair cathedrals promised.
Founding of Surface Weathering and Atmospheric Pollution Network (SWAPNET) by UK academics (e.g., mostly by geomorphologists). National and international workshops including architects and engineers.
1991 Government awards English Heritage £10 million extra budgetary funding to support historic cathedrals in England. English Heritage needs assessment surveys by Harry Fairhurst FRIBA. Cathedral Grants programme established with 10 per-cent for technical research programme.
1992 Establishment of the Department of National Heritage (1992-1997).
Establishment of the Office of Science and Technology (OST, later named Office of Science and Innovation, OSI), disbanded in 2007. Distributes £2.4 billion of research funds per year under the Government’s Chief Scientist (currently within the Government Office for Science).
Founding of the Building Limes Forum (BBLF) as a multidisciplinary study group including specifiers, craftspeople, manufacturers, geologists and chemists.
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1993 Heritage Lottery Fund created with two-part grant application process fostering research (₤4.3 billion distributed)
Publication of ‘Crumbling Heritage? Studies of stone weathering in polluted atmospheres’ by National Power plc and PowerGen plc summarising research on atmospheric pollution and stone decay for the Joint Working Party of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England and the Joint Environmental Programme of National Power plc and PowerGen plc. in response to criticism levelled by witnesses to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.
1997 Establishment of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Privatisation of BRE.
1998 Establishment of the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB).
2005 English Heritage forges link to the Chief Scientist, Office of Science and Technology and develops and publishes the English Heritage research strategy www.english- heritage.org.uk/professional/research/strategies/english-heritage-research- strategy
English Heritage proposal for the development of a National Heritage Research Strategy
English Heritage delivers a Foresight Plan to the Construction (Industry) Research and Innovation Strategy Panel (nCRISP).
English Heritage forges alliances to collaborate with the new Arts and Humanities Research Board Council (AHRC).
Formation of the English Stone Forum.
2006 Preserving Our Past workshop funded by AHRC, EPSRC, ESRC, NERC and English Heritage to build effective working relationships across discipline barriers in the historic environment research community.
House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology inquiry into Heritage Science www.publications.parliament.uk/ pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldsctech/256/256.pdf
2007 Discussions start on the development of a National Heritage Science Strategy http://nhss.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.19899 (not commenced until October 2008)
5-year Science and Heritage Programme developed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
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Introductory Paper: How Has the Way We Work Been Transformed?
JOHN FIDLER
Scope of Review My task is to address the organisation, technology, management and risk-based decision-making aspects of the development of science and research applied to cultural heritage from 1947 to 2007, and to do so by evaluating progress over three 20-year periods. As an architect specialising in the conservation of historic buildings with more than a passing interest in science and technology, I have chosen to focus my position paper rather narrowly on the scientific, engineering, technology and innovation (SETI) based aspects of research and for the most part on applied rather than pure or basic research as generally befits the field. This is because I am not an archaeologist, architectural historian or town planner: research covered by these disciplines would be very wide ranging and not build upon my previous strategic reviews and horizon-scanning (Fidler, 1988, 2006 and 2007). I will however allude to what has become known as technical art history or archaeometry studies of material culture because the trends in my field have been (sporadically) supported by these research modes over the last 120 years. I have also, in the main, limited my study to developments in England even though in many respects parallel developments have taken place in the Scotland particularly since 19931. In 1947 when statutory listing of historic buildings officially started, there were few protected structures and only a modest number of scheduled ancient monuments (SAMs) and guardianship properties. The United Kingdom was nearly bankrupt, there were coal and food shortages, and the pound sterling was soon to be devalued. The Government planned death duties that would cripple country landowners and empty country houses. By 2007 there were 480,000 listed buildings, 36,000 SAMs, 420 guardianship sites and 1,200 conservation areas in England alone: about 6 per cent of the total building stock. Before the recent economic crash, the conservation, repair, maintenance and improvement (CRMI) sector in the UK was worth approximately 49 per-cent of all construction expenditure, estimated at £4 billion. My attention then is firmly fixed on progress concerned with studies of historic building materials and systems, their characteristics and performance, deterioration mechanisms, and the means to conserve, repair and maintain them. Among such materials, brick and terracotta, wood, lime mortars and plasters, lead, copper and iron, and glass come readily to mind as individual artefacts but also as the constituent parts of structural elements, components and finishes that form the built heritage. Chief among these materials, and the most cherished, studied and published of all remains building stone. So I intend to review the organisational issues affecting research into stone decay and treatment as a proxy for the field as a whole. Regardless of choice of material, however, the current challenge in the field remains how to sustain material culture in our changing climate. Before expounding on developments in organisational structure, methods and thought over the past 63 years since 1947, I deem it essential to preface my discussion by reaching
1 With the appointment of Ingval Maxell as Director of Technical Conservation, Research and Education within Historic Scotland. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 162 backwards to earlier times because there are parallels and lessons for us there. Progress, after all, is not linear or built in isolation. It builds on the past, ignores the past, or reacts to it, depending on circumstances. Both positive and negative developments can also take place in spite of past successes or failures that go blissfully un-noticed, or are firmly ignored. Context My thoughts turn back immediately to the 1860s as the start of serious scientific inquiry into outdoor stone decay and its treatment in the United Kingdom. In 1861 architect George Gilbert Scott, Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey, was already summarising stone preservation experiments2 at the Abbey (Scott, 1861;1879). The following year, chemistry professor A.H. Church obtained a patent for his barium hydroxide treatment (Church, 1862), and Scott was sending stone samples to another chemist Frederick Settle Barff to perform consolidation tests with potassium silicate (Barff, 1867). A parliamentary committee was also established to investigate the aggressive deterioration of the Anston (Magnesian limestone) facing stones of the new Palace of Westminster erected only 24 years previously (Crookes, 1861). Here, excellent geological assessments and empirical testing of stone characteristics were commissioned and set alongside literature reviews of English, German and French experiments in stone preservation. Manufacturers of water repellents and patch repair mortars were also sharply questioned. This resulted in a better understanding of the decay mechanisms in stone, increased knowledge of silicate-based treatments and their fallibilities, pessimism about commercial products then available, and ultimately the gradual re-facing of the Houses of Parliament in the more resilient Clipsham limestone. In 1865 Scottish engineer David Kirkaldy3 (1820-1897) set up his famous 116 ton tensile testing machine in Southwark, London with a carved sign over the door, ‘Facts not Opinions.’ His work heralded an unprecedented period of empirical testing and inquiry into the properties of materials. However the fledgling building conservation movement of the period seemed to be sceptical about the contributions that science and engineering could make. From 1877, with the founding by William Morris of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), reactions against conjectural restoration of and experimentation with historic buildings rapidly took hold. Interest in preservation and conservation started to develop but without much of a scientific basis. Indeed, the SPAB positioned itself firmly against any form of testing of ‘chemical preservatives’ on old buildings by architects who, ironically, were desperate to retain ancient fabric but without the means to do so for the next 100 years (Powys, 1922: Shore, 1957: SPAB, 1980). Nevertheless the SPAB’s advocates did experiment with traditional remedies such as limewash (Lethaby, 1906) but never seemed to inquire about their chemistry4. Only with the arrival of serious government resources after the passage of the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act of 1913 did material research questions, scientific and technical experimentation and the publication of results really start. Led by Sir Charles Peers CBE FBA FRIBA (1868-1952) the eminent architect, historian and archaeologist who became Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments in 1910 and assisted by Sir Frank Baines KCVO, CBE, FRIBA (1877-1933), the first official architect specialising in the care of ancient buildings, the Office of Works and Public Buildings undertook major repairs to a large number of ruined abbeys and castles, royal palaces and other buildings in quick succession. Baines was especially prolific in his inquiries into the decay processes of historic materials; the past performance of
2 Including his own concoction of Shellac in Spirits of Wine (i.e., a concentrated aqueous solution of ethanol, probably repeatedly distilled brandy). 3 See also Kirkaldy, 1862. 4 Lethaby advocated the application of limewash for decaying stonework at Westminster Abbey. For a discussion of the effects of calcium hydroxide in solution see Fidler, 2002. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 163 stone treatments; the behaviour of mortar binders; the properties of mortar sands; and into developments in the use of insecticides and fungicides for structural timber. He published many important research reports, case studies and repair plans (Baines, 1912; 1914; 1926). The Ministry also fostered links with both academic and industrial scientists and through its various publications and other activities stimulated further independent research and publications. For example, paint chemist Noel Heaton addressed the Royal Society of Arts in the spring of 1912 on criteria for the successful treatment of decaying stone (Heaton, 1912). He had waxes, oils and fluorosilicates in mind but it would be another fifty years before almost identical guidance was published by the Building Research Establishment, focusing on depth of penetration, the need for permeability, and lack of discolouration etc. In 1915 the British Government created the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) with a budget of £1 million to foster the war effort and sustain the economy. By 1921 it had created the Building Research Station5 in Garston, Watford to investigate issues surrounding building material shortages for new housing after the war. But another line of research had been prompted by technical inquiries made to the Building Research Board by the Imperial War Graves Commission6 and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey seeking guidance on the weathering and preservation of natural building stone. The problem was engaged by the DSIR Advisory Committee in 1923 and work commenced at BRS in 1925 to review over 250 books and papers, visit numerous quarries and collect and thin section more than 6,000 specimen stones for petrographic examination7, resulting in one of the seminal publications in the field (Schaeffer, 1932). The Building Research Station also studied the durability and treatment of other traditional building materials. Its research always included international literature reviews, field observations, chemical analysis and various accelerated weathering and treatment trials. The resultant publications still underpin our understanding today of lime (Cowper, 1927) and terracotta (McIntyre, 1929). World War II curtailed relevant scientific research. But the period did recruit numerous young architects, civil and structural engineers into roles as sappers in the Royal Corp of Engineers where they repaired ancient bridges, propped monastery walls, and rebuilt historic houses on various invasion campaigns. Some returned home after the War to continue their professional training and rebuild Britain in a caring way. In time, these young architects became the stimulus for heritage science and eager consumers of its outputs. Survey First Period: 1947-1967 The repair of inner cities affected by bombing during World War Two was a painstakingly slow process hindered by the dour state of the economy and shortages of skilled labour and materials. Vast areas became derelict, and were subject to blight and wholesale redevelopment as the economy started to revive towards the end of the period in the 1960s. Most historic buildings had a maintenance backlog compounded by years of neglect. The state of the economy and new taxation so badly affected the land owners that many country houses were threatened by abandonment, subdivision and sale. As for the government’s own estate, the Ministry of Works struggled at first to repair the occupied building stock damaged by the Blitz and war neglect. But it slowly rebuilt and supplemented its modest resources in terms of expertise for both the departmental estates and
5 BRS was expanded by mergers and renamed the Building Research Establishment. Its name was shortened to BRE and it was privatised in 1997. For the early history, see Lea, 1971. 6 Now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) www.cwgc.org. 7 See Dr Tim Yates’s introduction to the 2004 Edition of Schaeffer, 1932 published by Donhead. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 164 the guardianship8 sites. In 1950, an Eastern European war refugee, Leopold Biek, then a 29-year graduate chemist from Imperial College, was appointed as the first in-house scientist to the Ancient Monuments Laboratory and worked as much for the Superintending Architect on building science problems as for the Chief Inspector on archaeological finds emanating from the increasing number of academic digs. In 1951, the Ministry also developed its capabilities in mural painting conservation in response to restoration needs at the Royal Naval College Greenwich and in Whitehall (Bryant, 2001). The Government’s development of post-Second World War planning legislation9 had sought to recognise and protect a wider definition of built heritage than previously and soon required a grants programme10 to stimulate high quality repairs. Concern for the wider built environment and for younger heritage sites also grew up in this period as a reaction to large scale inner city destruction with the founding of the Civic Trust in 1957 and the Victorian Society in 1958. The planning and fiscal developments led to an influx of additional resources in government departments, notably the independent academic and practitioner guidance from members of the Historic Buildings Councils and Ancient Monument Boards in England, Wales and Scotland, and the technical and administrative staff hired to service their committees. The 1955 Inspection of Churches Measure formalised quinquennial condition surveys by experienced conservation architects. For the first time, feedback from owners of historic assets and their professional advisors on the problems of conserving historic buildings and monuments found its way to government ears. From the listed building consent, ancient monument consent and grant programmes, information could now be distilled about the state of the historic building stock and on common problems facing owners and their architects. Civil servants were forced to engage with the Church of England,11 the Council for the Care of Churches12 and with the national amenity societies13 on such issues. Shortages of housing, traditional building materials and skilled labour continued and forced Government and the construction industry to experiment with new methods of building including modular design and prefabrication, and with the adoption of new materials particularly pre-cast reinforced concrete and plastics. As a consequence by the 1960s, restoration work on historic buildings started to include the use of glass-fibre reinforced plastic facsimile cornices and door canopies and cement-based grouts for consolidation of walls. Due to shoddy post-war construction with inferior timber, a wave of fungal attacks affected wooden building components and the BRE and other bodies focused attention on pre-treatment of timber with organic solvent driven preservatives (Ridout, 2000). Concern about atmospheric pollution increased after the Great London Smog of 1952 when more than 4,000 people died and thousands more became ill through respiratory diseases. As a consequence, Sir Hugh Beaver’s Parliamentary Select Committee on Air Pollution brought about the Clean Air Act 1956 and raised the spectre of acid rainfall impacts on the nation’s heritage. Thus the newly alerted constituency involved in church repairs lobbied Government for guidance on stone preservation and directly instigated research by the Ancient Monuments
8 Ancient monuments and archaeological sites maintained by the Government but whose freehold remained with original owners. 9 Town and Country Planning Act 1947. 10 Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953. 11 Owner now of over 11,000 listed places of worship. 12 Now called the Cathedrals and Church Buildings Council, responsible to the General Synod of the Church of England: see www.churchcare.co.uk. 13 Enshrined in later legislation as ‘watch-dog’ consultees to the planning process, they are the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Ancient Monuments Society, the Council for British Archaeology, the Georgian Group, the Civic Trust, the Victorian Society and the Twentieth Century Society – all now co-ordinating through the Heritage Alliance: see www.heritagelink.org.uk. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 165
Directorate and the Building Research Station (Bailey & Schaeffer, 1964; BRE, 1971; Ashurst & Clarke, 1972). A wider international interest in stone conservation also began to grow in this period; much of it fostered by UK participation. The founding of the Venice in Peril Fund in response to floods in 1966 caused Kenneth Hempel and Anne Moncrieff of the Victoria and Albert Museum to begin chemical preservative treatment on the Doge’s Palace and other great masterpieces. The International Scientific Committee on Stone (ISCS) of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) was formed in 1967. The training of professionals in the construction industry also developed tremendously in this period, especially due to the seminal Oxford Conference on architectural education in 1958 which drove schools of architecture into universities, developed multidisciplinary architectural faculties and established building science departments. The first attempts to establish conservation training also grew up in this era: in 1950, for example, a course on the Preservation and Restoration of Historical Buildings was run at the Bartlett School of Architecture. In 1956, UNESCO called for better conservation training14 and the Italian Government responded in 1959 by offering to host the fledgling International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (later known as ICCROM) in Rome under its first Director General, Dr H.J. Plenderleith formerly Keeper of the Research Laboratory at The British Museum. The same year, COTAC (the Conference on Training Architects in Conservation) was set up in England and in 1963 the Institute of Archaeology, University College London ran the first postgraduate diploma course. Middle Period: 1967-1987 Socially progressive values that began in the 1960s continued to grow. They included the hippie culture, rock and roll, responses to the Vietnam War, opposition to nuclear weapons and the advocacy of world peace, and hostility to the authority of government and big business. The environmental movement began to increase dramatically. Industrialised countries experienced economic recession due to the first oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Desk top computers revolutionised office culture and efficiency. The 1979 election resulted in a Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher and heralded large scale privatisation of government functions, industrial unrest and the 1984 Miners strike. The World Commission on Environment and Development produced an international manifesto for sustainability in the 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future that only gained traction twenty years later. In 1972 the Department of the Environment was created bringing together diverse strands associated with the built environment and planning. The Directorate of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings (DAMHB) were consolidated into one Savile Row headquarters with the creation of new laboratories. The Building Research Station became the Building Research Establishment (BRE). A decade later in 1983 English Heritage was created and started a concerted programme to publish years of experimentation and research in building materials conservation. The Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies15 began to offer Masters-level and short course programmes in building conservation in 1972 exposing practitioners to the materials research community through the teachings of John Ashurst16. Prompted by COTAC and growing demand, a part-time postgraduate diploma course was then established in 1976 at the
14 9th Session of the UNESCO General Conference held in New Delhi,1956. 15 The IoAAS predated York University, was merged into the new university, and closed in 1997, its courses transferred to the Department of Archaeology. 16 John Ashurst (1937-2008), the second research architect, DAMHB, Department of the Environment (by 1972), later Head of Building Conservation and Research, English Heritage. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 166
Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Others soon followed at Bristol and Liverpool Universities. The closure of the Institute of Archaeology course at UCL in 1968 prompted the establishment of the Association for Studies in the Conservation of Historic Buildings (ASCHB) whose London-based evening meetings for specialist architects and engineers provided a venue for continuing education through guest speakers who included leading practitioners and research scientists.17 Its annual Transactions publication recorded technical case studies and research in building conservation besides pioneering seminars for example on standards of photogrammetry and on non-destructive diagnostics. The publication paralleled the APT Bulletin developing at the same period in North America through the Association for Preservation Technology18. Many of the papers in both journals describe technology transfer in this period. European Architectural Heritage Year 1975 increased the public awareness of the built heritage and its welfare. But at a professional level, a key moment was the development of the West Front programme at Wells Cathedral (1975-1984) under architects Alban and Martin Caroë which soon involved a melding of scientific, technical and craft skills in the service of both building and sculpture conservation19. Here architects, archaeologists, conservators, craftsmen and scientists worked together for the first time on a large scale in the UK and learnt of the mutual benefits of interdisciplinary practice. The period also saw increasing levels of international collaboration on questions of stone decay and conservation. For example, the International Council on Museums Conservation Committee (ICOM-CC) held the first meeting of its Murals, Stone and Rock-art Work Group in 1968 while the ISCS held the first of several Bologna conferences on stone decay and treatment the following year. Scientific research in the field increased dramatically with the development of the European Commission Research Directorate XII’s Environment Programme culminating in over 120 multidisciplinary pan-European scientific studies worth €200 (£150) million. The Council for the Care of Churches (CCC) held a seminal symposium on Wall Paintings Conservation in 1979 and six years later the Courtauld Institute started its mural paintings course with funding from the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). In 1970, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution identified threats posed to historic stone and glass by acid rain. Concern was repeated in the 1984 report of the House of Commons Select Committee on the Environment which prompted the establishment in 1985 of the multi-department Building Effects Research Group (BERG) to scientifically investigate these impacts. Last Period: 1987-2007 The last period is marked by a combination of factors including the mass mobilisation of capital markets across the world through neo-liberalism; the beginning then widespread proliferation of new media such as the Internet; and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and consequent realignment and reconsolidation of economic and political power in Europe. The 1990s is often considered the end of Modernity and the dawn of the current Post-modern age. Living standards improved but terrorism threats and unrest in Northern Ireland only slowly resolved. At the beginning of the period, the privatisation of UK public services continued apace under the
17 The guest lecturers included building scientist, David Honeyborne of the BRE; geologist Frank Dimes from the Geological Museum; and physicist Bill Bordass. 18 APT (www.apt.org). Both ASCHB and APT have struggled to raise membership – ASCHB’s is currently under 800 and APT’s constant at 1,500. Most members are architects but include engineers, conservators, planners, historians and craftspeople. 19 Brought together partly by the West Front Committee envisaged by Peter Burman (then of the Council for the Care of Churches), and by personal connections – Martin Caroë ARIBA and John Ashurst ARIBA trained together at Kingston College of Art; Ashurst was working with Clifford Price at BRE; Conservators Eve and Robert Baker had worked with Alban Caroë before; Burman was aware of John Larsen’s work at the Victoria and Albert Museum through the CCC’s church sculpture committee. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 167
Conservative Government and the final decade was governed by Tony Blair and the Labour Party. In 1988, English Heritage published all its internal technical advisory notes in the form of five textbooks that became international best sellers and remain so to this day (Ashurst and Ashurst). They included all the research outputs and developmental work exploiting that research as generated by DAMHB and BRS/BRE over the period 1964-1986. In 1989, the European Commission and the Council of Europe combined to develop a tactical ‘bottom-driven,’ industry-led, applied research network (in contrast to the ‘top-down’ strategic EC Environment programme that commenced three years earlier) called EUREKA within which was created a conservation-based segment entitled, Eurocare20. This encouraged the development of ‘near market’ technical and scientific solutions to conservation problems which had been articulated by end-users of research and funded by manufacturers and/or service providers. In 1990 academic institutions, notably geomorphology departments, set up SWAPNET (the Surface Weathering and Atmospheric Pollution Network) to interface with environmental scientists and capture UK research council and EC grants for stone decay research. Gradually end-user groups including English Heritage, the Cathedral Architects Association and others participated in the meetings which were eventually published21. The same year, the Church of England’s Archbishops had tea in 10 Downing Street with Prime Minister Thatcher22. As a result of their pleading to Government for financial support for their decaying Grade I listed building stock, English Heritage’s budget was surprisingly increased in 1991 by £10 million to be devoted solely to cathedral repair grants, including the cathedrals and larger chapels of other Christian denominations. As a result, English Heritage commissioned a ‘needs assessment’ survey from Harry Fairhurst FRIBA, the Surveyor of the Fabric Emeritus of Manchester Cathedral and former chairman of the Cathedral Architects Association (CAA), to determine the strategic problems confronting his architect colleagues charged with the care of cathedrals. This resulted in a requirement for strategic technical and scientific research worth over £1 million which English Heritage then commissioned over the course of the next eight years (Teutonico, 1996). The research was guided by the establishment of a Cathedrals Research Clients Liaison Group involving the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England (CFCE) and the CAA. Research results were presented at conferences and published as proceedings or in English Heritage’s Research Transactions23 series. Some projects, such as the four-year Woodcare project (Ridout, 2001), received EC Environment programme funding and international collaborative research inputs that leveraged resources. The Woodcare project studied the inter-relationships between environment, fungi and deathwatch beetles (Xestobium rufovilosum) and provided the basis for a seminal text book, Timber Decay in Buildings: the conservation approach to treatment (Ridout, 2000). In 1992, John Major’s Conservative government established the Department of National Heritage. This separated and isolated English Heritage from other national public environment and construction organisations. However a concurrent decision invented the Office of Science and Technology (OST)24 wherein the government’s chief scientist influenced and distributed £2.4 billion in funding through the UK research councils to universities and national research institutions. Aided by the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology25, the Chief Scientist required all government departments and their non-departmental bodies to develop science
20 http://eurocare.factlink.net/139059.0. 21 www.envf.port.ac.uk/geo/research/swapnet/pubs.htm. 22 Anecdotal story told to the author by senior Civil Servants. 23 Published originally by James & James Science Publishers and now by Maney. 24 Renamed Office of Science and Innovation in 2007. 25 www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/offices/bicameral/post. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 168 strategies. This process was slow due to antipathy and inertia particularly from purportedly non- technical, non-scientific government departments26. Following the 1992 fire at Windsor Castle27 and the consequent Bailey Inquiry Report (1993), English Heritage established the UK Co-ordinating Committee for Research into Fire Safety in Historic Buildings (now called the Historic Buildings Fire Research Co-ordinating Committee) to share best practice and define research areas for further development. Subsequent work developed an online Fire Research Database (FRED)28 to share information and ideas. In 1993 the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF)29 came into being and instigated a two-part grant programme to repair historic buildings. The two-part system was a response to the lack of preparation by grant recipients in implementing grant-aided works in English Heritage’s programme. Funds were made available for the first time to properly record, evaluate, analyse and test the building and its deteriorating parts and the planned treatments. This fostered increased levels of applied research and testing in the service of repairs. The same year BERG published Crumbling Heritage? (Cooke and Gibbs, 1993), the results of research and literature reviews of stone weathering in polluted atmospheres that had been commissioned in 1985. This document articulated the increased body of knowledge in the field and determined that it was very difficult to blame all stone deterioration on atmospheric pollution due to other factors such as poor design, materials, construction and maintenance and other deterioration phenomena. In addition, the publication suggested further areas for research that helped set the scientific agenda for the next decade. In 1997 the Government created the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) that continued to host museum interests and built heritage concerns. However, the fruitful collaborations between the Conservation Unit of the Museums and Galleries Commission (MGC) and English Heritage in areas of common concern, notably on preventative conservation, historic museum environments and pollution and interfaces such as sculpture and mural conservation were mostly curtailed by the dismantling of the Unit and MGC in 1987. In another damaging move, the Government also privatised BRE and thus reduced all strategic national technical thinking in construction-related research and curtailed most of the funding. The next year, the Government established the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) after prolonged lobbying by universities. Tentative meetings were held with English Heritage in 2002 to find common ground in research funding and development and with AHRB acting as a catalyst, the first meetings were held with all the pertinent research councils including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). In 2004 AHRB combined with English Heritage and OST to help establish the parameters for the first English Heritage research strategy that was eventually published along with a Research Agenda that was a register and explanation of current research projects (English Heritage, 2005). The strategy was developed for internal use but based on the threats and opportunities confronting English Heritage’s broad base of services (from archaeology and architectural history to buildings and landscapes conservation). Public consultations were therefore taken into consideration and had the additional objective of stimulating the generation of a nationally-agreed mutual research strategy through the arts and humanities to economics, engineering and the sciences. Other strategic activities in 2005 commenced with AHRB becoming a fully fledged research council. English Heritage contributed to the Construction Research and Innovation
26 See OST’s Review of Science within DCMS, DTI, London, 2005. 27 Other significant fires included York Minster (1984); Hampton Court Palace (1986); St Mary at Hill (1988); and Uppark (1989) the experience from which informed fire safety and aftermath research at English Heritage. 28 www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/research/buildings/fire-research-database. 29 www.hlf.org.uk. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 169
Strategy Panel (nCRISP) Foresight Strategy and business plan30 for CRMI (Conservation, Repair, Maintenance and Improvement). It then supported the HLF in hosting and co-ordinating socio- economic research interests for the cultural and natural heritage sectors in non-departmental bodies and their customers through the medium of the UK Historic Environment Research Group (UK HERG). In 2006 English Heritage again combined with the research councils to hold the Preserving our Past symposium to foster cross-disciplinary research between the humanities, engineering and the sciences. Out of the feedback from university researchers at this symposium, and stimulated by the publication of the English Heritage, nCRISP-CRMI and HERG research strategies, AHRC and EPSRC combined to offer limited pilot grants for cross-disciplinary research clusters. This promising initiative culminated in 2007 in the joint offer of a fully-fledged five-year Science and Heritage program, complemented by English Heritage’s own in-house and contracted research. Then the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, led by Baroness Sharpe and supported by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), resolved to hold a public inquiry into ‘heritage science.’ Written and oral evidence was invited and hearings held before the publication of findings (House of Lords, 2006). Notable contributions to the inquiry included that of AHRC, several research scientists and end-users of research – all of whom praised English Heritage’s initiatives in the field, lamented the lack of ‘joined-up government’ and the poor share of the existing global research budget to support heritage conservation. The report was debated in the House of Lords and the Government responded and published its response. A key finding of the inquiry was that unlike other Government departments, DCMS did not co-ordinate research within its portfolio and had not encouraged collaboration between the museums and built heritage sector. In contrast, most independent observers noted that English Heritage had been responsive to the Government Chief Scientist’s requirement to deliver a research strategy and had fostered others to generate their own strategies, and work towards a national strategy. Their Lordships suggested that more efforts by English Heritage to stimulate and support the development of a national heritage science strategy would be advantageous. The consequence of this recommendation took another 12 months to complete its genesis and falls therefore outside the scope of this review. But suffice to state that this culminated in the publication in 2010 of the UK’s first ever National Heritage Science Strategy (http://www.heritagesciencestrategy.org.uk). Summary and Conclusions Repeated Patterns of Behaviour – reactive tactical responses One assessment of the 1947-2007 period under review illustrates the well-known maxim that the lobbying of politicians and the political response to nationally important problems of popular concern can lead to concerted action. This was as true in 1867 as it was throughout the review period. Cynics may argue that the establishment of Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Select Committee Inquiries to review circumstances and make recommendations is but another way for Ministers and their civil servants to ‘boot the ball into the long grass.’ 31 Certainly, official
30 nCRISP www.ncrisp.org.uk has now morphed into the UK platform for Built Environment Research to create a national research strategy. 31 Anecdotal information to the author from Maurice Mendoza (1921-2000), Director of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings, DOE (1978-1982): when preparing to set up English Heritage through the National Heritage Act 1983, he asked Michael Heseltine MP, Secretary of State for the Environment, whether the Minister would also like to off-load the Royal Commission for Historical Monuments for England from the civil service and merge it with the new Commission. Heseltine reflected that the academics might object to losing their royal warrants and write to the Times newspaper and he had enough troubles to deal with that autumn without more press scrutiny. RCHME was eventually merged with EH in 1999, some 17 years later. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 170 responses are often long, slow processes with Government departments and their agencies taking time to tool-up for concerted technical and scientific action. Consequent research inevitably then is not published for ten years or more. This is not the best way to drive the knowledge base in building conservation, but perhaps it is the pragmatic way to get things done. Accidental Fortuitous Circumstances History also shows us that many achievements in the field can be assigned to individuals with curiosity and vision. However their success is often down to fortuitous circumstances that involved them as a catalyst in collective efforts that have moved the field forward. In the 80 years prior to the study period, it is possible to cite Scott, Church, Baines and Schaeffer as major influences on developments in heritage science for one particular building material: stone. But in the middle part of the study period notably from 1969 to 1988, much of the progress was due to a few end-users of research linking scientists to field practice and multidisciplinary working through various formal and informal forums. These ‘meetings of the mind’ included the new postgraduate building conservation courses that created an education market for information, guidance and services; a showcase for technology transfer through expert lecturers; and most importantly, a means to articulate practitioners’ research questions and needs for the research community. Unfortunately, none of the courses possessed postgraduate research facilities for technical or scientific subjects and few cross-linked to SETI-based departments elsewhere on campus. However, British lecturers on the architectural, mural paintings and scientific principles courses at ICCROM in Rome also interfaced with practitioners and scientists from around the world and experienced the Centre’s teaching laboratory and interconnection to Italian research projects32. Other networks were based around important conservation projects (especially Wells Cathedral West Front) and through new professional associations such as ASCHB. As time progressed, the national amenity societies that are architectural period-based (e.g., the Victorian Society founded 1958), were joined by building-type associations33 (e.g., Follies Fellowship, funded in 1988) and then by even more specialised decay process or material properties based interest groups (e.g. the Standing Joint Committee on Natural Stone in 1974), the latter sharing practitioner concerns with manufacturers, contractors, and the research community. Good examples of these synergistic trends are SWAPNET and the Building Limes Forum34. Strategic Drivers: Funding Another trend seen in the review is that of indirect and direct fiscal incentives for heritage-based research. One such driver has been building repair grants both in the 1953 Act (funding still available at the time of writing from English Heritage) and from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The grants helped establish more conservation work of a higher standard and also fostered and led to technical questions being developed for which scientific research was required. Some of the scientific work, it could be argued, remains as simple testing and analysis but high-level research questions can also be prompted in this fashion. Another source of funding, this time mostly private donations supplied for the Venice in Peril campaigns, paid for UK museum conservation specialists to visit Italy and experiment on site in challenging situations the international publications from which influenced much of what followed for the next decade in terms of stone conservation. Similarly pioneering and influential research also took place due to nationally-contracted research as part of internationally agreed protocols such as the 1979 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE,
32 Led by Giorgio Torraca (1927-2010) for example on experimental design of non-cementicious grouts for mural painting repair: see www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/20/giorgio-torraca-obituary. 33 One of the first building type interest groups, but outside the scope of this review period, being the SPAB’s Wind and Water Mills Section founded in 1931. 34 www.buidinglimesforum.org.uk. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 171 www.unece.org) 30-year Convention on Long-range Trans-boundary Air Pollution35 (CLRTTAP) from which SWAPNET was established in 1990 as a response to such initiatives. In fact, English Heritage’s own building conservation research programme has been driven by similar strategic insights and contracted research. Since 1986, strategic (top down) SETI-based research based on themes and plans in a grants programme have emanated from the European Commission and encouraged multidisciplinary collaborative science. The amount of funding available and the need for additional matching resources for non-academic partners have ensured that many more projects were delivered and published in each Framework period so that a significant body of knowledge now exists in many materials-based research fields. Even the practitioner-led Building Limes Forum was first established (in 1992) through interest in the EC’s (bottom driven) Eurocare programme. Exchange of Ideas and Information The exchange of ideas and sharing of new information have taken place – at least for stone conservation – initially and intermittently in the UK through the International Institute for Conservation (IIC, www.iiconservation.org), its Studies in Conservation and Art series (from 1952) and Archaeology Technical Abstracts (1955-1997); through ASCHB Transactions (from 1973); and through the on-going international conferences and publications of ICOM-CC (since 1968); ICOMOS-ISCS (since 1969); and RILEM36 (since 1975); but now more widely shared through the World Wide Web. However, there is a great deal of un-reviewed ‘grey literature’ (Teutonic and Fidler, 1998) that limits progress and wastes resources. This has become such a grave concern that conference guidelines have now been developed (ICOMOS-ISCS, 2008). More problematic still is the plethora of paper hard copy and web-based sources becoming available at the end of the review period. Literature reviews have become such huge tasks that specialist information trawls using on-line search engines began to be developed in 1987 such as BCIN (Bibliographic Database of the Conservation Information Network37, www.bcin.ca) and from 2002 through the Getty Conservation Institute’s AATA On-line38, http://aata.getty/edu/nps. In many ways these abstracts databases are now becoming redundant as conservation bodies such as English Heritage and the Getty Conservation Institute put well-funded international literature reviews and bibliographies39 on the web, and Google Books (formerly Google Print, http://books.google.com) displays full text onscreen. Where next? Since the review period stops in 2007, we cannot look forward in time to any economic recession, further downsizing of heritage resources or limitations on grant funding for university research. Could we have foreseen the future crash back in 2007? Not many could! However, the long range trends are more obvious. Firstly, the building conservation field overall saw gradual development and increased resources from 1947 to 2007. This was due in no small part to the Heritage Lottery Fund’s grants spending from 1993 onwards which, by the end of the period, averaged £315 million per year40. However the skill sets attuned to heritage-based research within the public sector stopped growing in the 1990s and thereafter have slowly been
35 www.unece.org/press/pr2009/09env_p29ehtm. 36 RILEM www.rilem.net International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures. 37 Containing over 200,000 citations. 38 Containing over 100,000 citations. 39 For example in 2001 on terracotta: see www.conlab.org/acl/initiatives/terracottabibliography.pdf produced by the University of Pennsylvania for English Heritage; and from 2003, the Getty Conservation Institute’s on-line Project Bibliography series, Preservation of Lime Mortars and Plasters www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/pdf_publications/lmpbib_alpha.pdf. 40 HLF Annual Report 2007-8 at http://www.hlf.org.uk/aboutus/howwework/strategy/Documents/HLF_AR_2007.pdf. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 172 haemorrhaging due to the flat-lined budgets of both political parties and their concerns to off- load civil servants wherever possible. Both BRE and English Heritage have suffered in this regard. But also there is no longer any one strategic departmental overview of the heritage or of the construction sector which can drive policy initiatives relating to heritage-based conservation research. And this is why the Heritage Science Strategy and the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme are both now so important in establishing and refreshing research agendas for the future. References Ashurst, J. and Clarke, B. L. 1972. Stone Preservation Experiments. Garston: BRE. Bailey, T. A. and Schaeffer, R. J. 1964 Stone Preservation Experiments. BRE Digest 128 (first series), Garston: HMSO. Baines, F. 1912. Report of the Inspector of Ancient Monuments for the Year Ending 31 March. London: HMSO. Baines, F. 1914. Report to the First Commissioner of H.M. Works, etc., on the Condition of the Roof Timbers of Westminster Hall. Command Paper 7436. London: HMSO. Baines, F. 1926. Memorandum on the Defective Condition of the Stonework at the Houses of Parliament and proposals for its Restoration. London: Ministry of Works.. Barff, S. F. 1867. Stone Preservation: on some applications of soluble silicates. In The Laboratory, Vol. I, London, 10 August, pp 331-3. BERG. 1989. The Effects of Acid Deposition on Buildings and Building Materials in the United Kingdom. Building Effects Research Group, London: HMSO. BRE. 1971. Colourless Treatments for Masonry. BRE Digest 125, Garston: HMSO. Bryant, B. 2001. The Ministry and Conservation: painting conservation in historic interiors under the Office and Ministry of Works from 1923 to the 1950s. In Oddy, A. and Smith, S. (eds.) Past Practice – Future Prospects, British Museum Occasional Paper series No.145, London: British Museumpp. 39-44 Church, A.H. 1862. Improvements in the means of preserving stone, brick, slate, wood, cement, stucco, plaster, whitewash, and colour wash from the injurious actions of atmospheric and other influences, etc., British Patent 220, January 1862. Cooke, R.U. and Gibbs, G.B. 1993. Crumbling Heritage? Studies of stone weathering in polluted atmospheres: a report of research on atmospheric pollution and stone decay for the joint working party between the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England in the joint environmental programme of National Power plc and PowerGen plc. Swindon: National Power plc. Cowper, A.D. 1927. Lime and Lime Mortars. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Special Report No. 9. London: HMSO. Crookes, W 1861. Report of the Committee on the Decay of the Stone of the New Palace at Westminster (Parliamentary Command Paper). London: HMSO. Fidler, J.A. 2002 Lime treatments: an overview of lime watering and shelter coating of friable historic limestone masonry. In Fidler J.A. (ed.) Stone: stone building materials, construction and associated component systems – their decay and treatment, Volume 2, English Heritage Research Transactions. London: James & James (Science) Publishers, pp19-29 Fidler, J.A. 2006 Discovering the Past, Shaping the Future: providing the knowledge base for the historic environment and its sustainable management, The English Heritage Research Strategy 2005-2010. London: English Heritage. Fidler, J.A. and Stevens, J. 2007. Towards an EU-wide Strategy for Research into the Historic Environment and its Sustainable Management. In M. Drdacky and M. Chapuis (eds.) Safeguarded Cultural Heritage: proceedings of the 7th European Conference 31 May-3 June 2006, Prague. Vol. 1. Prague: Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic / ARCCHIP. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 173
Heaton, N. 1921. The Preservation of Stone. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 70. London: RSA. Pp123-139. House of Commons. 1984. Acid rain, Fourth report, Environment Select Committee, Session 1983–1984. London: HMSO. House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee. 2006. Science and heritage: report with evidence 9th report of session 2005-06. House of Lords papers 256. London: The Stationery Office Limited. ISCS. 2008. Guidelines for Conferences in the Field of Stone Conservation (The Torun Guidelines). Paris: ICOMOS. Kirkaldy, D. 1862 Experimental Inquiry into the Comparative Tensile Strength and other properties of various kinds of Wrought-Iron and Steel. Lea, F.M. 1971. Science and Building: a history of the Building Research Station. Garston: HMSO. Lethaby, W.R. 1906 Westminster Abbey and the King’s Craftsmen: a study of medieval building. London. P372. Lowenthall, D. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McIntyre, W.A. 1929. Investigations into the Durability of Architectural Terra Cotta. Special Report 12. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. London: BRS. Powys, A.W. 1922. Repair of Ancient Buildings. London: Dent. Ridout, B. 2000. Timber Pretreatments: a brief history. In B. Ridout Timber Decay in Buildings: the conservation approach to treatment, London: E. & F.N. Spon. Pp 100-103. Ridout, B. 2001. Timber: the EC Woodcare Project – studies of the behaviour, inter- relationships and management of deathwatch beetles in historic buildings. English Heritage Research Transactions, Vol. 4. London: Maney. Schaeffer, R.J. 1932. The Weathering of Natural Building Stones. Special Report No. 18. Garston: BRS. Scott, G.G. 1861. Processes as Applied to Rapidly-decayed Stone in Westminster Abbey. The Builder, Vol. 19, No.941. London. P 105. Scott, G.G. 1879. Personal and Professional Recollections. London. Shore, B.G.C. 1957. Stones of Britain. London: Leonard Hill Ltd. SPAB. 1980. Moratorium on the Use of Silane-based Preservatives to Conserve Stonework. London: Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Teutonico, J-M. 1996. A Future for the Past: strategic technical research in the Cathedrals Grants Programme. Joint Conference of English Heritage and the Cathedral Architects Association, London, 25-26 March 1994. London: James and James (Science) Publishers. Teutonico, J-M. and Fidler, J.A. 1998. Time for Change: an overview of building materials research for the conservation of historic structures. APT Bulletin. Vol. 29, Nos. 3-4. Albany, NY: Mount Ida Press. P 47 Weiss, N. 1995. Chemical treatments for Masonry: an American History. in D. Waite (ed.) APT Bulletin, Volume 26, No 4. Albany, NY: The Association for Preservation Technology with Mount Ida Press. pp9-16.
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Questions for Consideration
1. Are there any significant errors of fact or interpretation in the review that warrant correction or adaptation?
2. To what extent are the developments shown in the review period mirrored for other types of building materials research as distinct from stone?
3. Are there parallels in developments for museum-based heritage science?
4. What developments in Scotland for the period 1947-1993 compare and contrast with that in England?
5. What factors affected university research spending in the field in the periods reviewed?
6. Bearing in mind current budgetary restrictions, what key issues should be addressed to help co-ordinate and foster heritage research?
7. Memory loss can be seen as part of an illness in medicine but policy-makers thrive without precedents to be measured against. Who can fund more history of science projects to publish the warnings and lessons from the past?
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Session One
DR MICHAEL Robert Bud might be caught up in student demonstrations on his KANDIAH way here, so I will step in temporarily while we wait for him as it is important that we get going. As we have done in previous sessions, will people round the table give us a short description of why they are here. Can we start with you, Joyce? DR JOYCE I did my training in Conservation at the NYU Conservation Center HILL STONER and later got a PhD in Art History. I have taught painting conservation for about 35 years for the University of Delaware Winterthur Museum and served as its Director for 15 of those years. However, I am here because I am the co-ordinator of the Oral History Project, which is now under the umbrella and transcription paid for by the Foundation of the American Institute of Conservation. We have interviewed more than 245 people and, because of the literature that was sent out, I have brought along transcripts by Plenderleith,41 Werner42 and so forth. I did a lot of those interviews and was privileged to know a lot of the very senior and important people in British Conservation History. I am delighted to be here. INGVAL MAXWELL I trained as an architect in the 1960s, but saw the light and joined the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works in 1969 in the Ancient Monuments branch in Scotland. I am really coming from a ‘North of the Border’ prospect. In 39 years with the civil service, I served initially as a training architect to get my professional recognition from a professional body, an architect with responsibility for the middle of Scotland, then a principal architect for two thirds of Scotland and, finally, as Director of the Professional Services Division for the whole of Scotland at which time I was architectural adviser to the then Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland, the Buildings Council for Scotland and the Scottish Conservation Bureau Advisory Panel. In many ways, when a reorganisation took place in 1993, when I became the Director of Technical Conservation Research and Education Group, I felt that I had a reasonable overview of some of the problems that Scotland faced from the conservation perspective. DR SUZANNE I started off in archaeological conservation in the research KEENE excavations at Winchester. I then moved on to the Museum of London, tackling the archaeological collections there and a tidal wave of wonderful objects, and became Head of Conservation of all of the collections before moving on to The Science Museum, an even bigger challenge, which I gather still is a considerable challenge. My particular angle on conservation has been taking an overview. Looking back, which I try not to do too much, I have been involved in surveys at a national level with UKIC looking at the conservation
41 Harold Plenderleith (1898-1997), conservator and archaeologist. 42 A.E.A. Werner (1911-2006), research chemist, National Gallery, London 1946-54; Principal Scientific Officer, British Museum 1954-9, Keeper of the Research Laboratory 1959-75; President, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 1971-4. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 176
facilities for all museums and galleries in the UK. That had quite an influence. I then went on to look at the state of the collections in the Museum of London, particularly using statistical sampling and carried on involvement with national conservation bodies. My most recent interest, after I moved to UCL heading up a Museum Studies Course and research, was to look at the uses of collections. Having looked at them and their problems, you wonder what the point is. Their preservation care depends on developing them as a useful, social resource – something that I really believe. SIR DONALD INSALL I have made a few notes. Having been here yesterday afternoon, I can explain first who I am and say later on what I think, or run it together – whichever you wish. I am an architect planner, married with three offspring and six grandchildren and, until recently, a motorcycle. I love old buildings and looking after them. I enjoy team work with others. I am a member of a private practice, which has just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. We now have a number of self- generating branches. We are lucky in our workload from small to big jobs, and our responsibilities have included conservation aspects of buildings like the Mansion House, Goldsmiths Hall, the ceiling of the House of Lords Chamber and the dreadful problem of Windsor Castle after the fire.43 I think that I am probably here by virtue of my vintage, but I shall continue later. LAURA DRYSDALE I started my career as a tapestry conservator working in Scotland at Dalmeny House for Mick McGreal whose professional roots went back to the early days of formal textile conservation in this country. I then went to the V&A, first of all as a volunteer and eventually in the textile conservation team. I went then to work in the private sector for Ksynia Marco in her studio in what had been the old operating theatre of a hospital in Hackney. In the meantime, I was a member of the board of UKIC and sharing the editorship of Conservation News. I then did preventive conservation consultancy, often with my colleague, Frances Halahan, working with a lot of small museums. I worked at English Heritage as the Head of Collections Conservation and then moved to the Museums and Galleries Commission, which became Resource - the nascent Museums, Libraries and Archives Council – where I was a member of the senior management team. I then rather left conservation, and here I am today. JERRY PODANY I am the Senior Conservator of Antiquities for the Getty Museum where I have worked for 33 years. I attended the Institute of Archaeology here in London. My connection to this discussion is as President of the International Institute for Conservation (IIC). My interest is not only the history of the field, but in the history of conservation in Britain. I also have an interest in how the past can inform the present and, by comparison, can clarify what we think we should have achieved and what we hope to achieve.
43 On Friday 20th Nov. 1992. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 177
DR DAVID LEIGH I studied physics – not terribly well – and I then trained in archaeological conservation at the London Institute of Archaeology after which I moved on and became a conservator at Southampton University where I began a PhD in Anglo-Saxon jewellery. I became a Lecturer in Archaeological Conservation at Cardiff, where I taught for some years – so apologies to rather a lot of students. I then became head of the new Conservation Unit, part of the Museums and Galleries Commission where one of my colleagues was May Cassar and where we also established several initiatives. At the MGC, we established the conservation awards among other things, and set up the conservation register. I had a spell at the Museum Training Institute and then ran West Dean College in West Sussex and established a few new conservation courses there, including those in professional practice. We helped English Heritage transfer its building conservation master classes to the college, where they are still thriving. I then moved to running the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation. You will know all about the merger, which brought us to ICON, where I continued to work part-time until I retired. Since I have retired, things do not seem to have changed that much. I overlapped my work with that at IIC, first as Treasurer and then Secretary-General, working alongside Jerry [Podany]. I am involved with the National Trust on the council and the advisory arts panel. I am also involved with the British Standards Institute and the European Standards and developing the standards that already exist in the UK and bringing in a lot more. The interesting thing about that, which is perhaps relevant today, is that it is one of the few bodies that I have been associated with that brings together those involved in the conservation of the built and the moveable heritage around one table. That is something to explore later on. KATE FRAME My conservation career began at the prestigious CCI Institute in Ottawa44 in the early 1980s shortly after I completed my degree from London’s Institute of Archaeology. For most of my professional career I have headed conservation programmes for historic site museums; first for 12 years at the City of Toronto where I was responsible for the establishment, implementation and management of the preventive and treatment conservation department for the City’s heritage sites. During that time I also was tasked with creating the first-of-its kind in Canada conservation maintenance programme for the city’s outdoor public art and monuments. Since 2000, I have been head of Conservation at the Historical Royal Palaces (HRP) in London where I re-organised the department, its programmes in preventive and treatment conservation and transitioned the unit and its 34 professional staff to a revenue- generating business model free from government support while maintaining the high standards of conservation. HRP’s conservation programme is made up of three components – treatment, prevention and conservation science research. The 450- plus rooms (and their contents) contained within the five unoccupied
44 http://www.cci-icc.gc.ca/ Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 178
British Royal Palaces under HRP’s management, generate a great and challenging variety of conservation work. One area of our work has garnered us particular recognition. As the Royal Palaces’ conservators for the Nation’s royal textiles since 1912, we our noted for our work in conserving and investigating the conservation of historic textiles, including tapestries, royal state beds, and ceremonial costume. Why I am here? Perhaps it is because, during my three-decade-long career in conservation, I have been at the coalface in devising ways to translate conservation programmes into conservation practice in busy heritage site collection environments, which are commercial in their structure. JOHN FIDLER I am delivering the paper this afternoon. By training, I am an architect. I have two specialist post-graduate qualifications in building conservation and, until 2006, I was the Conservation Director of English Heritage for more than 20 years. I am now practice leader for preservation technology with a forensic engineering company in the United States – Simpson, Gumpertz and Heger, Inc.45 We operate principally in North America but also around the world. Until 2006, I was the Vice-President of ICCROM in Rome, the international centre for the conservation and restoration of cultural property, and I was a member of British Standards Committees. I am now on several ASTM committees in America for building standards connected with historic building repair materials, mortars, plasters, renders and so on. I have always wanted to be an historic buildings architect. My grammar school Art Master taught the history of architecture, not the history of art so from the age of 14, I had a copy of Sir Banister Fletcher’s History of Architecture on the Comparative Method and eminent graduates of the public grammar school include the aptly named Donald Buttress,46 the emeritus surveyor of the fabric of Westminster Abbey. DR ROBERT BUD I apologise for being late, but London has shut down as have several tube stations. I am Principal Curator of Medicine at the Science Museum and a former colleague of several people here. We had some of the earliest of the Institute of Contemporary British History witnesses seminars associated with the Science Museum. It is a great honour and a pleasure to continue the association with CCBH in its new home at King’s College London. I look forward to a fascinating afternoon. JOHN FIDLER I have only lately understood that the audience has not seen the paper, so it is my duty to summarise and present a few key pointers so that the panel can be reminded of stuff they have written and to pose the questions at the end of the paper. My task, given to me by May Cassar, was to address the organisation technology, management and risk-based decision making aspects of the development of science and research applied to cultural heritage from 1947 to 2007, and evaluate the progress over that period in tranches of 20 years or so.
45 http://www.sgh.com/ 46 Dr Donald Buttress, architect, Surveyor of the Fabric at Westminster Abbey, 1988-99; Surveyor Emeritus, 1999-. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 179
As an architect specialising in the conservation of historic buildings, I focused my position paper rather narrowly in that set of instructions, looking at scientific engineering technological and innovation-based activities of research and, for the most part, the applied rather than pure basic research as generally befits the field of conservation. For the sake of brevity, I decided to limit my study to England so I am grateful that Ingval Maxwell is here and can focus on experience in Scotland and overseas, and can elucidate some of the joining aspects. I fixed my attention on progress concerned with studies of historic building materials and systems, and their characteristics and performance, deterioration mechanisms and the means to conserve, repair and maintain them. In that context, I needed a proxy based on one building material that would suffice to act as a learning system through which we can look at progress across the whole sector. I focused on building stone because, as many of you will know, it has probably been the most cherished, the most studied and published of all building materials. I want to review the organisational issues affecting research into stone decay and treatment as a proxy for the whole. I could not help myself, but break May’s rules about the study period. I have always been fascinated how history keeps repeating itself. I have been a great student of technological developments for building conservation out of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in relation to developments in binders for mortars, plasters and renders in the development of lime and cement. I quickly had a back glance beyond the study period to the 1860s and progress from them to 1947 because, as you will see from where I am going with my description, there are indeed moments in history that keep repeating themselves. In relation to stone conservation and research in the field in the nineteenth century, George Gilbert Scott,47 as surveyor of the fabric of Westminster Abbey, was messing around with stone conservation experiments because he could not get decent stone to match. He was passing round samples of materials and throwing things at the building all the way through the 1860s, notably with the assistance of Professor Church,48 who was interested in treatments involving barium hydroxide, and Frederick Barff,49 again someone else with an interest in silica-based treatments as conservation treatments. At the same time in the 1860s, disastrous decay processes were overtaking the Palace of Westminster, only 23 years after its building. A Parliamentary Select Committee sat in horror trying to find a solution based on, first, preservatives and then complete replacement of the building facades. Emanating out of those studies by an official Government body, a great deal of empirical research and activity went on. In 1985, that great Scotsman, David Kirkcaldy,50 set up his testing
47 Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811–78), architect. 48 A. H. Church (1834-1915), Professor of Chemistry: Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester; and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. 49 F.S. Barff (1823-86), architect. 50 David Kirkcaldy (1820-1897). Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 180
machines in Southwark. You can still go to the museum and see the important logo over the door, ‘Facts not Opinions’. That empirical testing work of the period and the publication of data on stones towards the end of the century still has the most valuable data that I have seen in Great Britain for a long time. Ironically, the fledgling conservation movement driven by the writings of John Ruskin51 and the pamphleteering of William Morris52 in setting up the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877 was rather cynical about the use of science for the preservation purposes. A series of publication over almost 100 years have still been rather conservative in relation to a belief in science to resolve conservation problems. Ironically, some of the traditional processes that SPAB53 advocated, such as Lethaby’s54 writings on lime-wash and lime-wash treatment experiments at Westminster Abbey in the 1900s, are based around chemicals. It did not seem to be interested in trying to work out about calcium hydroxide in the nanotechnology of that period. Running through preservation-conservation activities by the practitioner end of the business, there seemed to be a healthy cynicism about the value of science and research based on great atrocities and disasters that occurred. I have particularly focused on the patronage of science and research, who was doing it and why. My predecessors in the Ministry of Works in the 1920s were Charles Peers55 and Frank Baines.56 Charles Peers got the gold medal from the Royal Institute of British Architecture for his work on the preservation of monuments. That would never happen today. He really sponsored an enormous amount of activity. We see the stark cycles coming to bear: Frank Baines researching into the performance of stone consolidants since the 1860s. There he was in 1920-21 revisiting churches, with barium hydroxide solutions at Westminster Hall and reporting on their performance over time. He was looking at the behaviour of a lot of binders, properties of mortar sands, the development of insecticides and seminal reports on the condition of Westminster Hall in the Palace of Westminster. In the 1920s, the paint associations and the chemists interested in paints were giving papers at the Royal Society of Arts on stone conservation problems. Noel Heaton particularly set down some criteria for what a successful consolidant would be for stonework and that guidance has not really been surpassed. It reappears, as it did in the publications of building research establishments during the 1970s. The Building Research Station was set up by the Government, with a budget of £1 million, really driving improvements in the building industry after the First World War, but another cycle was taking place. Institutions with large numbers of historic buildings, notably the Imperial War Graves Commission, now confronted with enormous stocks of gravestones and monuments to look after and,
51 John Ruskin (1819–1900), writer and artist. 52 William Morris (1834–1896), textile designer, artist and writer. 53 The Society for the Protection of Ancient Building was founded by William Morris in 1877. 54 WR Lethaby (1857-1931), architect and architectural historian 55 Sir Charles Peers, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments and President of the Society of Antiquaries. 56 Sir Frank Baines (1877-1933), architect. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 181
yet again, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey appealing for guidance from the Government on how to stop the buildings crumbling. From 1920-21, the Building Research Station’s first seminal piece of work was undertaken to review progress in building and stone conservation. The seminal work by Schaffer57 in The Weathering of Natural Building Stones published in 1932 is a text book that I use all the time. Many of its findings have not been surpassed. Here we see the model set up of desperate end users appealing or lobbying the Government for change, a rather slow but methodical response to those appeals and something good coming out of it. You see that reoccur. The BRS in the 1920s based in Garston, Watford produced other seminal publications, such as building limes by Cowper,58 on terracotta by McIntyre.59 Their descriptions of decay processes in those materials have only been supplemented, never replaced or surpassed. We now come to the Second World War and the start of the study period that we are talking about now. I noted the large number of a core of engineer sappers who were existing architects who came out of war service and went back into restoring historic buildings. They became a very technically minded client body for research. They knew what they did not know, and they started to band together into associations and train at schools of architecture, like The Bartlett at UCL. They became a demand-base for scientific information. After the war in the 1940s, the Government were struggling to repair their own building, which was much neglected and destroyed by bombing. The fledging technical services of the Ministry of Works for Ancient Monuments for the ruins and the guardianship sites started to come into being. In 1950, the Ministry of Works hired its first scientist, the famous Leo Biek,60 long gone sadly from the world, who was employed as much by the architects as by the Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments. He was responsible for corrosion in the cast iron plates on the roof of the Palace of Westminster amongst other jobs on buildings. In the same period, the wall paintings on the Government estate, particularly at Greenwich in the Royal Naval Hospital, were starting to get attention and conservator restorers with an interest in chemistry started to be built up in the services of the Ministry of Works, first in Kensington and later in Regent’s Park. It was in the early 1950s when Acts of Parliament came into force to give money to restore historic buildings, such as the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953. There was the creation of the Historic Buildings Council formed from outside advisers who helped the Government to spend money to prop up the decay after the Second World War. It was the interface between practitioners summarising the needs for technical research and the Ministry, and
57 Schaffer, R.J. The Weathering of Natural Building Stones. 58 Cowper, A.D. (1927), Lime and Lime Mortars. 59 McIntyre, W.A. (1929), ‘Investigations into the Durability of Architectural Terra Cotta,’ Special Report 12 (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, BRS). 60 Leopold Biek (1922–2002), Officer-in-Charge of Ancient Monuments Laboratory, 1950–66. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 182
the sponsors of that research came to the fore. Out of that activity, we see a great deal of lobbying for more research on stone conservation, particularly after the great smog of 1952, which killed so many people in London. It created Beaver’s Select Committee on Air Pollution, which not only dealt with human health but started the first concerns about acid rainfall deterioration of historic buildings and monuments. It took the Government a long time to respond to that, and it was not until the late 1960s and 1970s that a whole tranche of experimental work was published by my predecessors, T.A. Bailey, John Ashurst61 and Corinne Wilson,62 as she was then, with the Building Research Establishment, on the conservation of building stones, some of which are still in circulation today. John Ashurst was a key figure in my world for being a translator of science for the practitioners. He was an architect by training. He was a good teacher and taught at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies at York in the 1970s and ICCROM in Rome. He was exposed to scientists in Rome and translated much of their work for practitioners and disseminated that activity. He was a catalyst or lens for a lot of their concern and interest. John Ashurst’s personal connection, particularly with the conservation of stonework at the west front of Wells Cathedral in the great campaign that took place in 1972 really brought multi- disciplinarity in building conservation to the fore. There his college contact, Martin Caroe,63 was the architect in charge of the work. Ken Hempel,64 John Larson and Cliff Price – chemists with an interest in stone preservation – were all brought together with Robert and Eve Baker, who were experimenting with lime water treatments on masonry. Suddenly, the benefit was seen of a multi-disciplinary team working on one problem from Warwick Rodwell65 on the archaeology through to the Bakers on conservation, and the scientists. That was a seminal moment in the setting up of research questions and disseminating answers to them. Towards the end of the last period, we see the cycles of concern about acid rain, and its effect on stained glass and stone, such as the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 197066 and the 1984 House of Commons Select Committee report on the problem of acid rain. It caused the Government to set up the Building Effects Research Group Committee, which is the Government booting the problem into the long grass: if you cannot think of an answer, set up a Committee. It will take five to 10 years to come up with a solution, and that is what happened. Out of the genesis of a lot of activity and more resources of the 1970s we see the publication in 1988 of English Heritage’s five textbooks on practical building conservation, really unlocking 20 years of scientific research experiments on stone
61 John Ashurst (1937-2008), conservator. 62 Corinne Wilson (later Bennett, 1935-2010), Cathedrals Architect, English Heritage 1992–6. 63 Martin Caroe (1933-99), conservation architect. Partner, Caroe & Partners 1963-99 64 Ken Hempel, chemist, Victoria & Albert Museum. 65 Warwick Rodwell, archaeologist. Visiting Professor in the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading 66 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1970-2011. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 183
conservation and other building materials. In the late 1980s and early 1990s we see the setting up of the European Commission’s programmes involving acid rainfall impacts of stone, as part of the environment research package and responses by academia in SWAPNET, the surface weathering and atmospheric pollution network, and the banding together of different kinds of specialists interested in stone, such as end users; geomorphologists; chemists and physicists starting the dialogue on how they could collectively resolve the problems. In the 1990s, we owe it to high tea at 10 Downing Street for the Archbishops of Canterbury67 and York68 complaining to Margaret Thatcher69 that the cathedrals were falling down. English Heritage, to its great surprise, received an extra £10 million in its budget with the express purpose of saving the 36 English cathedrals. That remit was broadened to the other denominations, but it was a surprise package and English Heritage was not really set up at the time to spend it very quickly. I took the opportunity to promise that I could spend a million pounds if it gave it to me on building sites research, and that set up the English Heritage programme that followed. It has been published in researched transactions and textbooks. Many cycles continued in the 1980s and 1990s. BERG published ‘Crumbling Heritage’ through Ron Cook,70 another connection to UCL, in 1993. The cycles of expressions of problems by the practitioners; a debate with the Government and research emanating from them have all taken place – until the development of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology Inquiry on ‘Science and Heritage’.71 English Heritage’s response to that, which I was primarily responsible for, was to produce its first research strategy, I must say aided and abetted by the Government’s Chief Scientist72 against the wishes of DCMS at the time. I am glad that Baroness Sharp was able to stick it to DCMS in the House of Lords during the debate on the subject. To conclude, in an analysis of the period there seemed to be repeated patterns of behaviour by the patrons and sponsors of research and reactive tactical responses to emergencies, such as acid rain and stockholders not being able to perform. There was also accidental fortuitous circumstances when key individuals with vision and interest who just happened to be in the right place at the right time with other people, and then the serendipity situation that we heard about this morning. There were strategic drivers, notably more recently funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund: i.e., its policies to have a two-stage plan for grants to for repairing buildings, including research and testing. And finally the dramatic increase and exchange of ideas and information, which has helped to broadcast what has been done and where we should go next.
67 Robert Runcie (Lord Runcie, 1921–2000), Archbishop of Canterbury, 1980-91. 68 John Habgood (Lord Habgood), Archbishop of York, 1983-95. 69 Margaret Thatcher (Baroness Thatcher), Prime Minister, 1979-90. 70 Cooke, R. and Gibbs, G. (1993), Crumbling Heritage? Studies of stone weathering in polluted atmospheres. 71 Cm 7031. 72 Professor Sue Hill, Chief Scientific Officer, 2002-. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 184
I pose the following issues for consideration by the panel: did I get any of my facts wrong? Are there areas where such information can be supplemented? Were there parallels in the development and organisation of research in the museum-based heritage sector at the same time as there were parallels in Scotland and Wales and elsewhere at the same time? What factors affected university research relating to the area? Bearing in mind the current budgetary restrictions, what lessons from the past can be addressed to encourage more heritage research in future? Although memory loss in medicine can be seen as an illness, in Government it can be a great blessing to forget what has gone on in the past. It presents a very slippery slope for politicians. In the future, who can fund more history of science projects to publish the warnings and lessons from the past? ROBERT BUD Thank you. There are two aspects: to what extent people can amplify the building story and to what extent is it a generic story, also characteristic of smaller museum artefacts? I suppose that theme will go through this afternoon. Suzanne, would you like to talk about to what extent it reverberates from the museum point of view? SUZANNE KEENE We have never had as much funding as you have for buildings, to investigate the science for collections and so on! I am an objects or a collections person rather than a buildings person. In the case of buildings, it is obvious if something awful is happening to them. The Palace of Westminster is a thought for the day, crumbling only 25 years after it was built. It is much less obvious for objects, including paintings. There are many fewer emergency drivers for doing something about matters. The history particularly of painting conservation goes much further back than you have suggested in your paper. I am not up to date with the exact dates, but there were panics when the National Gallery was first opened. Hoards of people came along in their wet clothes, and there was worry about light fading. There were similar worries at The British Museum because it was so popular for so many people, as was the V&A. There were concerns about the welfare of the objects on display. On the whole, there have been short-term panics with fewer substantive efforts to address them. I come to the efforts of UKIC way back in 1960s when David Leigh was also involved in our historic survey, were you not? DAVID LEIGH I have brought it along! SUZANNE KEENE Brilliant, well done. DAVID LEIGH It is important in the chronology; it is an important document. SUZANNE KEENE It is, because it had an effect. After that museums and funders began to take more of an interest in the care and preservation of collections, without ever acknowledging that things were in a bad way. David and I looked back and said if we had done that survey again, which we do not have the time, inclination or money to do, what would we find? Would there be many fewer panic situations to look at by way of the Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 185
general care of collections? Turning to science and the research on preservation, there has been very much less attention to that where objects are concerned than there has been to buildings, particularly because the materials that objects are made of and the effects of the technology are so very diverse. Buildings have few kinds of materials compared with objects, so there has been less emphasis on research except for research on the environment. I have thought for some time ever since the work on insulation and how to maintain a suitable environment for buildings, conservators have been way ahead for a long time, including May. I think that she had a paper published at early stage about creating a suitable environment for collections. On the whole, museums have not had the money to throw at mechanical air conditioning systems. I draw attention to a lot of work particularly by Sarah Staniforth at the National Trust. Building people now could profitably have a look and revisit that research because it shows many ways of maintaining an equitable environment using passive means rather than throwing carbon dioxide at it basically. JERRY PODANY Research on building stone had an interesting influence on collections conservation in the late-1960s and throughout the 1970s. And I must state that I do assume it was necessarily all positive. There was a period when conservation studios (revealingly called ‘laboratories’) were carrying out treatments on collections material that were really designed for buildings. And sometimes this was done whether it was truly needed or not. The conservators were trying to be ‘up to date’ and ‘scientific’ about their work. There was certainly material that very much needed consolidation, for example, but many objects within collections did not require such heavy handed applications. Such treatments justified the claim of ‘scientific conservation’ but did not necessarily serve the future of the objects and the collections. Many museum conservation departments bought testing equipment to try to keep pace with developments in material science. Sometimes this resulted in positive contributions, but it also resulted in a great deal of repetition and, at times, misleading results. I raise this because I believe that when we review the role of ‘science’ in conservation we should strive to balance that review. A good deal went right but sometimes a good deal went wrong. Nylon is still insoluble and facades and sculptures have yellowed and cracked because of the litres of unstable epoxy consolidant pumped into them. All of these appeared, at one time, to be well tested, ‘certified’ and ‘scientific’ approaches to the challenges of conservation. ROBERT BUD Does Jonathan Ashley-Smith who was Head of Research at the V&A for many years have any comments? PROFESSOR Not many, because I am not allowed to speak until the second half. I JONATHAN agree with the fact that certain things took place in museums. John ASHLEY-SMITH Larson’s work with silanes would have been useful for outside stonework. It was used indiscriminately, but to no great purpose inside museums. One of the things that I had made a note of this morning was about soluble nylon. That was found to be wrong for Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 186
outdoor environments, because it hydrolises, but it was used extensively with collections in dry environments. I do not know that anyone has followed them up. It does not matter that they have become insoluble because no one will ever go back to those objects and do anything with them again. Whether it was a bad thing, we do not know. People throw their hands up in the air and say, ‘Soluble nylon. Terrible. We should not have done it.’ Probably, we should have done it. It was the best thing to use at the time, and it has not yet, as far as I know, been shown to be bad. PROFESSOR MAY It has. CASSAR JERRY PODANY It has. MAY CASSAR It darkens and it cross-links. JONATHAN I know that it cross-links. ASHLEY-SMITH MAY CASSAR It shrinks and pieces of objects fall off. JONATHAN I have not seen that. I do not have anecdotal evidence about it. ASHLEY-SMITH ROBERT BUD We have looked at buildings and have reflected on the parallels and sometimes the dysfunctional parallels between museum objects sitting inside, and buildings sitting outside. Does anyone have any reflections on the longue durée picture about buildings that we heard earlier? When thinking about that, one thing that struck me was the House of Lords Committee. Has anyone had any reflections on that Committee and how it made sense in terms of your story? JOHN FIDLER As a former civil servant, I can tell you how the civil service reacts to such matters. To have a lens focused on organisational behaviour and your performance is a threatening situation. You get groans from the management when these things are set up. There can be great opportunities to explain how marvellous things are or how they would be if you had a few more pounds, but for the management in big organisations it seems a threat and a concern. For the Ministries involved, it is definitely more work that they could have done without. While the practitioners and the professional institutes see it as an opportunity to shake the trees in the organisational structure of the Government and their agencies, those concerned in managing these bodies are seeking to minimise the issues. Anyone who has read the transcriptions of Baroness Sharp’s Select Committee will see that the museum bodies’ oral evidence to the Select Committee did not go over very well by comparison with the buildings side. We were armed with a vision of what we wanted to achieve, even though we did not have it all agreed by our own paymasters, and we were able to get the Select Committee to echo that back to the Government in the parliamentary discussions that followed, although it only dealt with the situation in England. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 187
SUZANNE KEENE That little mention of soluble nylon made me think of another characteristic of research into object conservation and techniques. We have very rarely looked back at the things we are using in an organised way to see whether they work, whether they are bad or good. As well as a sort of fractured and fragmented approach to what to do, we have not considered what not to do and learnt from what we have done before. I do not know whether my colleagues agree. DAVID LEIGH That point was touched on this morning. We have not been good enough in comparing the condition of objects now with what was done in the past. There is room for considerable research. I do not know if the topic is coming up to your funding streams. Given John [Fidler]’s slightly negative views on the museum side’s effects of the House of Lords Select Committee, okay it would have been amazing if the Government had actually listened. I am sure that the reports are wonderful exercises, but I doubt whether most of them are acted. However, it has resulted in the freeing or the identification of research funding. We are here today as a consequence of that. It has also caused us to reflect, which we are doing now, on where we are going. That has been very healthy. To have had that thinking driven at the House of Lords has been beneficial, and will become seen as a historical marker point in the development of conservation of heritage science. That is my perspective. ROBERT BUD Given the two Americans among us, would they reflect on the long- term vision and the parallels between the story you have heard about in the United Kingdom and the experience in the United States: JOYCE HILL STONER Before thinking about how the way we have worked has been transformed, as it is international, I looked at the funding history in parallel with what we have just heard. We had substantial government funding beginning in 1965 with the National Endowment for the Arts, which went on for some time. We are now in a skid, as everyone is. A National Conservation Advisory Council was established in 1973, which eventually did assessments of where we are in architectural conservation, in training, and in library and archives. That turned into the National Institute for Conservation, which has changed its name to Heritage Preservation.73 It has some funding but does a great deal of lobbying, which has come up over the past four sessions, which has turned into heritage preservation. Something I see reflected is how conservators are trying to make some difference in Congress. We have had advocates on occasion who have made a difference in Congress. The Heritage Preservation people have been successful in introducing concepts to the senators and congressional representatives such as the movie Slow Fires74 which demonstrated how acid paper in books and documents simply crumbles away. Much legislation followed about how important books and documents should be on high-quality acid-free paper. Slow Fires was based on how acidic wood-pulp paper rapidly deteriorates.
73 http://www.heritagepreservation.org/ 74 Slow Fires: On the preservation of the human record (1987). Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 188
Peter Waters75 stood up to testify and crumbled an entire book in his hands in front of the assembled legislators. That made quite an impression. JERRY PODANY Joyce has summed it up. Perhaps the United States has a greater number of sources for support in the private sector. As for the development of scientific contribution within conservation, I believe the United States and Britain are on parallel tracks. But there is no doubt that the international community learns great deal from Britain as one of the leaders in heritage science. JOHN FIDLER Reflecting on what I wrote a couple of weeks ago, because I had been in the civil service I was looking at the governmental thread of history through all of this. Sir Donald Insall is with us, and I was reflecting how the private sector practitioners relate to such matters. The liquid nylon discussion relates to that. A great deal of research is funded in this country and in North America by industry, some of it good and a lot of it bad. It is bad because no one is explaining to the scientists why some of their avenues are dangerous, have been trod before and found to have elephant traps in them. We were able to head off at the pass Dow Chemicals revival of some Italian patents for Fluoro-materials for stone conservation, and it has dropped the programme. It is about the fourth time in a few decades that that chemical has gone through the system. I pondered on the matter because practitioners in the field, like doctors in the medical profession, read magazines in which new wonder products are shown. Free samples are given. Trips to factories in Italy are exact parallels with medical science and the selling of products. All that goes on, and it is difficult in a busy life of a small practitioner to sort the wheat from the chaff. All we can rely on is our trusted cousins and friends to tell us what is good or bad. It is back to this morning’s discussion about giving some standards or guidelines and who can we trust in this horrible world. I want to pose the question to Sir Donald. Confronted by a plethora of materials to design with and specify, it must be difficult for the practitioner to afford the time to reflect on that and go into libraries and prepare? DONALD INSALL I agree. Indeed, it is. A very responsible and important function it is, too. For the architect or practitioner, the phrase ‘heritage science’ is a little worrying. I found that yesterday. It suggested that research and experiment might be a laboratory function only, which for us is not the case. It is an activity, an essential continuing element of every project, in fact, of every practical task of conservation on the ground. It is finding out how, as well as finding out what. Finding out how to make things happen is all part of the story for us, not only the methods and tools available, but the human resources and hands and how to co-ordinate them to the effect we need. How to organise, inspire and guide is all part of research for us. Heritage, for us, is not only the greatest monuments or the conscious collections that have happened, but the human landscape – the dreadful word ‘environment’, I wish we had a better one – and
75 Peter Waters (1930–2003), Conservation Officer at the Library of Congress. 1971-95. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 189
homes, gardens, contents, belongings and their history and continuity. It is our task and our privilege to cope with. We also ought to mention communication. Having found out something and worked out how to achieve something, it is part of our job to do what we can to communicate it. I tried to put such matters recently in a book Living Buildings,76 which some of you know. Christmas is coming! We need to be able to find out how to make things happen and to share it with other people. For the practitioner, that is just as important as being able to refer to what may be presented as a magic substance. DAVID LEIGH What has been said has sparked further thoughts. I want to move to perhaps dangerous territory of accreditation. I suspect that Ingval [Maxwell] might have something to say about that, too. We are talking about high-level architectural conservation practices, the best. There are a lot of architects, however, who do not have to be accredited in any way in conservation. They were trained as architects, a legally regulated profession, but not conservation. It is interesting that in the developments between movable and the immovable heritage, the movable heritage conservation is slightly ahead. We have got accreditation established quite well. America is still struggling with its certification. JERRY PODANY Very much so. DAVID LEIGH I believe you now have two schemes up and running. Why that is relevant is because in all those cases you should be only accredited if you are prepared to consider the evidence and are clear when you need to look for it, when you need to call in for scientific work and, in fact, you can see accredited professionals driving the science to an extent. There is no longer a response to panic; it is a sustained requirement by the professionals for the scientific backup for questions that they come across to be answered. Accreditation holds some sort of key. ROBERT BUD It is a big topic. I do not know whether it should be left for afterwards, but let us think about the relationship between the accredited expert and the practitioner. In museums, we have seen the changing relationship between the conservator and the curator. When I joined the Science Museum 30 years ago, there was no question of conservation. We had workshops and every now and then you would have a special conservation problem, and you might go outside. Basically, the practitioner was the expert – a very different world from what we have today. I do not know whether that can be explored through the experiences of people here who were leaders in transforming that world. JOYCE HILL STONER A group of us earlier spoke about how we have always used the term ‘the three-legged stool’ to describe conservation. This concept was introduced by George L. Stout of the Fogg Art Museum (later director of the Worcester Museum and the Isabella Stewart Gardner
76 Donald Insall (2010), Living Buildings: Architectural Conservation, Philosophy, Principles and Practice. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 190
Museum). This was also called our ‘triptych’ by art historians. Stout, in the 1930s and in the 1960s when the first conservation program was founded in the USA, at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts on 78th Street, noted that the three legs, (or wings of the triptych) are: 1) Art history/archaeology/the cultural context of the artefact; 2) The scientific understanding of materials/research; 3) Hand skills and actual practice. From all the discussions in the past three seminars, and in the expansion of all the things we feel that we must teach our graduate students in art conservation, I now say that the ‘three-legged stool’ has turned into a ‘12-legged settee’. Our graduate students who are to graduate and go out into the word as assistant conservators must have the three-legged stool and then also: Skills in interdisciplinary communication and team building – they must go on digs or speak to colleagues at the museum. As Stefan Michalski noted, they must build committees and get them on their side. They must do public advocacy and fund raising – many now work in visible conservation departments such as the Lunder Center, or carry out treatments in the galleries or outdoors on scaffoldings working on public murals. They have to speak in a language that public legislators understand and be absolutely convincing, exciting, and passionate as Laura Drysdale said. They must absorb a vast quantity of constantly expanding literature. When I entered the field in the 1960s, I could put in one suitcase all the literature I needed to read. A suitcase-full of new published research now comes out almost weekly or monthly. For Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts (AATA, see above) we have described that as a quantum explosion of literature that has happened since the 1970s. What will [scientific techniques such as] FTIR (Fourier-Transform Infra Red) or XRF (x-ray fluorescence) analysis tell them? When is analysis necessary, and where can they arrange to have samples analysed? They must be able to speak intelligently to scientists (it’s unlikely the scientists will come to them – the conservators must be the connectors, the communicators to both the scientists and the art historians). They must study entomology and know life cycles of pests that might attack cultural materials in addition to HVAC system controls and settings for Preventive Conservation in addition to risk management, emergency preparedness – team building yet again. They should understand how to deal with tribal leaders from native cultures and the spiritual and metaphysical content of ethnographic objects that may have special storage or display requirements, including care of human remains. They need to be sensitive to living artists and the metaphysical meaning of their materials--blood or chocolate or soap, etc. They should be able to carry out interviews with living artists for this additional type of ‘culture of origin’ for art and artefacts. They should be really good at use of digital photography and Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 191
databases, which are always changing. They should travel and have global consciousness. Many things change as you cross borders. Material culture theories and social history must be understood. We laughed about having a final exam composed only of acronyms: IIC International Institute for Conservation; ICON (the British conservation group); ICOM-CC International Council of Museums: Conservation Committee; ICOMOS (monuments and sites – see google); AIC American Institute for Conservation; SPNHC – the Society of the Preservation of Natural History Collections etc. etc. All of these groups (and many more) have important conferences and publications to attend and read. Can some of the preventive conservation or actual treatment work be carried out by community volunteers? – they should be managed appropriately – this can increase public outreach. The outside world must be coaxed to visit us and see what we are doing if we are to survive. AND we must increase diversity and include third-world countries. That’s my list of 12 (or more!) legs – and reflects some of how conservation practice has changed since the 1970s. LAURA DRYSDALE That is fantastic. It makes me thank god that I do not have to work a conservator any more. It has also made me feel quite nostalgic for the days when someone really knows how to do something to an object. That is partly what Jonathan was talking about this morning: the loss of the confidence to intervene. I can recognise that over the period of my trajectory in conservation. There grew up a fear of doing things to things because of a history of disastrous treatments. The soluble nylon disaster was only just passing out of view as I started working in conservation. People did become quite afraid of touching objects. Perhaps that is something your 12-seater sofa might reinforce. You have so many other things to think about. How can you have the confidence and the focus to pick up the scalpel and mark the object? JOYCE HILL STONER Our group is treating objects. You just have to explain it better. INGVAL MAXWELL On the basis that we are about to break, David has raised an interesting point about accreditation. It is something that I would like us to come back to after the break. Let us pick up on how we have changed the way that we work, and John [Fidler]’s fourth question about what was going on North of the Border. What has been happening over the past 20 years North of the Border is formative to how the accreditation systems have developed in the heritage world. DAVID LEIGH I want to pick up on the earlier point about the loss of skills. I am not sure the argument follows that, because we have to be more humble, more careful and more thoughtful and more aware of past mistakes, we are afraid of touching objects. There is an element of that, but some of the training courses are still training people to the highest levels of skills and there is still a lot of really good expertise being taught. Admittedly, the syllabus keeps expanding. In the 1970s Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 192
I gave a talk at The British Museum on the phrase ‘supercon’. Do you remember that? SUZANNE KEENE Yes. DAVID LEIGH Even at that stage, we thought that a conservator had to be a superperson. Now they will have to be even more super. Okay, we specialise much more than we did, but I still believe that the skills are there and are still practised. JOYCE HILL STONER Heavens, I didn’t mean to say that practical skills are not there – we require a portfolio of studio art and a drawing test as part of our admissions interviews. DAVID LEIGH No, you did not, but I think that Jonathan and Laura did. LAURA DRYSDALE No, I am not saying that the skills are not there. I can recognise something that happened at the beginning of my work in conservation, which was a fear around dealing with objects. It was a fear of intervening because there was a history of intervention that looked as if it had been disastrous. I am not sure if that fear has been perpetuated. I do not know what it is like now if you work in conservation, but perhaps it allowed for the other things to come in. You did not have just to be a conservator. You could relax your focus and let it incorporate other things. To me, that is a good thing. I am more interested in the other things than I am in the scalpel. ROBERT BUD That is a good point, at which to break for tea. Thank you for a fascinating session. I am sorry for the delayed start.
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Session Two
ROBERT BUD In closing the last session, Ingval Maxwell was about to raise the question of what happened north of the border. I think we should give you an opportunity to start looking at that. INGVAL MAXWELL: Thank you very much. Really, in my mind’s eye, I am linking the lead-in that David [Leigh] gave about accreditation and John [Fidler]’s fourth question of what happened over a similar sort of period. But, of course, one of the fundamental differences, coming to this meeting, is that north of border the responsibility for the built heritage has been devolved. We did try this before, in mediaeval times, with the King’s Master of Works. In 1827, by Royal Warrant, we had an Office of Works for Scotland, but that only lasted about three years before it was absorbed into Whitehall. In the interim, the interesting thing, which relates to accreditation as well, is that in 1829 the head of the Office of Works for Scotland, the architect Robert Reid,77 actually made a policy statement. It is interesting to reflect on, because he was looking at problems at the Romanesque Dunfermline Abbey. With pressure from antiquarian Sir Walter Scott,78 who was interested in these things at the time, Reid said: ‘I concede that in all cases of this kind restoration of embellishment should not be the object but that … on such decayed and ancient edifices should be executed for the purpose and with a view solely to their preservation and, in effecting that object, the less appearance of interference with their present state and construction the better.’ In 1829, that was quite a distinct statement, which has a resonance right through to today. In that sense, we have not really changed the way we work too much. However, in 1831 the Office of Works for Scotland was disbanded and it came under the rule of Treasury. In many ways, John’s story, which he introduced earlier, is more or less applicable across the nation in that sense, until 1978, when the first attempt at devolution came about and it was realised that a Whitehall Department responsible for ancient monuments in Scotland did not actually fit with the idea of devolved responsibility. The staff from what was then the Property Services Agency of the Department of the Environment was transferred to the Scottish Office. The Scottish Office did not know quite what it had got, because it was very much an administrative Department and not used to an organisation within itself that really did work. Particularly during the follow-on Thatcher Government era, the unit that I was in charge of at that time – the Works and Professional Services Division – had something like 14 reviews, scrutinies, audits and market testing exercises carried out in an eight-year period. That meant that there was not really much time to think about conservation research.
77 Robert Reid (1774-1856), the King’s architect and surveyor for Scotland, 1827-39. 78 Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), historical novelist. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 194
We did benefit from the good offices of John Ashurst but, in the interim, with English Heritage going into quango status, and the Scottish fold staying within government, that fell away steadily. So, in the one sense, Scotland and to some extent Wales perhaps were left a little bit in the lurch. However – this is where the link to accreditation comes in – as part of one of the major reorganisations from the 14 sets of recommendations taken into account, Technical Conservation, Research and Education was set up. I was given the challenge of improving the quality and standard of building conservation work in Scotland. That was quite an interesting job description item to address. It could only be addressed through working with many contacts in the outside world, on the education and training industry and professional body side. Just a little before that, way back in 1988, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors approached the grant-giving bodies to say, ‘Why are you specifically identifying architects in the grant-giving documentation to be the recipient of grant monies awarded for the repair of historic buildings?’ They are therefore getting the fees. That did not hold too well within officialdom at that time, in both the Historic Scotland and the English Heritage predecessor. But the RICS came back in 1992, and said, ‘You can’t tell us to go away this time. We have devised a scheme of accredited status for our surveyors which we wish you to acknowledge in your grant- giving approach and, therefore, change the wording.’ That was effective, and the wording changed, to require a suitably qualified practitioner to deal with it. That, essentially, was the birth of the accreditation schemes. There are not two accreditation schemes in the building conservation world, there are seven. There are three for architects, or four now, if you include the Republic of Ireland: the RIBA, the RIAS, the AABC and RIAI schemes. There is a scheme for architectural technologists – the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists – and, in that sense, the surveyors’ scheme as well just adds to the need for a challenge to get the act together. In 1993, what appeared was the framework for that – much like the policy of the old Office of Works still holding good – the ICOMOS Education and Training Guidelines. I believe you were involved in the production of that, Donald? That set out 14 criteria, which anyone involved in the sphere of building conservation work should be competent in. It encouraged the various countries internationally to sign up to introducing education and training programmes to effect these 14 issues. They have, in fact, been very useful in the life of TCRE because, working to a sort of hidden agenda, I planned to produce a publication for each of the 14 guidelines, so that in fact there was no reason for lack of knowledge. But the interesting thing is that all of the accreditation schemes acknowledge the ICOMOS 1993 Education and Training Guidelines. That is a critical thing, because from the commissioning client’s perspective, in terms of building work, there is a need for consistency in how the individuals are accredited, and to what standard. The way things are going, I think Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 195
there is the potential to see accredited teams working on building conservation work in the not-too-distant future. The benefit, however, is that there are not only the publications available to support this but the postgraduate courses that exist in this country – again, set up some years ago under Donald’s influence and that of Bernard Fielden79 and others – which are in compliance with the same set-up. In effect, there is that consistency across the professional world. That is important from the commissioning client point of view, from the reciprocation point of view and, given the different disciplines involved, from the equivalency point of view. ROBERT BUD Just one point of clarification. You used 1978 as your point of change, but you did not talk about Scottish devolution itself. Did that make a big change? INGVAL MAXWELL Yes, it did because, as I said, I think I am coming here from the basis of a devolved Government that is looking after the built heritage in Scotland. At the same time, there has to be a recognition that the approach to the built heritage is an international approach, which is why it is relevant that some international base line is adhered to. That is the benefit of sticking to the ICOMOS Education and Training Guidelines. JOHN FIDLER We talked about standards and standard setting in the widest context. I think a trend that had started at the end of the period of study, but which has become more pronounced in the past two years, as I have seen – in relation to the building industry particularly, on an international scale – is that up until now we have benefited from scientists, principally chemists but some physicists and biologists, who, representing their companies and their quality and research units, have spent an inordinate amount of time sitting on British Standards and other committees. They have helped to set general building standards in the UK, some of which are applicable to conservation, although a lot are not. But that resource has almost completely disappeared, and I wanted to raise that issue. The driver for this is quite important. Building materials have become simple commodities in a world marketplace. Family companies used to own cement factories or brick works, for example, and were very proud of the products they produced. For the benefit of the industry as a whole and for their customers, they would donate the services of their scientists, through the British Standards Committee, who helped to set standards and to ensure quality. That has completely collapsed as a model, because these companies have been bought out, three or four times, by principally German but also Irish venture capitalists and others, whose objective has been to drive down the overheads of the companies to make more profit. All the laboratories I can think of that used to exist have been closed. Why is that important for this community? For example – I will name a company – RMC, which produces ready-mixed mortars, had research scientists including experts on blood chemistry (analogous to mortar plasticisers), who are very useful if you want to know about
79 Sir Bernard Feilden (1919-2008), conservation architect. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 196
the rheology of cement paste and lime mortars. They were great experts that advised English Heritage and others on these materials. They sat on several British Standards Committees for mortars, plasters and renders. But all of those people have been made redundant by a Mexican cement company which has taken over – almost a world monopoly in the purchase of cement. These people are just selling white powder in bags now, and so I expect to see a diminution in the number and quality of British standards. The trade associations also used to support our industry with expertise, but the demographics mean that baby boomers are retiring out, but are not being replaced by the companies. So, I expect to see a diminution in the advice and guidance from the trade associations as well. There is a criticality, it seems to me, in the way that the global market for the construction industry has changed fundamentally in the past 10 years. DAVID LEIGH John always has a brilliant overview of things. As far as I have seen, the initiative on British Standards continues. Some of those, which no doubt you were responsible for or took part in, are being revisited and revised. There is a general one. General Guidance on the Conservation of Historic Buildings, which is now going to be revised – a bit late, but it is happening. And there are others as well. It is true that there is difficulty in getting people from the industry to take part, as you know, but there are people – some actually in this room – who are taking part in the process, such as Kate Frame here, and others who are interested. I note that in May Cassar’s article, she referred to the need for us to maintain or take up this, and not to be driven, as we are, perhaps partly because of the reasons you were saying, we are partly being driven by outsiders, in Europe but not in the UK. We need to get back that initiative to make the best of the expertise we have and the research we have done, which is so good in the UK. ROBERT BUD One issue that that raises is the changing balance between public and private – local private and international. I know that Historic Royal Palaces has experienced a shift between the public and private sectors. Has this been a major shift for you? KATE FRAME It has made a tremendous shift – all quite positive in my mind. Our conservators have had to develop new skills and revise their approach to being employees to gain the support they need to survive and thrive in what is a commercially driven organisation. HRP transformed itself into a private charity over the last ten years and set the expectation that conservators contribute to making the palaces a success beyond the provision of conservation services. Conservators have done so by developing skills in communicating about their work to generalist audiences, HRP’s visitors, who are its greatest source of revenue. Communicating conservation to non- specialists was made an element of the conservators’ jobs, at every level. They are now masters at it and ready and able to give media interviews, visitor talks and support cultivation campaigns at fund Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 197
raising events, and as a result have a high profile in the organisation and are viewed as contributors to its success and not the cost centre they once were. Conservators have also had to expand their working roles within HRP. Formerly their working relationships were narrowly focused on the collections and working with curators. Preventive conservators in particular now have had to branch out to become part of the commercial teams running revenue generating functions and filming events which in turn funds their work. They approach these collection-risky activities positively, finding innovative conservation solutions that allow the activities to occur without damage to the rooms and collections. Conservators have developed business and negotiating skills to influence preventive conservation in this commercial environment. One concern raised about the conservators expanding role outside of their traditional professional role (technical conservation) is that it may lead to the watering – to the dumbing – down of their conservation knowledge and skills. This has not been the case at HRP. Our staff’s professional credentials are continually maintained and improved while their new skills at communicating and planning only serve to broaden their professional abilities. Now they can speak plainly, and passionately about conservation making their work more accessible and understandable to the public ensuring their knowledge and professional authority come through. They have also been trained to speak about what they know and their work and their professional aspirations, the work at hand. As a consequence they are able to speak without preparing a script, which means they are able to get as much of the hands-on conservation work done whilst delivering public engagement programmes. It is often said that such activities take away from resources to conserve – implying collections preservation suffers. The organisation and workplans of the Conservation Section have been designed to ensure balance. In the six years HRP has been communicating conservation, our standards of work have increased. Joyce [Hill Stoner] mentioned university training of conservators as having become a twelve legged stool – that is twelve skills areas whereas once there were about three – I believe she said technical, science and ethics. HRP, as an employer of 34 conservators, many of whom are recent graduates from university conservation programmes, has not found this to be the case. From universities we need graduates with the three-legged core conservation theoretical knowledge and skills in conserving materials and understanding of the ethical framework of conservation and hands-on experience showing dexterity and basic aptitude to carrying out conservation processes. We find that if those entering conservation have natural qualities of enthusiasm to speak about what they do and good communication skills, we are able to supplement a skills training that is a three legged stool to create one with twelve legs in the first few years on the job. INGVAL MAXWELL There is a scale issue, however, between object conservation need and the built heritage conservation need. It is a major challenge, to Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 198
which the industry in its collective form must face up. There are something like 6 million properties in the UK built before 1919, in a traditional manner. Arguably, we have been building in that traditional manner for almost 5,000 years, but have really lost the techniques in the past 100 years. The irony is that the professional world, the construction industry world, has trained everyone to build things afresh, 100 per cent, and yet from the industry’s own statistics and analysis, almost 50 per cent of client money spent on buildings is on repairing and maintaining the existing building stock, of which 6 million are constructed in a traditional fashion. From the building point of view, the scale of the discrepancy is horrendous. In many ways, that is why accreditation is important – to start coming at the top of the pile, to get changes in place for the many practitioners who are working and making conservation-related decisions through doing repairs and maintenance to the existing building stock. But there is also a need to bolster the education and training world at the bottom end, to start closing the gap. We have not got around to truly dealing with that in the building and conservation side. Another point relative to the postgraduate courses, and certainly in my experiences as an external examiner in at least three of them, is that we have been exporting conservation skills, because at least 50 per cent of those attending the postgraduate courses in building conservation in the UK are from outwith these shores. That is, I think, an indictment on the lack of recognition of the challenges of dealing with those 6 million properties in an effective way. … But there are real dilemmas, on a scale that is vast compared with the challenges in the object conservation world, simply on the numerics alone. SUZANNE KEENE There are about 200 million objects in public collections in the UK, so I do not think it is numerical, although I do agree about the size. ROBERT BUD Do you want to comment on that? DONALD INSALL Yes. John has invited us to amplify any items. His paper is totally beyond the significant errors of fact or interpretation that you asked us about, but you have asked us to supplement it. The international courses might receive a bit more mention on the taped record, or whatever it is nowadays – the digitised record. The ICCROM courses to which you have referred have been extremely effective and influential, as have been the Leuven courses in Belgium, which I went to for many years. I met the students there, and talked with them for several days. Several of us here have comparable experiences in other conservation courses, more in the object field – is that so? It would be useful to share any experiences people have. ROBERT BUD Another factor we can bring up – we might return to that topic – is not only education but research. You mentioned the courses. One of the questions that will emerge as we move between public and private sectors – we have heard just now – and between local and Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 199
globalised tech industries is the question of research. Does someone have thoughts on the research resource? INGVAL MAXWELL Again, if I can come at it from the Scottish point of view, having been fairly lax in research up until about 1993, and with the challenges that I faced certainly, I think the fundamental need was to ensure that the research was carried out in as multidisciplinary a manner as possible, given the range of challenges that need to be integrated and thought through. The approach I adopted for 15 years was to set the challenge for the academics and the scientists, who did fundamental work that was necessary to relearn things that were intuitively known in the past but from a more scientific and academic base, and to use the work, but to ask them: now, please translate that into practical speak, so that the practitioner can use it. Latterly, the challenge was: now, please translate the practical speak into the lay speak, so that the client can understand it. In that way, veneer the needs and understandings commensurate with who was driving what – whether the client spending the money, the practitioner specifying properly, or the academic or scientific community interfacing with each other, which in many ways, in my experience, did not really happen until about the late 1980s – certainly north of the border. JOHN FIDLER Ingval and I were very lucky because we were given resources to sponsor research – not through grant programmes but directed research. We knew what we wanted and we went and bought it from the academic sector. So, we were able to sponsor indirectly postgraduate research in various activities. Particularly, Ingval was successful in setting up centres of expertise – I am thinking of the Robert Gordon Institute of Stone and so on – which did not formerly exist as a coalesced specialty. INGVAL MAXWELL The challenge there was to integrate those specialised in botany, chemistry, physics, sculpture, architecture and environmental psychology in a stone-cleaning programme. I got stick for the latter, but why? The question was, how clean is clean, in terms of cleaning a building? There was a degree of lateral thought coming into the process of triggering these research approaches, in a way to get a more comprehensive issue. By setting up peer review advisory committees to run with the various themes that we were driving at the time, not only was the gain educating educators, but the potential of educating students from that was now possible. Also, more importantly, the uptake of the results was pretty much more assured. MAY CASSAR I wonder whether I could ask the witnesses to reflect in a little more general way – cutting across both immovable and movable heritage – on the shift in work patterns that has been taking place over the past couple of decades. Certainly in the United States, the greater emphasis is on the private sector and self-dependency, rather than dependence on government. What lessons can we learn in the UK as, increasingly, the private sector has a more significant role in the workplace than the public sector, in the current economic climate? I do not anticipate that climate changing significantly for a few years. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 200
What does that imply in terms of the reduction in resources and whether we can become more mutually dependent on each other, in terms of the sharing of the skills and resources between the public and private sectors, which I suppose might be a novelty, both in the USA and the UK? As the public sector in the UK shrinks, and people have to develop their own independent means of employment, what can the public and private sectors do together to ensure that we do not suffer a permanent shrinkage? What is the role of knowledge and research in ensuring that we remain viable, and that we actually grow when everything seems to suggest that we might shrink? LAURA DRYSDALE I want to pick up on May’s point, because of my experience working at English Heritage in the late 1990s. We moved from employing conservators at the bench to outsourcing all the work. That is quite a strange process, because you lose the serendipity of actually having work done. At the time, there was something quite satisfying about a laboratory in the middle of Savile Row, some of the most expensive real estate in the world, I should think. But it didn’t last, having those people there. They were soon shuffled off, to go to some of the least expensive real estate in the world, I imagine, which was in Fort Cumberland, practically in the sea, which seemed to me to be a suggestion of how little people valued archaeological science and conservation. What it did mean was that we could buy private sector conservation, and we could buy it to the standard we desired and specified. I think there was a sharing of resources and of intellectual resources between the commissioning organisation and the commissioned. In a perfect world, that can be incredibly productive to both sides. The problem with outsourcing is always really about the level of specification from the commissioning organisation. You do need a substantial level of expertise inside the organisation in order to commission effectively. I do not see why it is not a model that cannot be perfectly satisfactory, because private sector conservators are very good, and there is no reason why they should not be. JOHN FIDLER My perspective is from my current role in the United States. I am working for a 500-person, multidisciplinary engineering company. Much of our work is to do with forensic engineering, responding to lawyers and having to get the evidence base right for them, assessing why something has failed, be it a bridge, the collapsed 9/11 towers or, simply, lots of leaks in a condominium housing project. We are working out what went wrong, how to fix it and – as important in such situations – who did it, who is to blame and how much should they pay. The founders of the company were three MIT professors. As part of their culture, which continues to this day, we are all encouraged to publish for the benefit of the industry. Fifty per cent of the cost of writing papers, and presenting seminars nationally, in the States, is paid by the company. It sees that effort and investment as a benefit to the industry, to help push forward knowledge but also, indirectly, market the skills of the company. I have to say that that is a very rare model, even in North America, for Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 201
an engineering company. We have several rivals which do not do anything like that. I do not know of any practices in the UK working in preservation which could manage that on the full scale, because the margins in the conservation business are so thin by comparison with general engineering practice in the United States. I offer that as the perfect end of the business, but it would be a bit of a struggle for most of the private sector to be able to respond in such a way. INGVAL MAXWELL Looking at it from the past – if I was to choose a date, broadly speaking I would say pre-1920, although that is not hard and fast, but broadly speaking that is when we stopped building traditionally and started making more complex structures. Up to about that time, you could argue that we did have in balance the right knowledge, the right skills and the right materials to do a proper job. Now, to repair or maintain these structures is moving towards conservation if you repair and maintain it properly. The problem I think in the construction industry and in the minds of many clients with responsibility for pre-1920 structures is that using the word ‘conservation’ has a certain connotation – they are much happier to spend money repairing and maintaining. There is a psychology here that needs to be addressed, to get the commissioning client to look at their property in a slightly different way, by repairing and maintaining them properly. If we can do that, we will get a lot more conservation for the money that is being spent, which, across the country at the moment, is £4.5 billion per annum on repairing and maintaining the existing building stock with ill- informed craftsmen and professionals. By changing the drift, I am quite optimistic about the future, because in the current economic climate, I do not see us building much afresh, beyond the Olympics. I see us hanging on to the existing building stock. It has been projected, I heard, that if we demolish our buildings at the current rate, it will take us up to 1,000 years to clear the face of the country and to build afresh. So our existing building stock will be there for a long time. Getting the right knowledge, skills and materials is part of the challenge – to use the money that will still be spent on repairing and maintaining, to move it towards getting more effective results akin to conservation. That is where my optimism lies. ROBERT BUD I would be very happy for people in the audience to speak, but would you identify yourselves for the tape? MIKE CORFIELD The way contracting in the archaeological world in England has gone over the past 20-odd years is perhaps an interesting parallel. When Planning Policy Guidance 16 came in, there were a relatively limited number of relatively small archaeological teams in the private sector, which were offering themselves as contractors to developers who had to have archaeological work carried out. After PPG16, there was a growth of those private archaeological organisations, which dealt directly with contractors and carried out assessment and mitigation studies on archaeological sites. Since then, there has been a general coalescence into perhaps three or four major units – very big units – such as Wessex Archaeology, Archaeology of the Museum of Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 202
London and the York Archaeological Trust. Those three all employ their own archaeological scientists, who back them up. Archaeology of the Museum of London has access to the conservators of the museum, as well as employing its own conservators. Wessex Archaeology has recently taken on one of my former Wiltshire staff as its conservator. So, there is this sort of growth going on in that area which perhaps could parallel the creation of larger conservation teams to support the industry and provide the specialist advice in building conservation as well. From my small experience of English Heritage and building conservation, there are significant problems that must still be addressed – the movement of natural moisture within the walls of a building, and what happens when it comes up against an immovable and impermeable surface, largely put there to prevent a very large artwork falling off the wall. How you can cope with that sort of thing is a great challenge, tied in so much with how the building behaves. Unless we can understand that, we will not get the solution to the problem. We started to address it through the EPSRC research programme, which very much looked at moisture movement in structures. DR PETER I am delighted to hear this pushing forward of the separate training CANNON-BROOKES for people involved in historic building materials and techniques and modern materials, because there is a very real difference – for two reasons. First, I had lunch once with Nicholas Ridley,80 when he was Secretary of State for the Environment. One of the things of which I tried to persuade him was the importance of rehabilitation and adaptation of agricultural buildings within the countryside as part of the conservation of the visual texture of the countryside. That, in fact, did get through and the PPG did change, which was a huge satisfaction. My second was not so successful. I worked very closely indeed with Sir Alex Gordon.81 When he was President of RIBA, I tried to persuade him that the architectural profession ought to look seriously at the training structure of the medical profession – that you had basic medical training and then you went into a speciality and became a Member of one of the Colleges. Architects, after basic training, ought to decide whether they were going into historic building materials techniques or into contemporary, because the two, frankly, do not mix. JOYCE HILL STONER My students talked about this in the 1970s. That the important BEVA 37182 research for painting conservation by Gustav Berger83 was carried out completely by a private conservator supported by the
80 Nicholas Ridley (Lord Ridley of Liddesdale, 1929–1993), Secretary of State for the Environment, 1986-9. 81 Sir Alexander Gordon (1917-99), architect, 82 ‘A heat seal adhesive developed by Gustav A. Berger of New York which is widely used for the lining of oil paintings, heat seal facings and the making of laminates with fibreglass etc’: http://www.conservation-by- design.co.uk/sundries/sundries19.html 83 Gustav A. Berger, painting conservator. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 203
Samuel H. Kress Foundation.84 Marion Mecklenburg85 (as noted) was private when he began his research on stress-strain on canvas paintings, but later worked for the Smithsonian. Bernie Rabin,86 who came up with another substitute for wax-resin lining, the PVA hot-melt system (polyvinyl acetate AYAA and AYAC), in collaboration with Dr Robert L. Feller of the Mellon Institute, was entirely self-funded as a private conservator. Kress and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have been our conservation research godparents – they have funded much of the important research for our field – Robert Feller was part of the Mellon Foundation. Now René de la Rie87 is working on varnishes, but he is part of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Much of the research is now coming out of institutions such as the Smithsonian and the Getty Conservation Institute now, however. The NEA funded the start-up of a number of regional conservation centres throughout the USA, for smaller museums and libraries that could not afford their own complete conservation departments. We always suggest to our new graduates that they really should work first in a consortium with learned supervisors in a government institution, museum, excellent private or regional facility, etc. for 7 to 10 years. Then it would be wonderful if they branched into new territories and became private conservators. We keep a map on a bulletin board of all the states in the USA where our graduates have gone. There are still entire states where there are no programme-trained or American Institute for Conservation (AIC)-member conservators at all. ROBERT BUD May, did you have an immediate point? MAY CASSAR Yes. I find it extremely fascinating that there are people in private practice who, of their own initiative, are undertaking research and seeking funding to do that research. I wonder whether you could reflect a little more as to why it is happening. It is very unusual here. What incentivises people to do that? What can we learn? JOYCE HILL STONER This goes back to the question of whether it is up to intuitive, special individuals to carry out research. Richard C. Wolbers88 (Professor at the University of Delaware, known for innovations in fluorescent staining of microscopical paint cross-sections and devising new gels, enzymes, and resin soaps for the cleaning of paintings; conducts international workshops) is our onsite inventor. He calls such people ‘tinkerers’ – people who want to solve problems. Perhaps so many are from the private sector because they feel they are not taken seriously at meetings because they aren’t from a museum or large institution. Gustav Berger was an example of this. He lined his first painting with BEVA 371 in 1969; the adhesive was presented at
84 http://www.kressfoundation.org/ 85 Marion F. Mecklenburg, Museum Conservation Institute, Smithsonian Institution. 86 Bernard Rabin (1916-2003), conservator. 87 Dr René de la Rie, Chief Scientist, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. 88 Richard C. Wolbers, Associate Professor, Co-ordinator of Science and Adjunct Paintings Conservator, University of Delaware. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 204
Lisbon IIC in 1972, and Gerry Hedley89 (Courtauld Institute, teacher and researcher, killed young in a mountain-climbing accident) carried out lining questionnaires and by 1986 or so Hedley noted that BEVA was the most used lining adhesive for paintings worldwide. Berger always worked privately with some support from the Kress foundation. The great German restorer William Suhr,90 with whom Berger worked for a time, told him that we had no good adhesive for paintings conservation, and Berger said ‘I’m going to find it.’ It was private initiative, and perhaps it would not have happened if he had been in a public institution on a better salary with benefits. SUZANNE KEENE I speak as a private client of work on historic building and historic objects, probably with a little bit less cash than English Heritage to commission such work. I share John Fidler’s more sceptical view. There is a huge gap between understanding, ethics, research and scientific knowledge at the top, and people commissioning work on the vast majority of heritage objects in a practical way and carrying out the work. It is obvious that if you earn your living through conservation or building, you have not got the time or money to go to conferences, read literature or follow the research. There is not trickle-down mechanism. Particularly now, we understand so much more about how historic building materials work and so on. You get builders coming along using cement mortar and so on. It is extremely sad that the knowledge there is not getting down to the hands. LAURA DRYSDALE The issue you have raised is about how much it matters. It is about how much objects and building are worth, and how many there are. In this country, where there are these vast quantities of historic buildings and enormously multiplied vast numbers of historic objects, you can’t possible expect that they all survive. They cannot. It is a fact that there will be losses. That is just a fact. All you can do is make the kind of decisions that Joel Taylor has been making, and that you were in the forefront of making with your auditing work. You have to decide that some things are more important than others. Inevitably, some conservators will be better than others, and they will have more ambitions to work in close association with more prestigious objects, and will find themselves at the top of the tree. It is a kind of natural selection. ROBERT BUD I am conscious that we should focus on the history rather than the policy. SUZANNE KEENE You are quite right, but a lot of people are going to get fleeced of money by bad and wrong destructive work being done, if that is the attitude. INGVAL MAXWELL To pick up on that point, David, if you have an influence in the British Standard Review of 7913, don’t lose sight of the phrase in that standard from 1998 that says that modern standards should not be applied unthinkingly to historic buildings on the basis of what has
89 Gerry Hedley (1949-90), Reader in the Dept of Conservation & Technology at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. 90 William Suhr (1896-1984), painting conservator. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 205
previously worked. That was a major statement to come out from British standards that reflected on the past in intuition and practice. That challenges what has been devised. John has rightly identified many vested interests that come in for the creation of other standards. You can be cynical and say that if you are at the table long enough and bang it hard enough, you will get what you want. It may not be what is needed. That is why that phrase in 7913 is important and should not be lost. ROBERT BUD Coming back to the questions, to make sure that we address all the points in the last half hour. I am conscious that we have not talked about university research spending as a pattern. Would people like to reflect on what factors affected university research spending in the field over this period? JOHN FIDLER In the paper I refer to the fact that from a building perspective, none of the postgraduate building conservation courses in the UK have laboratories. Bernard Feilden 91 – bless him – gave some money to York University for a teaching laboratory. The University bought a rather poor microscope and put it in a cupboard. It was always a tragedy to me that a better understanding of materials and processes could have been engendered by a teaching laboratory of some sort in some of those courses. Most of the courses in building conservation are run by architectural historians because they are cheaper than architects. Therefore, their perspective tends not to be on the technologies and the science of the subject area. The majority of the students that Ingval referred to are no longer architects, even though most of the courses are in architecture school. They tend not to have an interest or focus in the technologies of the science. INGVAL MAXWELL Part of the issue of trying to get the balance back in is about targeting the professional bodies and the education committees to ensure that they are promoting what the industry and the professions need in a balanced way. Without that driver, it is doubtful if the university curriculum will change to any great degree. Reality has got to underpin these needs. JOYCE HILL STONER Regarding university research, we have just received terrific news that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has broadened its guidelines to include conservation research. Teaching conservation scientists are now falling over themselves to follow the NSF guidelines for research design. Richard Wolbers has been funded by the University of Delaware to do significant work in the cleaning and coating of building exteriors – he has been asked to consult after unfortunate adhesives have been used on buildings that have caused exterior surfaces to spall away. He is doing much consulting in building preservation. He also works with paint archaeology--taking samples and studying the history of interior paint choices over 200 years, or wallpaper from
91 Sir Bernard Feilden (1919-2008), founding principal of Feilden and Mawson Architects, Norwich; surveyor of the fabric of York Minster, 1965-77. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 206
historic interiors. How Thomas Jefferson92 originally painted the porch at Monticello93 – now buried under 20 subsequent paint layers JERRY PODANY I believe there are significant opportunities for future research in conservation by exploring mutual interests and collaboration with universities. I am a co-author of a National Science Foundation grant with the University of Madison-Wisconsin investigating computerised analysis of stress loads in sculpture. The ultimate goal is to create a programme that is an intuitive and useful tool to the conservation filed, as well a broader community. The resources and knowledge brought to the pursuit by the university is unparallelled in the heritage community and essential to the partnership. JOHN FIDLER It’s important to say for America that there is a Federal agency, the National Centre for Preservation Technology and Training, which is sponsoring research, not necessarily all from academia, there is some from the private sector too. Money from the National Park Service drives that programme. DAVID LEIGH One of the trends that we can see over the years, certainly in the UK, is that there has been a much greater sense of collaboration with non- heritage scholarly departments. You may get the Institute of Archaeology, or wherever, collaborating with the relevant scientific specialists around the country. There has been a lot more of that, and it has also been fostered by heritage programmes. We need to see more of that. One of the differences is that there is no charitable funding that you seem to have for research. Nobody will pay that sort of money. The Heritage Lottery Fund does not fund research. There is a gap there. PETER The emphasis of this discussion seems to be on the building per se, CANNON-BROOKES and not on what the building does for the objects inside. I have the impression that the Bartlett has a research department. You are slightly short-changing yourselves on this point. MAY CASSAR I wanted to respond to David. There are charitable foundations that fund research in the UK, including the Leverhulme Trust. The competition is fierce and the quality must be high. The success rate is limited, but we are in a competitive environment, and we must improve the quality of what we want to research and ensure that is targeted well on the needs of end users. We are in the field of applied research and the questions need to come from the end-user community. DAVID LEIGH For the documentation, does anyone know about the origins of the AHRC Science and Heritage initiative over the past years? MAY CASSAR I think everybody probably knows the origin. It was a recommendation of the House of Lords Science and Heritage inquiry in 2005-06. There were three recommendations, one of which was that the research councils should come together to create a time-
92 Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), American President, 1801–9. 93 Monticello was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, located near Charlottesville, Virginia. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 207
limited strategic programme to put funding into research in science and heritage. That covers from the arts and humanities, and AHRC leads that together with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. They put in an equal amount of money in order to fund the programme for a period of five years. I was responsible for writing the intellectual framework for the programme, and then the research councils handled the process of applications and independent peer review and selection of the projects. Thirty-eight projects have been funded, and I am happy to say that all the money has been committed – we’ve spent it. Even in the current economic climate there is no risk of any loss of that money. The programme will end in 2012-13. Seven large interdisciplinary projects, each roughly of a value of £800,000, have been funded. There are eight post-doctoral fellows, 10 PhD studentships and 13 research networks. That is the total amount of funding. ROBERT BUD It is good to have that on the record. JOHN FIDLER Those last few words from May were quite important for the future of the research networks. In my paper, I allude to that development of networks, which is a relatively new phenomenon in modern fields. That is apart from mural painting conservation where since the 1950s, and even earlier, there has been a synergy of interest for different disciplines, including science, around that subject. I have seen a lot of developments in the UK over the past 10 years. I referred previously to SWAPNET94 for atmospheric pollution and decay in building materials. In the British Isles there is the lime forum – those groups bring together end users, historians, archaeologists, material manufacturers and the science community from academia. Going back to May’s previous question about the future and the issue of privatisation – that shared interest around a single subject may be where the future lies. DAVID LEIGH One could also add the textile conservation centre and the five-year million-pound research grant with which it did a lot of good things. One hopes that they will try again now that they are in Glasgow. INGVAL MAXWELL A point was made earlier about linking the health of the building and the object. That can be broadened out to the health of the occupants as well. If a wind, watertight and reasonably warm building is used, that is the best use on which the rest can happen. That also creates challenges, particularly if we are to hang on to the existing stock for some centuries into the future. We are into – the noise of the air conditioning behind me is indicative of this – how to retrofit services in a sensitive way into quality and sensitive interiors where there may not necessarily be the void or the space to do it. There are real challenges for the professions to look at things from all perspectives in terms of what is needed for the objects, the occupants and the building. The synergy of those three aspects should produce reasonable results that are acceptable to all. I don’t think we are quite
94 Stone Weathering and Atmospheric Pollution Network. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 208
there yet. A lot of liberties are being taken with buildings to retrofit them without the sensitivity. There are challenges ahead. ROBERT BUD Raising the question of challenges, we heard earlier about cathedrals, but we did not hear about factories. To what extent is there a shift in the kinds of buildings that we want to preserve, or a shift in the kinds of objects – do we worry about preserving PVC or polyethylene? To what extent do new challenges frame an agenda for the profession? JOHN FIDLER Fashion takes an important role. I am confronted in one of my current jobs by the maintenance and repair of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. I have discovered that the preservation of large, ocean-going liners and battleships is probably the largest ‘black hole’ in museum conservation problems. Most people would say that to resolve the ship conservation problems you need to open a hole and pour in lots and lots of money. Industrial archaeology seems to be the poor child of everything that we have been talking about in terms of the balance of resources, and it is daunting that most politicians have put their head in the sand in relation to that. Unfortunately, the trends and fashions are variable as the pendulum swings around picking up on various things – we are now into the preservation of cinematic photography, video, electronic media and art media. A whole community is pushing that, and some of the older things that we have been trying to keep are now the waifs and strays as less money is available. INGVAL MAXWELL Fashions and trends – one of the intriguing pictures that I managed to pick up from a trade magazine was a picture of dead windows. It would have filled the volume of this room with discarded timber windows. At the time they were saying, ‘You need to fit the best so fit double glazing, plastic and so on.’ Now, in the same series of trade magazines you have, ‘Now is the time to fit triple glazing.’ That is after 15 years. What cycle of fashion is driving the discarding of building elements? There is another point for the future that will come back and bite us hard in a financial sense. I recently saw a building in the north of Scotland that was faced with black Indian granite 25 mm thick. Unfortunately, a lorry had backed into it and broken some panels. The Indian granite was to be taken to Portugal to be worked, and then transported to be built in Inverness under the economies of scale argument. Does the same economy of scale argument apply for the replacement of three pieces that needed to get the design in place? We have created a whole range of challenges based on fashion and trend. DAVID LEIGH You referred to industrial and plastic materials and so on. There is also the digital heritage, which is growing at a fantastic rate. I don’t know whether that is embraced in your Programme, but it is of growing concern. JERRY PODANY To follow on from David, within the collections area (although this is probably true of buildings as well) these unique materials are often found in contemporary works of art and are represented by an ever- Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 209
expanding range of methods and applications. These are the places where conservation research is, I believe, weakest and of greatest need. This is where we need to reach out to specific research disciplines. I have a comment on outreach. While I generally disagree with comparing heritage conservation with the medical field – it seems terribly unfair to doctors - I am going to do it anyway. I am going to make a plea for the ‘generalist’. Without the generalists in medicine today, we would likely be overmedicated and probably receive a good many treatments that we didn’t need. As the field of conservation becomes increasingly subdivided into specific areas of study and expertise, particularly in research, it is missing the generalist who can serve as the conduit to all specialists outside of our field. How we resolve that difficulty is critical for our future and our sustainability. LAURA DRYSDALE That is interesting. I would like to pick up on the medical model, which I am fond of. The challenge for conservation in the future, from my perspective, will be about how people who are not conservators actually get this close to objects [puts hands two inches from face] and how conservators can facilitate that and make it possible for the intimacy that is the relationship between the conservator and objects to be shared with people who have been excluded from that. I do not mean somebody handling it with gloves quite close to somebody else – I mean somebody really touching it and having that experience, which is what conservators value. KATE FRAME One of our main challenges is protecting the Palaces’ delicate decorative features from the ever increasing numbers of visitors both during the daytime and at after hours events that include activities ranging from educative and enjoyment to commercial. Our research on mitigating measures to protect the collections from such activities has focussed on physical barrier systems and environmental management are now moving towards the inclusion of qualitative assessment of visitor needs, patterns and motivations including their actual right to access to collections. An issue presently confronting us is the extension of our sixteenth-century tapestries display which was put in place over a century ago. Their display area is actively used day and night exposing the rare collection to high risks including elevated dust levels and long exposure to light. Our conservation solutions need to include measures that mitigate the negative risks of visitors to the collection while at the same time enhancing the public’s access to and enjoyment of these significant historic treasures. Only with this can we transform our conservation research on the protection of the historic textiles into practice. PETER I applaud Laura’s comment. As a curator, there is enormous CANNON-BROOKES importance to handling the object without gloves. I arranged for a bronze to be taken off its marble plinth in the Hermitage and to be examined. That was during the old regime in the early 1980s. I went to the stores with the head of sculpture, and he handed me the bronze. I handed it straight back to him again. He looked at me in surprise. I said, ‘It doesn’t weigh right. This is not a sixteenth century Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 210
bronze; it is a nineteenth century bronze.’ You cannot get that understanding of objects without handling them. You have to know whether they feel right. Any ceramics expert will tell you that. We have an extraordinary idea of separating scholars in museums from their collections. ‘Oh, the registrars look after those.’ It is about hands-on, direct contact with object, and that is where the curator and the conservator, in conference with an object, will come to a real understanding of what to do and what it needs. SUZANNE KEENE I would like to welcome what Kate [Frame] said. To me, the biggest challenge for the preservation of object collections – 200 million in the public domain – is to demonstrate that they are a useful resource. Kate, if you haven’t got a copy of my research report, I would like to offer you a completely free copy. There is one more for somebody else. ROBERT BUD As we come towards the end, it is good to address the last point about funding not only the conservation but the experience of the conservation. Who can fund more history of conservations science? JOHN FIDLER I am interested in that because one of the most fundamental opportunities for my field and the gaining of extra knowledge was lost in the commissioning of the History of the King’s Works.95 That is a magnificent set of volumes delivered by the late H. Colvin96 over nearly 20 years. This goes to historiography: the changes in the way that history is undertaken and the research that goes with it. The History of the King’s Works is a set of volumes based solely around patronage and the socioeconomics of the period. All the information about materials and craft processes hidden in the pipe rolls is still there untapped. No one will ever revisit that in the kind of comprehensive way – the opportunity was lost to the conservation community. I can see a pattern in the way that archaeometry or technical art history – I am reading the record, never mind getting into scientific analysis of stuff – has ebbed and flowed through the preservation of monuments of a period of time. We can go back to the 1900s and 1920, and enormous bodies of work were being produced, understanding the processes of building in the Middle Ages or the Roman period, and so on, and publishing that. In the 1950s, John Harvey97 at UCL, and others, were mediaeval scholars looking at records. Salzman’s98 Building in England Down to 1540 was published in the 1950s by Cambridge University.99 Those are seminal moments when the windows were opened on the technologies of the past and how things were made. I do not see much of that happening now. There is still much we don’t know about how building materials were made and where they came from.
95 Howard Colvin, The History of the King’s Works (London: HMSO, 1963 to 1982). 96 Sir Howard Colvin (1919–2007), architectural historian. 97 John Harvey (1911-96), architectural historian. Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, 1950-9 on the preservation of historic buildings, scholar on Gothic buildings and those who produced them. 98 Louis Francis Salzman (1878-1971), economic historian. 99 Louis Francis Salzman (1952), A Documentary History of Building in England Down to 1540. Seminar IV: How Has The Way We Work Been Transformed? 211
That is a great opportunity for historians. We need to articulate those opportunities. ROBERT BUD TICCIH,100 of course, has been very involved in this. INGVAL MAXWELL In terms of memory loss, one area that concerns me greatly is the loss of heritage collectively – by that I mean buildings and contents – to the effects of fire. The big question that is difficult to answer with anyone in charge of a collection is, ‘What do you want left after your fire?’ It is not as if fire does not happen. I have had to resort to keeping press clippings for a period of 12 years north of the border to prove to our political masters that we were losing one important historic building per month due to fire. That grossly underestimated the extent. Working with fire and rescue authorities, I was subsequently able to show that 500 listed buildings suffered some degree of fire loss per annum over the three-year period when I was an official. There is an issue about the risk from disasters, and I would say that the loss to fire – if you look at a pile of ashes and think what it once was, that is a real loss that takes us into the challenging area of retrofit to try to protect the structures and the contents. ROBERT BUD We are overtime, so this is an opportunity to ask whether others have points they would like to raise. JONATHAN I wanted to add a thirteenth leg to the settee and say that I am not ASHLEY-SMITH aware of any teaching of conservation students through the history of conservation. There could be a huge amount of benefit in not reinventing the wheel. JOYCE HILL STONER Oh, I should have of course mentioned the history of conservation. I lecture on it for each new class of students and many of them carry out history interviews for our Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation oral history file – we now have over 250 interviews. ROBERT BUD That note of celebration has rescued us from fire, which would not have been a nice point on which to end. I thank everybody for all their hard work.
100 The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage. Annex I: F.A.I.C Oral History Interviews
Annexes 213
A.E.A. Werner (1911-2006)
W.T. Chase and Joyce Hill Stoner
Recorded May 30th 1976
Reproduced by kind permission of The Oral History Project for the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, housed at the Winterthur Museum Libraries, Winterthur, Delaware, USA.
JHS How did you first become involved with conservation? AW I became.... involved with conservation when I answered an advertisement in Nature… JHS Oh! AW ..wanting a research chemist at the National Gallery. And that was in 1947. I went over for an interview in London, and much to my surprise got the job. WTC What were you doing before that? AW Before that I was a reader in organic chemistry at Trinity College, Dublin. JHS Did you have an interest in art? AW Yes. I always had an interest in art. I'd always been visiting museums when I was trotting around Europe and so forth. JHS Did you paint or draw? AW No. I didn't paint or draw. No. JHS Did you fix things when you were little? AW No, I'm no good with my hands at all. I had none of those aspirations at all. JHS How did you first get into chemistry? AW Oh, that was very simple because my father was a professor of chemistry at Dublin University. What I did was I took chemistry at the university. Did my primary degree in Dublin, and then went out to Germany to do my doctorate at Freiburg in Breisgau. Then came back... WTC Was that before the war? AW That was before the war. Yes. I was in Trinity from 1929 through 1933, and then I went to Germany 1935, came back 1937 to Trinity. JHS Do you speak German? AW I do, yes. And then... and then I was on the staff then for ten years teaching chemistry. JHS Were you born in Ireland? Annexes 214
AW Born in Ireland. Born in Dublin in nineteen hundred and eleven. Long time ago. JHS Was any of your family involved with art or chemistry? AW My grandfather was a painter. JHS Ah! There we go. AW From Alsace. He came to Dublin in – approximately – eighteen hundred and fifty, and then met a French woman there and married her and settled down in Dublin. So there we have how the Werner family came from Alsace to Dublin. JHS What kind of paintings did he do? AW Oh, well he painted portraits. He came to England to do portrait paintings in East Anglia and was invited over by some of the gentry – the families in Ireland – to do portrait painting. That was important there. I never found out as to actually what was the impetus that led him to leave France and go to England. And that's what happened. JHS What was his name? AW His name was Louis. Louis Werner. JHS Do you still have any of the portraits? AW Do I? No, I haven't got any I'm afraid. We didn't have any. They went to all the various families, you see, for whom he did the paintings. JHS Oh. He didn't have any that didn't get sold. AW He didn't have any himself. No. We had a few at home. My uncle had them, but they disappeared. They were sold or something at some time, so I'm afraid I haven't got any at all. JHS So you first came to the National Gallery in 1947? AW No, I came in '48. JHS '48. AW '48 was when I actually came. It was late in '47 that the interview was. I came in '48, then. I had to give notice at the university. I came in the middle of '48. JHS And who was there then? AW Philip Hendy the Director, and the great one for us was Ruhemann. And it was the reason why the National Gallery was advertising was on account of the controversy for the methods of cleaning paintings which had been used by Ruhemann which led to the government appointing what was known as the Weaver Commission. Weaver, Paul Coremans and George Stout were on this commission and one of their recommendations was that there should be a research chemist appointed at the National Gallery to assist Ian Rawlins, who was there as scientific advisor. That was how it came about that they started to think of having a laboratory in the National Gallery besides just having Rawlins there as physicist. WTC What was Rawlins doing exactly? Annexes 215
AW Rawlins was mostly dealing with problems of control and environment, part- icularly during the war, and then mostly work on infrared photography and x- raying the paintings. JHS In a way is Garry Thomson now doing what Ian Rawlins ...? AW No. Well, see when I retired from the National Gallery and went to the British Museum, Garry Thomson came in to replace me. JHS Oh, so he replaced you and not Ian Rawlins. AW When Ian Rawlins retired, then Garry was appointed head of the department but he does work of an entirely different nature to the work done by Rawlins. JHS I see. Philip Hendy is not still alive is he? AW He's still alive, yes. JHS Oh, he is? How old is he and where is he? AW Hendy must be seventy-five. He had a very bad stroke recently. He lives in Oxford. JHS Was Ruhemann a difficult person to work with? AW No, no. The whole point was, you see, that when I got this letter from Philip Hendy saying that I had been successful and they were prepared to offer the job, he said I would like you to come over again to meet Ruhemann, because it is essential that you and Ruhemann should be compatible, because it was the first time they'd ever had a chemist in the National Gallery. So, I came back then and met Ruhemann and we had lunch together with Philip Hendy, and all was well. I took up the post then. That was why there was a delay before my actually taking up the post. JHS What was Philip Hendy's title? AW He was the Director. JHS Of..? AW Of the National Gallery. Sir Philip Hendy. JHS Had he always been very interested in conservation? AW Oh yes. It was due to his coming. After the war he was appointed the director of the National Gallery, and one of the things he was keen on especially was the cleaning of paintings. He actually engaged Ruhemann, who in that time – – I'm not very certain whether he had come from Germany before or after the war – – anyway, he engaged Ruhemann to clean these paintings. And some, of course, were like the famous Rubens, the Chapeau de Paille over which there was tremendous controversy. People were saying that Ruhemann was ruining the paintings and so on and so forth – overcleaning – and that was the reason why they had this big controversy in the Times, and the other newspapers. JHS Did you participate in that or was that before you? AW Oh, no. It was all before me. As the result of that controversy they had the Weaver report. One of the recommendations was to appoint a research chemist. The idea being that the research chemist would in a certain way check up on the Annexes 216
work of the restoration department. And give whatever assistance they could to the restoration department. Like, you know, seeing whether there was any pigment coming off with the swabs was one of the kind of things which... JHS Had you worked with materials like paint before...? AW Never, no… JHS Microscopy? AW No, only as far as chemistry was concerned, but never with pigments. The first thing... You know this is interesting. The first thing I did when I had applied for the job you see was to prepare myself for the interview. So I bought Gettens and Stout, and I read Gettens and Stout on the boat across to London 'cause I couldn't get a hold of Technical Abstracts, they weren't in the TCD library. But I bought a copy of Gettens and Stout and read it right through you see so I at least knew something about pigments and media. JHS What did you start having to do right away? AW Well, what did we do right away... let me see. It was a long time ago. The first thing, of course, was just merely testing the solutions which were being used for the cleaning. Then I got interested first of all in this question of preparing paint cross sections. Then when I'd been there about a year I realized one person couldn't handle all this business you see, so we then advertised for an assistant and that brought in Joyce Plesters. And Joyce Plesters is one of my most important contributions to conservation. Joyce came as a young girl who had just...she was half way through her degree. After she'd done her reading she'd failed her final you see. She came along. Joyce and I then started working on methods for painting cross-sections using various embedding media – trying out various waxes, and things like that, Aroclor and so forth – until eventually we devised the technique of using polyester resins for preparing these cross sections. That was the first thing I really did. Then by that time Joyce and I were so busy on ad hoc problems that we then decided to ask Ian Rawlins the next thing to do. We wouldn't be able to do any fundamental work; we wouldn't have time to do it. The next stage was to approach the Nuffield Foundation, and we got from them two scholarships to employ two people to work on a more fundamental basis. The first of those was John Mills. He's now in the National Gallery. The idea was that John was to use chromatography for identification of paint media. We started off, of course, on the basic question of trying to distinguish between a pure oil medium and an oil-resin medium using reverse phase partition chromatography. And the second student was a man called Ian Graham who had actually been a student of mine when I was in Trinity. Ian Graham; he did work on the question of the action of solvent mixtures on paint films. This question of using alcohol and acetone diluted with toluene and so forth. JHS Where is he now? AW Well, he has had a curious life. He's now a freelance photographer... He was a real old English nineteenth-century gentleman. He went touring around, and he did an awful lot of work out in Guatemala going to see all these monuments and taking rubbings off them. And he was a very good photographer and he went out and did a lot of photography. What he is doing now at the moment I just don't know. He was a real freelance person. Annexes 217
WTC I think he may be still doing the same thing. I think he is one of the people who is instrumental in trying to get antiquities laws passed down in that area. AW I believe he had a terrible time down there. One time he was out there in the wild when his guide was shot dead. WTC Same guy. AW Same person, yes. He was with us about two years on the Nuffield Scholarship. JHS What was the name of the scholarship? AW The Nuffield Foundation Scholarships. JHS Did you find that those of you working on the cross-sections simply began to separate away from the people treating the paintings, or were you all still bumping into each other every day? AW No, there was a very close relationship, you see, between the conservation department and the lab when they were cleaning paintings they were constantly taking off samples for examination. And another interesting part of course, was that the first year I was at the N.G., 1949, Dick Buck came over. JHS Yes. As we were coming in on the bus, Mr. Buck said to be sure and ask because he remembered that one of his first days over there was one of your first days. AW Yes, I was there about a year. And then Dick Buck was seconded from the Fogg to come out to demonstrate his method for the transfer of paintings. And the one he worked on, of course, was the famous Bellini Madonna of the Meadows in which he had to take off not only all the wooden support but also all the ground. It was interesting because it was the first time I had ever seen a transfer. He held the paint layer up. You could look through it. All the Bellini ground just simply flaked off. Just take your little finger tip and you could flick it all off. Complete separation and cleavage between the paint layer and the ground. And then of course, almost at the same time, in fact just before Dick came Brommelle came into the conservation department. JHS Oh, he was there too. AW After me. He came after me. When I went there first, there was Ruhemann, as chief restorer, and Arthur Lucas was there also. And then... Those were the only two on permanent staff. They also used to employ two other restorers, who were what we would call "commercial restorers." One was called Isip and I’ve forgotten what the other was. And they used to come in. Ian Rawlins and I had to control what they were using in the way of solvents and so forth. They came in as contract restorers. And then after I had been there six months, or perhaps nine months, Brommelle was appointed as restorer in the restoration department. JHS Was he already married to Joyce Plesters then? AW Oh, no, no, Wait. WTC It'll come. It'll come. AW He wasn't. He was married to somebody else. I was very stupid because I didn't realize that after I'd been there about a year or so, Norman was finding every possible excuse he could to come down to the chemistry lab. I didn't tumble to it Annexes 218
for quite a long time. He and his wife separated. And then he and Joyce got married eventually. JHS And why had Dick Buck been asked to come? AW Oh, Dick Buck had been asked to come because he had a reputation for his method of transfer of panels, you see. JHS But who had decided to ask him? AW Oh, Philip Hendy decided to ask him. JHS And at this point was Richard Buck the first American conservator you ran into? AW Yes...the first one who was actually working. Next came Sheldon and Caroline Keck – they came over to the Gallery, and then John Gettens came along. JHS Did you have ‘limerick breaks’ or other light moments at the National Gallery similar to the early days at the Fogg? AW No, we didn't have much time for that sort of thing. Of course, Ian Rawlins was a very esoteric type of person. The conservation department was separate from the chemistry lab – which was actually very small. I only had one small room to work in. There wasn't ‘getting together.’ Occasionally, we'd meet up in the restoration lab and drink coffee and so forth, but not down in the lab. JHS IIC was beginning about now, wasn't it? AW Yes, around 1950. Rawlins and Plenderleith, and of course Paul Coremans were intensely involved with that. It grew primarily out of the idea to continue what had begun at the Fogg...and Technical Studies. The idea was to form an institute which would continue the publications. It was founded in England because it was easier to found it according to English law, and you didn't have to use ‘company’ or ‘limited’ after it. The original name was the International Institute for Conservation of Museum Objects. That lasted...well you can check that. It originated from an idea of George Stout and W.G. Constable...the change...that we were not only concerned with museum objects, but with buildings, and so forth. So it was changed to ‘Historic and Artistic Works.’ JHS What was your interaction with people doing conservation in other London museums at this point? AW There was the British Museum laboratory, of course, but they were not concerned with paintings. The V&A...I don't think they had a picture restorer then...they were organized along traditional lines, they didn't have any sort of scientific expertise. The British Museum laboratory had Plenderleith. Moss was his second-in-command, and Harold Barker, Mavis Bimson, and Robert Organ were there. I had constant contact with that lab. And we had at the National Gallery the honorary scientific advisory council... Plenderleith was chairman of that. I got to know Harold Plenderleith very well. So that was a kind of liaison between the National Gallery and the British Museum. Through the National Gallery Council – it was used by Rawlins to add more weight to the scientific department for the trustees. It was a very distinguished body – made up of scientists. One of the most important – from my point of view – was Sir Wallace Akers – one of the past presidents of IIC. Annexes 219
JHS Did you have contact with Rome and Brussels? AW The lab at Brussels was situated at the top of the museum at that time – The Musée Cinquantenaire. I can’t recollect when I first met Paul Coremans, but I must have gone over to Brussels to visit. And Paul Coremans would have already come to England. Another person who came across was deWild...he had paintings to restore for English clients. We never met Doerner...we had no contact with the Doerner Institute. We were in contact with Brussels, and with Mme. Hours at the Louvre. We were in contact with the Istituto Centrale del Restauro, because of course we had a tremendous controversy with Dr. Brandi, the director. He published an article in the Burlington about how delicate glazes were. He had a chemist there called Liberti who he said had analyzed a particular glaze. I tried to repeat the experiment and couldn't get anywhere – vermilion and resins. At that time, our assistant keeper Neil McLaren, who administered the dept. of conservation, and I wrote an article for the Burlington Magazine in opposition to what Brandi had put forth about the delicate glazes. JHS Any contact with Scandinavian labs? AW No, none at all. JHS What was the situation regarding training? AW No training at all at that time...the only training for picture restorers was entirely on the apprenticeship scheme… with the practicing Bond Street restorers. Herbert Lank was brought here and trained by Ruhemann. We had no contact with the Bond Street restorers, except when someone like Herbert Lank was brought in to the National Gallery. Arthur Lucas... and then Brommelle – Brommelle was trained by Ruhemann – he had been a physicist from industry. And there were people doing contract work on paintings. JHS What was Ruhemann like? AW He was a very nice person. I got on with him very well indeed. He had a mixture called ‘CRP’ – cleaning, reviving and preserving. He came to me one day and said that he had trouble getting the mixture to work up together. It consisted of beeswax, carnauba wax and turpentine. I decided we could replace the beeswax with microcrystalline wax, and that we could replace the carnauba with a polyethylene wax which had just become available, and the turpentine was replaced with white spirit. JHS What was his lining adhesive? What was his inpainting medium? AW He was lining with wax resin, and at that time inpainting with tempera color. And glazing in oil. JHS How long were you at the National Gallery? AW Until 1955. In 1955, Moss transferred away from the British Museum lab to the Natural History Museum. Plenderleith left in 1959 to go to the Rome Center, and I was his assistant until 1959. WTC You were there concurrently with Plenderleith for 4 or 5 years? AW That's right. At that time, the lab was at One Montague Place where it had been transferred after the war. Alexander Scott, a past president of the Chemical Annexes 220
Society, had an interest in art and antiquities. He was asked to investigate the problem. He found one room in the Dept. of Prints and Drawings as a laboratory, with a Bunsen burner outside on the window sill. In 1922 two floors at 39 Russell Square were turned over to lab space. Scott did chemical examination and worked on methods for treatment. The trustees were to provide the space, but the DSIR (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research) was to pay staff and equipment costs. Plenderleith came about 1923. Scott was there 2-3 days a week examining things. Plenderleith was teaching himself, learning some things from Scott. He had to work on all materials. He did work on paintings and wax-resin lining. He had to solve his own problems. At that time there was no chemist at the National Gallery. JHS When did you first think about bringing the computer into the British Museum? AW That was, of course, much later on. We had always been talking about Harold Barker and having a computer in the Library. It never came about. Harold Barker and I were thinking we would never get a computer if this goes on. So we tried to get a computer for the lab. I put in an application to the Trustees for a grant to buy a computer. Then we had to go through the process of getting a computer – you have to decide what you are getting the computer for – we wanted to use it for radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescent dating, and to do all the analytical calculations. Then the government had to decide: would it be more economical for us to have a computer terminal or to have our own computer? We were also working on all sorts of x-ray diffraction – searching the ASTM index. Considering the amount of tine taken up by x-ray diffraction, it was decided it would be uneconomical to have a terminal, and they agreed we ought to have a computer. Then it had to be decided what was the best computer we could buy. We were obligated to put out tender. We had a terrific competition between IBM and Hewlett Packard. IBM had bad hardware but very good software, but Hewlett Packard was very good on the hardware but without so many programs for the software. Anyway we decided that the one we did want was the Hewlett Packard. Then it was all paid for by another government department – it cost about 60,000 pounds. We also wanted to be the first museum laboratory that had a computer, of a decent size. What we really wanted was the information retrieval; this would mean that our computer in the lab would be used for the other departments, with other problems – the registration of the Elgin marbles, for instance. JHS How did the staff expand to the way it is now? AW When I first went to work there as Keeper, there was Robert Organ, Harold Barker and Mavis Bimson on the scientific side, and then Baynes-Cope came in. We had about four people down in the workshop doing conservation work and also Leonard Bell who had come and Alexander Scott's first assistant. WTC What about the radiocarbon lab? AW Harold Barker started the radiocarbon lab. It started off as a combined project between the BM lab and the atomic research association at Harwell. At that time Harwell was interested in low level counting. Harold went down to Harwell to get some expertise, and produced a system for counting. It wasn't functioning properly...all this business of proper connectors – vacuum type and so forth. Also Harwell started to lose interest in low level counting. I asked one day ‘haven't you got a blue print of this electronics system?’ We hadn't got one, and never had had Annexes 221
one. We finally had to give it up – a fundamental flaw in the electronics somewhere. It was most unsatisfactory. Harold had an awful time trying to run that radiocarbon equipment. Eventually it started working – Harold had to just do the thing himself... the blueprints and what the circuits should be. By that time it was transferred to the new lab. 1959 – I took over. 1960 – we decided to build a new lab because we hadn't enough space in the old lab. We've taken over the two houses now – for the first time we had a proper lab built – by 1961 a functioning design. We had to preserve the facade of the Georgian Houses – this was at 39 Russell Square. So we had to move the whole radiocarbon equipment, and we got another person in to help. Eventually of course we abandoned the proportional counting technique for the scintillation technique—that was about 1968. JHS Who designed the lab? AW This lab was really designed largely by Robert Organ. The lab couldn't be ideal because we had certain limitations – we had to preserve the Georgian facade – behind the facade we had to knock down everything and build the lab. Also there were limitations on the height of the lab out in the back. Then of course – as it always happens—they suddenly found that they hadn't enough money for the lab – they had allocated 50,000 pounds. It had started before Plenderleith retired. Nowhere could I find anything written to explain why this figure had been reached. I asked the Minister of Works architect – how did you arrive at this figure? ‘Oh’, he said, ‘It was a guess.’ You see? So the guess was off by about 50%. Then we had to put in another supplemental account – to get money to finish the lab. I was away in Pakistan when the lab was actually opened in 1961. JHS What were you doing in Pakistan? AW That was the first of my UNESCO tours. I was asked by the UNESCO commission to go out to Pakistan to advise them on the setting up of their laboratory. It had been in existence but was closed down, for the Department of Antiquities. This came as a request from the local Pakistan-UNESCO commission to UNESCO headquarters to send out someone. I was 6 weeks in Pakistan. That was my first tour for UNESCO. I also went for 6 weeks to Syria for UNESCO – the same kind of purpose. In 1970, I went for 2.5 months to Australia – same purpose. Then I went for two weeks to Egypt – these were my four UNESCO missions. JHS I understand you had a pig farm in England? AW Yes, I went to live in the country. And if you live in the country, of course you keep pigs. JHS Do you have any children who are interested in science or art? AW I have two daughters – one is a housewife, primarily in England. The other one's a doctor – in Tasmania. She married a doctor – they both went to Dublin University. My younger daughter got married to a student in her year. When they got qualified, they got married—they spent the first few years in England, and then they decided to go off to Tasmania. JHS Do you have any hobbies? Annexes 222
AW I play chess, and at one time I was very keen on mountaineering—not any longer. I guess the only other hobby is traveling round to conferences. JHS How many languages do you speak? AW French and German. A few words of Polynesian. I live in Honolulu – I have an apartment there. The interesting thing – going back to the very beginning – there was no conscious effort in England to found conservation – it’s all happened by just accident...the things in the subway. We applied to the Foundation...and the controversy over paintings which caused the foundation of the National Gallery Lab. There was in existence of course the Courtauld Institute...1934...D.V. Thompson, who was at that time in charge of the technical department...in the Courtauld. He was always a very odd person. He left this field and disappeared completely into something else...making porcelain or something. W.G. Constable was director at the Courtauld. So the crucible was there. It revived when Ruhemann came to the Courtauld...he trained students as well as working at the National Gallery. And Stephen Rees-Jones came along...we had a lot of contact with each other. They were founded by accident – no one said, ‘well we've got to have conservation.’ Some disaster had to happen before conservation came in. Going back to conservation history, the BM lab started off doing a lot of routine work in the pre-war period. Then it gradually became evident that if the BM lab was to do any kind of research, it would have to establish workshops in the BM departments. Gradually each department built up a workshop. The people who worked there at first were not trained of course, because there were no training programs. They could use only methods that were okayed by the lab – no new materials, until they had been tested by the lab. So the lab had this kind of umbrella jurisdiction. These workshops eventually expanded until there were about 50 conservation officers spread through the departments of the BM. In the previous director Sir John Woolfenden’s time, the Trustees’ committee for the lab thought it would be a good idea if all conservation were unified under the lab. But this was geographically impossible. But there was an advantage in having these people departmentalized, because they knew their department and storerooms and could advise their keepers as to what should be done. By this time there were trained conservators. I persuaded the director to dissuade the committee. Later we got a new director – Pope Hennessey from the V&A. The V&A divided their departments up according to materials – so it was easy to slot in beautifully. So Pope Hennessey came along and he looked around and wanted to put all the workshops together. He persuaded the trustees to form a committee to look into the unification of conservation. They decided they were going to unify conservation. The Keepers did not want to lose their conservators, and the staff of the BM lab was already up to 30. In the meantime the lab had taken over the [unintelligible] which was another 10 people – suddenly it was up to 40 people. Can you imagine a thing that size? When I left, they appointed Michael Tite to become Keeper of the lab. He had much better scientific qualifications than Harold Barker, but he didn't know the first thing about conservation. Then they decided to create a new department of conservation, and Harold was made Keeper. There were certain disadvantages to this; the way the lab had been, there were certain overlaps between conservation and scientific examination. But now it would be more difficult to work together. Poor Harold got awfully busy. Of course, when I left the lab was bursting at the seams. Now they have to bring in another keeper, another secretary for that Keeper, another executive officer for Annexes 223
the lab without any additional space at all. You know the lovely office I had? They have to strip that down – so they could move my secretary to become Harold's secretary, and put the new secretary next door. Poor Baynes-Cope had to depart altogether...which didn't please him at all...because the new Keeper, Tite, took his room. Then there was the awful problem of how to split up the lab. Harold wanted to have a PSO [Principal Scientific Officer] he was very anxious to have Mavis as his PSO Mavis didn't want to have anything to do with conservation; she wanted to keep on with research. Poor Harold had an awful lot of problems. That's the situation – myself I think it was very unfortunate. It will mean that Tite will be relieved of all the ad hoc conservation and he'll be able to do long term research. Harold will have all the research work on conservation – in a separate department That's what's happened as another development. They've got to have space. The idea was to separate the conservation people into teams – a team for doing stone, a team for doing wood, and so forth. The latest thing I've heard is that they're going to try to annex part of the old lab... in One Montague St. It was a Georgian house. The lab has become more and more scientific. As far as England is concerned, the whole history of conservation as I've said was more accident than design...unlike what happened in Brussels and Rome, where they had a conscious effort to do something. Coremans was probably influenced by the existence of the BM lab, and the lab at the National Gallery. Coremans had probably the first "central" laboratory. The Istituto del Restauro was also consciously formed as a central institute. JHS Thank you very much—I will send you a transcript for any corrections or additions.
Annexes 224
Harold Plenderleith (1898-1997) By Tina Leback (now Christine Leback Sitwell)
Recorded March 17th & 18th 1978 Reproduced by kind permission of The Oral History Project for the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, housed at the Winterthur Museum Libraries, Winterthur, Delaware, USA.
TL The best place to start is probably at your birth and that period between when you were born and the university. A little bit about your childhood, particularly, any influences toward conservation at that point. HP Right, well you just want me to start telling you about my origins as it were. Well, I was obviously born in Scotland in Coatbridge and my father was an art master in the school there. After a period of six or seven years, he was transferred to Dundee where he became art master of the Harris Academy – one of the leading schools here. There I more or less grew up. TL You were born in 18…. HP I was born in 1898 in September. The family moved to Dundee when I was age seven. I was in Dundee right up till the First World War. Went right through the school and eventually by some miracle, took the Dux Medal. TL What is the Dux medal? HP The Dux medal is the reward for highest marks in school examinations to the leading boy and leading girl in their final school year. That was a miracle, obviously! TL That’s a Scottish medal? HP Not entirely. It is a common award in British schools. Now I should say that I’ve been awfully lucky because my father was a clever draughtsman, a very good teacher and he was always very popular with the students and the staff largely because he was interested in so many things. He knew all the names of the plants in the Scottish countryside that grew. Every holiday he would take us around for walks in the country and show us the plants and tell us the names until we were fed up with it. Finally the easiest way was to learn and be done with it. So there we are. I was fortunate, you see in having this artistic background. He used to lecture in art history which was quite a novelty in the school at this time. My close friend, actually my wife’s mother became art master after that. Not in the Harris Academy but in another school. My sister also went in for art and taught it. So that’s the beginning. TL Did you draw and paint at this time? HP Well, only when I was made to at school! I liked it but I was a booky sort of person. I loved museums. Actually I use to go in the evenings and attend external lectures at the University in zoology and that sort of thing. I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen. I sat the entrance bursary competition for St. Annexes 225
Andrews. I won the bursary so I began to take a BSc degree. But, of course, almost immediately – this was in 1916 – in the autumn of ’16, I was drafted into the Officer’s Training Corp, OTC. It was a question of lectures in the morning, drilling in the afternoon and then swatting at night. TL Swatting at night? HP Yes, studying at night; working away the whole time. No student life in the normal sense. TL You were going for a degree in chemistry? HP I was going for a general Bachelor of Science degree (Chemistry, Natural Philosophy and mathematics). Of course, the war broke that up. I went off to the army. I was in France for almost a year. I came back wounded with a military cross, incidentally. Eventually after being in hospital and sent for convalescence, I managed to wangle out of that on the excuse that I worked to return to the University and continue my degree studies and this was allowed on the condition that I attended every day at the hospital for massage and that sort of thing. So back I went to college but not to St. Andrews because I couldn’t settle there. I elected to finish my degree at University College Dundee, UCD then a college of St. Andrews University but now (1979) a fine university in its own right. TL When you say you couldn’t settle there… HP Well, we had all suddenly turned into men from boys. We all had these war experiences. We couldn’t do anything except talk about the war. It was impossible to settle down there. However, I was very fortunate again because in Dundee I found in the Chemistry department a Chemistry professor, an awfully good chap and we became close friends. They had been doing research into gas in Dundee during the war years, poison gas. As it happened when in the army I had seen a brigade gas officer. So they asked me if I would clean up the residue of poisons left over from the war. That’s how it started. I cleared away the gases, etc. and got really interested in chemistry. I finished my BSc and then took a PhD. TL At the same university? HP Yes, in Dundee, then a college of St. Andrews University. It was while I was doing post-graduate research that the opportunity opened up for going to London. I should explain that much of the British Museum’s collection had been kept in the underground during the war. TL World War I? HP Yes, World War I. Objects had been protected from zeppelins but exposed to moisture and heat and so on. TL This is when they were in the tubes? HP In a disused Post Office tube, part of the London Underground transport system. TL Was just the British Museum Collection kept there or was the National Gallery… HP All sorts of things were kept there, but I was only to be concerned with the British Museum collections at that time. TL How did you know about this (the job). They contacted you at the University? Annexes 226
HP What happened was they advertised in Nature, a scientific magazine saying that a chemist was required to set up a laboratory to study methods for conserving or preserving as they called it, museum objects that had been damaged during war storage. A knowledge of mycology being an additional qualification, but I was determined to get this job and I didn’t know what mycology was. I looked it up in the dictionary actually. TL What is mycology? HP Mycology is the study of moulds and mildew. So I went to the botany department of college and said I would like to know all about mycology. TL Quickly? HP Quickly. Geordie West, who was in charge when asked how long have you got. I said, ‘A fortnight.’ Well, you can imagine what the professor replied! But he allowed me into the library and departmental museum and when I found myself eventually on short list for this job to my great delight I was strongly full of mycology! And I went to London – this is probably too long a story – but I went to London and eventually met a group of elderly gentlemen. TL They were from the British Museum? HP Uh no, an appointments committee representing the Royal Society, the British Museum and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In fact the laboratory was established under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. TL That’s a government branch? HP Yes, well it is no longer in existence but it was very important at this time and for some time after the war. They asked me all sorts of questions and they pushed my published papers aside and said ‘Oh yes, that’s all right.’ Didn’t ask me any questions about my work or publications. They said they knew all about that! Then they said, ‘Now we’ve asked you some questions Dr. Plenderleith, are there any questions you would like to ask us?’ So I said, ‘Yes, indeed, I would like to ask you some questions about mycology.’ They had never mentioned it during the interview you see. So they all looked at each other – not a single person knew anything about mycology. So I told them how important it was for the conservation of books, manuscripts and so on. How can you possibly deal with this emergency when conservation of these things is primarily a mycological matter? They were awfully nice about it, I must say. They thanked me and that was that. So I went away feeling well, I’ve gone and lost that job by my stupidity. So I went and bought some theatre tickets. I planned to stay in London for a week and enjoy myself! However, I received a telegram from my father telling me to come home at once. There was something for you. I came home and I found I got the job to my amazement. TL They were impressed by your mycology. HP Long afterwards I saw the chairman of the committee and said, I couldn’t think why they had appointed me because I had come to the conclusion during my interview that it was hopeless. He laughed and said, ‘Well you may remember we asked you how long you had studied mycology and you said a fortnight.’ I was Annexes 227
quite honest with them no doubt if must have sounded funny but at least it served as an indication that I was keen to take on the job. TL They took you. HP Yes, my tickets were no good for the theatre after all. TL This would have been after the war it would have been in the 1920’s? HP Yes, that’s right, it was 1924. I started my work in December 1924 at the British Museum. TL They didn’t have a laboratory? HP They hadn’t a lab at all. They hadn’t even a room in the museum. It was a derelict house set aside to receive the objects from the tube and they paid me £350 a year. TL A year? HP Yes, and in addition I had £100 for apparatus and chemicals and everything. I was handling the cream of the stuff at the British Museum without any knowledge of what it was at all. This of course was a crisis. We first started collecting material for study in the library. Rathgen, a German had established a laboratory in Berlin years before which had since become more or less defunct but he published a book on his preservation work which was later translated into English and available. I started on that. TL It was a book on conservation in general? HP Yes, as regards to the museum material the problem was to sort out this stuff into the kinds of damage. Obviously, there was mildew and mould damage to papers of all kinds, books, papers, papyri, leather, especially which is particularly susceptible to mould growths. And then the Egyptian collections were found to be full of soluble salts from the desert sands and these in damp atmosphere had grown and crystallized and burst the surfaces of stele, faience, clay, etc. TL Well, that was from the initial excavation? HP That’s right. The salts had never been extracted and exposure and humidity in the tube caused them to expand and disrupt the material infected. There was one unique collection of Coptic sculpture. They actually said, ‘Well, you know we got these things very cheaply. The vendors said they would only last about 20 years and they’ve lasted 50 years so why should we worry?’ That was I’m afraid a common attitude at that time. The British Museum had had no scientific advisors. I was the only trained scientist working at the British Museum at first. There were of course the world renowned classical scholars who were the cream of specialists but not in sculpture or necessarily technical matters. Awfully nice people but it took me some years to discover that because I was a chemist by training they very naturally suspected me of wanting to dip things in acid and watch them fizz. A scientist was a dangerous person to them – that’s the truth, just as they were in their way, frightfully impractical people to me. It took some time for us to get to know each other but in the end we became the closest of friends and I learned everything from them as it seems now in retrospect. TL You were the only one in the lab? Did you have an assistant? Annexes 228
HP No! Not an assistant, but there was a boy there who eventually became one. The man who recommended the establishment of a lab was a very great scientist, Dr. Alexander Scott and he became a very great friend, like a father to me. But it should be clear that he didn’t do any of the restoration himself. He had his little private lab at home where de did work on atomic weights and so on in his retirement. TL He had been at the museum before you came? HP No, he wasn’t a museum servant at all. I was the only one who was a museum man. He was the experienced scientist who had undertaken to help and to advise me. He was 45 years my senior. I began at age 26 so he would be 71 and I always referred to him as the Director of Research. This gave us some standing in the museum. TL How did they know about him? He must have been affiliated with someone. HP He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and Superintendent of the Royal Institution in London, a leading scientist of the time, but had retired in 1911. So he had the qualifications and prestige and he was interested in art too. He collected India proof and things that, not very much in vogue just now but at that time they were. He also was very interested in botany. He had been a science master at one time at Durham School so we had a great deal in common. He it was who set me on the rails! All our lives we were the closest friends and my wife and I owe more to Dr. and Mrs. Scott than we can ever express. He would come in twice a week in the mornings to see how things were getting on; it was a great interest for him and for my part I learned a tremendous lot from his wide experience and knowledge of the sciences. TL He served more as an advisor. He actually didn’t do any conservation work? HP No, he never did, not certainly on museum material. He did some work at home in testing modern materials, adhesives, etc. Fond of foreign travel he paid a visit to the Valley of the Kings often where Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered. I was never out there at all at this early period but I did a number of analyses on specimens taken from the Tutankhamun tomb and brought back for this purpose and this indeed was almost my first job in London once we got some sort of lab facilities set up. TL Were any other labs existing at this time in London? HP No. There were no other museum labs at all. The only other lab was the government lab but they weren’t really very interested or co-operative except that they did help me with advice when required, mainly on analytical matters. At the museum we just prepared for reception, received material from the tube and went ahead with essential cleaning and sterilization and unpacked. After some months I asked how permanent is this job? The reply from the authorities was oh, well in a year or two you’ll get all this finished. Well, what happens after that? Well, replied a facetious colleague, you just hang up your key and go home. But it didn’t quite happen that way. TL So they didn’t have any future plans? HP They hadn’t a clue you see. What happened at the end of the year was that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research said, well this is a kind of Annexes 229
amphoteric lab. We’ll just hand it over and do a ledger change and make it part of the museum establishment. They did this and only then it became obvious that the scientific laboratory was going to be a permanent institution. By this time I had established a kind of basic laboratory by buying second hand apparatus and making the money spin out as much as possible. I had been able to detect fakes by using scientific methods and equipment which sometimes the scholars had missed and that was a great help. I had been able to analyze specimens from the excavations. They had never had this facility before. Of course they loved that for their reports. Altogether they found it useful to have a dog’s body about to do the scientific work, and for that reason alone the lab was worth keeping. Everybody wanted to keep it. By that time, I had got to know them all pretty well, you know and they trusted me. I was able gradually to get assistants to train but this took a long time. TL Were these assistants from the University? HP Oh, dear no. They were lab boys. Two were originally boys recruited to scrub the floors. They were trained from that stage. Another was a gardener who knew a little about laboratories as he once worked for the Mond family. Then I got volunteer assistants and that was a help. It was many years before I had an established scientific assistant of University standard. TL When you talk about the chemical analysis do you mean wet chemistry or did you have other equipment? HP Wet chemistry analysis from the very beginning. I analyzed the stained glasses of Wells Cathedral and I remember that was a major job considering that the facilities that we had weren’t very good; neither were the analyses. This took an awful lot of time. TL Were any of these young boys in the lab eventually to go into conservation as a profession? HP Yes, one of them did awfully well. He was a lab boy for some time. Then he became very ill with TB. We lost him for a year then he came back again and by this time I had fitted up the photo-micrographic apparatus in a little room downstairs. I had a nice little dark room fitted out in a bathroom and I encouraged him to continue with his interests in photography. And you know he became tremendously good. He became the best photographer of silver I ever met. Silver is difficult, it’s shiny you know. He did a splendid job. From that he developed an interest in classifying and codifying things. He became one of the most useful people as he developed into a very good restorer as well. TL Do you remember his name? HP Yes, Leonard H. Bell. You won’t know him. He eventually retired on reaching the age of 60 and I have since learned sadly of his death after a short illness. Another boy taking evening classes qualified eventually with a degree and is now a Science Master in the teaching profession. About 1930 the group of assistants was reinforced by junior members of the British Museum staff wishing to have some scientific training and this was most useful as fresh problems were presented annually by the return of excavators from the near east with masses of material. We cleaned and documented and prepared for exhibition in the galleries. The main excavation was in Ur of the Chaldees by Sir Leonard Woolley. Annexes 230
TL He was a curator? HP No, he was an archaeologist, excavator and he used to bring masses of stuff home which had to be cleaned up and examined and reduced and restored and so on and exhibited. Then he would collect money for his excavations and go back again for his next season to Ur. So what with Howard Carter coming from Tutankhamun and Sir Leonard Woolley from Ur, I began to be actively interested in archaeology and we succeeded in getting the laboratory expanded that would handle a lot of stuff at one time. TL You were still in this outside house? HP Oh, yes I was in there right up until it was bombed in the Second World War. There was no money, you see, for anything better. They don’t realize somehow that we were handling priceless stuff. In fact, I had to buy my own microscope and I still have it. I used to go to then Steven’s sale room in London and buy equipment there when I could and gradually built up the essentials. I got a very good fume cupboard that was essential because we were doing an awful lot of reduction work involving the use of strong acids and caustic soda and that sort of thing. We used to make our own chemicals sometimes too. TL Did you have any connection with the university? Did they let you use their equipment? Or do analysis for you? HP No, no. I think the first connection with the London University was made at its Courtauld Institute of Art when they established a laboratory there and I was invited to help engage staff. TL When did that occur? HP Certainly after 1932, I should say in 1935. The National Gallery laboratory had been established under Ian Rawlins the previous year, 1934. I’ve been on the scientific advisory committee of the National Gallery ever since. I was chairman for a number of years and I still go up to London and attend their annual meetings. TL It sounds like you were the only one doing any scientific investigation. HP Yes, I suppose I was a pioneer in a way. TL Amazing. Were you involved in encouraging the development of the other two labs? HP Oh yes indeed. I was on the board of the Courtauld Institute at the time when they appointed Dan Thompson. Do you know that name? TL Well, is this the same Daniel Thompson who wrote a book on the art of fresco? HP Yes, that’s right medieval pigments and so on; a very fine publication. Dan Thompson worked there and Patrick Ritchie worked with him. Then we had Rees-Jones there. There was a minor explosion after a number of years. Pat Ritchie left and went into chemical industry and from there he returned to university work as a Professor of Chemistry. Rees-Jones left and went into an X- ray laboratory but he was very anxious to come back to the Courtauld and actually did return when eventually W.G. Constable became director at the Institute. Constable was a very good friend, a splendid person. He was worried Annexes 231
about the Courtauld labs not having the right kind of stuff and he wished he would get Rees-Jones again. As it happened, some years later Rees-Jones was in London and he rang me to say he was sorry he hadn’t time to see me but he was just going way back again to the Midlands. I said, ‘Where are you speaking from Stephen?’ and he said, he was speaking from King’s Cross station. And I said, ‘Look here would you like to go back to the Courtauld?’ And he just gasped and said of course he would but there was no prospect for him. ‘Look, you come straight down to see me.’ I replied. So he missed his train and came down to see my lab. In the meantime, I informed Constable that here was his chance and sent Rees-Jones along to him. So Stephen went back to the Courtauld. He was a great success there. He started under Constable and the laboratory owes a great deal to the devotion of Rees-Jones and of course to W.C. Constable the Director of the Institute. TL So you were involved in that lab as well as the National Gallery? HP I was involved in that lab and I was involved in the National Gallery lab there too from the very beginning. In the university a sister institute to the Courtauld Institute of Art they had called the Archaeological Institute* established under Mortimer Wheeler and with Kathleen Kenyon. I used to take part in establishment lecture courses with him in Regents Park. TL They were archaeologists they weren’t con…. HP Yes, there were archaeologists. TL But the Archaeological Institute also had a conservation program. Were you involved in that? HP Well, yes but that came later. It developed out of those scientific lectures on the preservation of antiquities. TL It sounds like you were the lone pioneer. HP I suppose I actually was, long ago! I used to say jokingly that I start things and then run away before the roof falls in. TL Was there any contact with European conservators? HP Yes, there was but, it was rather frowned upon at first by the British Museum because of the idea that I had obviously to travel and there was so much work to be done in London. There was so much to do. I missed the first Athens Conference and I missed the first Rome Conference in 1930. These marked the beginnings of the League of Nation’s Conferences. TL These were sponsored by the League of Nations? HP Yes, art historical conferences. Now it was possible to meet picture restorers from all over Europe; USA and beyond. TL If they were art historical did they have any sections on conservation in these conferences? HP Yes, but only in regards to paintings, at first and later on furniture, textiles, and many other artifacts; when the League of Nations International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation was established. I was a member of that committee and Annexes 232
we had many meetings in Paris and Brussels and major conferences in Egypt and in Spain all on conservation work of one kind or another. TL Do you remember when it was? HP Yes, in 1930 onward. My difficulty is when I left London, which I eventually did. I left my articles with the lab there for the library. I, of course sold a number of books, etc. because I was going out to Rome. When I left Rome I left other things there, so what is left is only the remains of my off-print and pamphlet collection more or less. There were two conferences which at the time (1933 and 1935) were very important to us. There was first the one in Cairo the on excavation (fouilles) and then there was the one in Madrid on paintings. Both of these were well published, in Mouseion, the periodical of the International Committee of Intellectual Cooperation (League of Nations). It was at these conferences that I first worked very closely with Helmut Ruhemann, George Stout, and W.G. Constable and the leading directors of museums in Europe covering art and archaeology and also library and documentation work. I was consulted a lot after that. For example, by the B Nationale* & the Louvre in Paris and I used to give lots of lectures in the provinces in this country over the ages of the British Museum’s associations. Strange things happened. I was once asked about giving lectures to the Portuguese army by our foreign office. TL Why would you lecture to them? Were they contemplating…? HP Well, I happened to know something about the war, you see. I was asked to go and give them a talk about preservation of the cultural property in the event of armed conflict. About a fortnight before, the foreign office telephoned to say was everything all right for my lecture? ‘Oh, yes’, I said. ‘Oh, that’s alright then you will be lecturing in French, of course.’ ‘Not on your life.’ said I. ‘Oh yes but we want you to do it in French.’ ‘In that case I know the very man for you. Coremans* of Brussels will do it for you.’ ‘No, no we want you to do it.’ So I said, ‘Well, alright.’ TL Did you speak French? HP Not much! What I did was to write out the lecture in detail in English and get it to a professional to put it into French. Then learn the thing off by heart in French which was a terrific effort. I first of all had to give this lecture in Madrid. Half the audience was in uniform – brass hats and so on. I did my little histories and showed them some frightful war time slides that I had drawn and painted specially to horrify them and they were tremendously impressed! I was immediately invited to do it again in Oporto. I don’t know why Oporto, but of course I said yes. So I went to Oporto and they treated me awfully well. Different section of the army it appeared. They took me off and showed me how they made sherry and gradually I gained confidence and was able to do a little more to improve my French. This was fortunate as I was invited to give a lecture at the Louvre in Paris in general conservation. TL There was nothing at the Louvre at this time? HP Oh, no nothing at all. There was a man, Goulinat, who was a private restorer who had his own methods. Nobody knew what they were. What I was fighting was the fact that private restorers used their own methods and wouldn’t tell anybody about them. Even in the British Museum I was faced with a man who had done Annexes 233
some very good work on cleaning coins but nobody knew what he used or how he had done it and he published nothing. He had bottles of chemicals wrongly labeled just for the sake of putting people off. That was throughout the whole world. Collectors had to fight a conspiracy of silence and this idea of using private recipes. Everything we were satisfied with, we published and of course so did the Courtauld Laboratory and the Laboratory of the National Gallery and many of the researchers now appearing in European and American cities. The National Gallery lab grew up very quickly because they had the money for equipment and it was possible for them to develop the neglected physical side of the work. They weren’t so keen on chemicals coming into the Gallery in those days, but they did marvels in radiography and microscopy. Just about that time Technical Studies in the Fine Arts was published. I wrote the first article for that on the invitation of W.G. Constable. I was trying to develop a system of recording what was happening on a series of about a dozen unstable pictures all prone to blisters forming and cracks of various kinds. TL So then you had contact with labs in the States? HP That came later. I had been in touch with George Stout who had been visiting the country in connection with the Courtauld Institute. TL That was in the 40’s as well? HP Yes, just at the time their lab was formed at the N.G. In the late 40s Rawlins went across and visited the labs in America. I and Rawlins had been appointed Scientific Advisors to the Trustees of the N.G. and were interested in American developments. He came back to tell me about the idea of forming IIC* and he had been asked to be secretary-general. TL You say he had been asked. Who… HD He had been invited by the Harvard group at Cambridge in Boston. Yes Stout and Gettens were involved and Murray Pease, Dick Buck, Betty Jones, Sheldon Keck, etc. Also he would do it if I would be the treasurer. So he and I shouldered the burden to begin within starting our Institute, IIC. TL So they selected London for what reason? HP Yes, they selected London for, I think, two reasons. One of them you’ll understand – I don’t. It was if they established it in America it would inevitably get into the hands of stuffed shirts, whoever stuffed shirts were, and go nowhere. The other one was that we already had two labs here and they fancied having the Institute established under English law. We started in 1950, in London at the British Museum and the National Gallery. They knew me and they knew Rawlins. They knew that we were very close friends. We were both members of the Athenaeum (a private men’s club in London) and we met there twice a week for many years developing the program of IIC. TL So, although the idea originated in the States, it sounds as if you and Mr. Rawlins had most of the responsibility for actually starting it. HP We did with invaluable help from lawyer friends. It was a tremendous honor, you know, to be picked out by American people to do this sort of thing; and rather a challenge. They trusted us and that was that. I don’t think we let them down. It was in these early negotiations that we got to realize the value of Gettens and Annexes 234
Stout; they were tremendous – individually and in concert in furthering the interests of IIC from the beginnings and continuing throughout. TL The initial reason for starting IIC was that it was to serve as a common body between all countries or all museums in various countries in terms of research as well as just exchanging ideas. HP That is so. They were underlining the fact that it was necessary to stop all this private restoration using secret methods. That was one of the points. They were keen on improving techniques; especially micro-techniques. We had in this country an enthusiastic student of sciences offered to the arts, a retired professor of chemistry called A.P. Laurie who had written various books about art. Laurie was a man who was criticized a lot because of his own overwhelming good nature, full of fun, tremendously serious in some things but very naïve in others. He published a number of interesting books on brush marks of Rembrandt’s and the various sources of evidence you can get about genuineness. He, in his own mind considered himself to be like a medical specialist to whom a painting could be safely entrusted. He would examine it and tell you if it was genuine or not and he would charge an appropriate fee; that’s rather frowned on nowadays. At that time it was frowned on too pretty heavily because he charged high fees. But he was innocent enough to tell people about this and he was quite honest in believing that this helped to establish the value of science in the public mind. Undoubtedly he did a lot of good in popularizing the idea of conservation especially in the art gallery world and at the same time helping to debunk the charlatan. But he was a lone fish at this time; others however were to follow. There was one little group in London deserving mentioning in the same category who were interested in techniques of tempera painting especially – a tempera painter’s club or something. They published three little volumes of great technical value. TL They were art historians? HP Yes, art historians and craftsmen painters and also people who were interested in drawing and meticulous techniques of the artist’s studios; this sort of thing. They were the kind of people who inspired Dan Thompson to write a book. Tudor Hart* was one well known artist. Then there was another type of person; the private picture restorer. Some of them, of course were very good. The National Gallery had traditionally used private picture restorers. There were others outside the galleries who were not so good and many were definitely bad. There was one strange man, Kennedy North, who was well known as a man who made extreme statements in a very empathic way and whose idea of conservation was to dip things in wax. He was rather like David Rosen, you know. You know David Rosen? Rosen performed tremendous feats with wax. But Kennedy North’s approach was always dramatic. He could take a large painting and wire it all up. And he would sit at the end with switches and press them to energize local heating of the wax. Everything was supposed to be under strict control and to many his treatment was very impressive. But there was no real basis of scientific knowledge behind it. Such were examples of the conditions that obtained pretty generally before the advent of IIC. That helped tremendously to bring us into the modern age of conservation. TL Once you had formed it how could you police these people who were using bad techniques? You really hadn’t …. Annexes 235
HP Only by publishing good techniques about bad ones. That was the only thing. Now, for example in relining paintings they used to use all sorts of adhesives and many people used glue-glue mixtures which were too hard and sometimes did an immense amount of damage. You couldn’t get the canvas backing off if ever this were required without soaking the picture in water. So I started on this little problem to try and work out a simple way of carrying out comparative tests. I made a whole lot of sample blocks of wood – 3″ x 3″, covered them with the canvas and made them into pairs with a hook at each side so I could fit them together with some form of adhesive. Then subsequently tore them apart under controlled and comparative conditions in order to test the strength of the adhesive. I hung a bucket on the bottom block and ran water into the bucket at a standard rate in each case. As the bucket of water got heavier the strain on the joint eventually reached breaking point. I was able to make mixtures of waxes and find out if one particular mixture seemed to be so much better than the others. I tried various additions to try and improve the working properties but obviously the fewer additions, the better. Fillers were alright; something neutral was alright. The addition of gums and resins could be allowed within reason and some of the results published in Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts. That was a way of showing that you could get reliable results by using simple methods. Didn’t cost anything and only simple materials were used in the adhesives that you could remove if necessary without straining the picture. I was awfully amused some years later when I was in Boston visiting Elizabeth Jones to find a drawer labeled Plenderleith and Inards. Plenderleith was this mixture, you see, and ‘Inards’ were what I called ‘inerts,’ the presence of which they had found to be a useful addition to improve the mixture. TL What was the scope of people that Technical Studies would have been published to? Would a private restorer in London have the opportunity to buy Technical Studies? HP Oh, yes. It was mostly an altruistic movement. Inspired by the Americans, and most of the things that are in it are reliable. Certainly they were reliable at the time they were published. But there have been many, many improvements in later years. The original format and an index have now appeared in print. Technical Studies marked the beginning of the modern movement I think. Of course the mastermind behind it all was your fellow countryman, George Stout. He inspired, Technical Studies just as he inspired later on IIC and its abstracts. TL So who would you say were the actual people involved-yourself and George Stout, John Gettens, Ian Rawlins…? HP Yes and about two dozen others. You have only to look at the people who published papers in Studies in Conservation. TL So it was a rather small group? HP It was rather a small group and it was never our intention to make IIC the kind of thing it has developed into today. This would have seemed impressible in the early days for the very obvious reason that there were so few people that had our idea that we should publish everything and that we should condemn bad techniques. As you can readily imagine it was often very difficult to do that at first. People in high places had very strong views about things. Directors of museums had their own pet restorers and their own ways of wanting to deal with things and these had to be modified gradually. When we started it was our idea that we might have – I think there were up to about 20 foundation fellows of IIC. Annexes 236
Then later we decided we would have associates. We never envisioned more than 50 fellows because there weren’t 50 fellows in existence who shared our ideas or were adequately experienced in scientific conservation throughout the years – it had to come gradually. It was touch and go because we needed the money. The only way to get the money was to have a bigger fellowship. And now that training is universally possible IIC has been able to flourish and become indispensable to the profession. TL So you were funded through your own pocket, so to speak? HP Yes we gradually built the thing up. The man, I think, who has done so much as anyone, within recent years, to make it what it is, is our Secretary General, Norman Brommelle. He has been terrific in giving it unstintingly of his time. He was a splendid restorer at the National gallery – absolutely first rate – then he left that to become Director of the Conservation Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum rather to my sorrows because it was a loss to the National Gallery and I wasn’t sure whether it was going to be a gain for the Victoria and Albert or not. He was suddenly concerned with things other than paintings but he very soon showed he was a first rate organizer. He got on with people, which was so important. You couldn’t have had a better man. So he made a great contribution. TL Did you actively seek additional people, let’s say continental people, for IIC or did they just slowly evolve and join the ranks? HP Well, what we did was to actively seek support from institutions. Only institutions had finance that they could direct at this time for this purpose. But it was very difficult to get money for anything. We grew up gradually through the years. An important event in the life of IIC occurred about 1938 a year or so before the outbreak of the Second World War. We realized that we were heading for possible disaster if war should break out. Rawlins and I wrote a little booklet about first aid treatment of museum material. I forget what it was called- our text was never published. It was diverted to the protection of museum objects in war- time. This got to the attention of the directors of museums in London, particularly the British Museum. They asked if they could see it and later on said they would take it over and they published it. That was fine. We were involved by this means; we had gotten most of the practical information disseminated and urgently needed before we were involved in war in 1939. For example, how to make standard boxes to be stored in minimum space so that they could be speedily made up into containers in an emergency: lists of stuff we should get together while the going was good and could have standing by. We had all that planned and they published the thing so that it was ready in good time. Then the Ministry of Works purchased large quantities of essential materials and made them available to museums and picture galleries for use in protecting the collections in war time. TL This was in anticipation of the war? HP Yes, all in anticipation of the war. For my part, I got basements in the museum which were normally used as strong rooms and I bought a lot of chemicals. I had a special grant for that. Enough to last us through the war for emergency work like sodium sesqui-carbonate, acids, fungicides, insecticides and so on; that was all planned. And then the authorities established a first aid post. We had to get equipment for that; then a decontamination station, (fortunately never required), Annexes 237
then fire-proofing arrangements. We had our own firemen in the museum and our own policemen in the museum. We were really a self-contained unit; acres of roof to mind of course. My job was to coordinate duties and assist with training and at the same time, assist the director whose name was Sir John Forsdyke. He planned the actual siting of the objects when it became necessary to decentralize and I used to trudge around to help him in selecting sites and in deploying caretaker staff. TL Where were they taken? HP They were taken to about 15 of the sort of major houses in England – country houses. Decentralization we called it. Then after that there came what we called, The Baedeker bombing*. The Germans started bombing these bigger houses. TL They would bomb the country houses? HP Yes. That became a great source of worry and we couldn’t by this time get any of the good bomb-proof sites for they had all been acquired already by others. We were quite stumped. Someone went to Churchill for advice and he said, ‘Well, you might like to have a look at an underground limestone quarry near Bath. I’ll allocate a quarry and you can see that.’ So we went then Forsdyke and myself and a Ministry of Works representative and found a quarry that was being used to grow mushrooms. The humidity was 100%. Apart from this it had great advantages so we made some experiments and found that we could get a silica paint which would waterproof the limestone walls completely. The Ministry of Works then took it very seriously and said yes, this is marvelous if we can get this now, we will have acres of quarry which go deep into the hillsides. If we can get the mushrooms cleared out and so on and introduce plant and control the humidity this would take us about a year but you will have to tell us what conditions you want. So I said, ‘I want 60% relative humidity and 60 degrees F; just like that a figure like that – a constant figure. If you give me those conditions I can put anything there.’ Of course, I was in touch with them while they were doing the work. When they eventually handed it over in just a little over a year they had self-recording thermo-hydrographs with lines, straight lines. Interestingly that they had succeeded both as regards the constant temperature and the constant relative humidity. TL So they coated the walls and that…. HP The essential atmospheric conditions for safety were 60/60 i.e. 60 degrees F/60 degrees RH. They painted all the walls and the floors and the ceiling so that no damp could enter from outside. They put wooden racking in to help us to decide where to put things. Then gradually the museum stuff was taken there – library materials, manuscripts, ceramics, Egyptian material, textile department materials and valuable books and documents. TL Well, why don’t we go back to the British Museum laboratory and take the period when you first came in the 20’s till about 1940 – the early 40’s when the war broke out. And just describe what changes occurred at the lab while you were there either in personnel or your dealings with people in the museum itself or perhaps in some of the articles you may have published relating to your work there. Annexes 238
HP Yes, well, there was no question of publication, of course, to begin with. One had to learn the job and there wasn’t much time. We were very busy. We were given an old house in Russell Square, number 39; a nice enough house on four stories. On the ground floor, looking out of the window towards Russell Square, we had a general restoration laboratory and at the back of the house, a little central office where I had a simple microscope, a counter weight (rather like the weight on a grandfather clock), binocular suspended by gut over wheels so that I could lift it and take it down and it would stay put at any angle. The weight was under the bench and I could slew the binocular around and look at a van for example, or study a metal object very easily with both hands free. Then I had my own microscope, as well, my own cameras for making records. But I must admit we didn’t make many records because we didn’t have time. Downstairs in the early stages I found it useful to begin by checking through some of the methods of Rathgen. It was a great advance when we got a decent fume cupboard; much more healthy. A stink cupboard provided with an extraction fan thus protected from the poisonous fumes of hydrogen sulphite and other noxious chemicals. TL When you said methods of Rathgen….. HP Friedrich Rathgen was the German scientist who published Die Konservierung von Altertumsfunden in Berlin where he worked one time in the State Museum. That was the name of the book and it was translated into English about, I suppose 1912. I can show you the book. We checked the methods he advocated and as a matter of fact this was of interest to me because many years previously in Dundee I had come across an idea of reducing an oxidized metallic surface by treating it with zinc and caustic soda which generates an atmosphere of hydrogen. This hydrogen attacks the oxide on the surface and the metal is restored. I knew the method worked but it had to be refined a bit for museum purposes. I remember at an early stage, there was a Mr. Harraii– an Egyptian who brought in a wonderful collection of stuff that had been found in a pottery vase in Persia. These were horse trappings – they were like beads from a huge necklace. They were made of silver and inlaid with stuff that we called niello – but at first appeared to be just a collection of green lumps, of earthy matter. I got busy with these things and, oh, how interesting it was. You never knew what would appear from the green lump. You can imagine, I suppose there were dozens of different designs, shapes and sizes; wonderful material to practice on. TL So you used this reduction method? HP So I tried all the reduction methods on that and came to the conclusion that the safest was to use granulated zinc with formic acid. The quickest no doubt was to use citric acid but it carried things too far. I realized hydrochloric acid could be extremely dangerous because the aim was to get rid of the chlorides and to use hydrochloric acid could only intensify corrosion. Now in the basement, we had a wood workshop where we made our own equipment. We had a furnace room which was the old billiard room. We got the floor laid with cement and then one was able to get a supply of gas. I put in some furnaces and started to do a little work on Egyptian blue and other things. Upstairs where there was good daylight we worked on Egyptian mummies, textiles and ethnographic material. We kept a space open for excavator’s materials that had to be treated fairly quickly for exhibitions. Then eventually, it took years, I got an x-ray plant which was a great help. Such was the British Museum laboratory for the first 10 years of its existence. Annexes 239
TL You talked about lab workers. Were most of them doing the technician’s work where they would prepare samples for you or keep the lab, order supplies? And you, yourself, did you do analysis and treatment. HP Well, I was the only one who did the analysis. I was the only scientist there. The retired gardener assistant I told you about, Mr. Padgham did reduction work and the only lab boy, the only other member of staff in this period, eventually did reduction work too i.e. after a number of years. And the odd museum keeper or director who wanted to come for a short time just to see what we were up to and how we assessed the condition of things and what methods were available and why we chose certain methods and so on. Gradually we built up a group of people who were interested in these developments but it was a long time before I was able to get a scientific assistant. TL That was simply a financial problem? HP You must realize that there were at this time eleven departments in the British Museum each of them far larger than any other entire museum in the country. The British Museum is a vast complex. Each department had a tremendous collection of material and there were sub-departments (the newspaper libraries at Henden the Bindery, etc). So there was actually a huge museum staff. We at the laboratory were three people only two untrained plus eventually some voluntary workers. So they didn’t spend money on us much to begin with. It took time to make friends and to gain the confidence of the authorities. TL But I would think with a collection that size they must have been seeing the effects of deterioration in their own individual departments. HP Oh, indeed, and departments had their own technicians, their own people who did technical jobs for them, mounting, printing tables and essential cleaning. But how they did it was their business. We had to stop that. The standard method of dealing with restoration for example was to paint it with shellac. The result of that as you can imagine was to fix the rest and intensify the corrosion. Very gradually such methods had to be discouraged. There was often active antagonism to begin with between that type of person and our approach. They had their private methods. By our being there and exposing this we were undermining their importance. Tact and diplomacy were called for! TL But the Director of the museum at this time was on your side? HP When I began in 1924, the Director of the museum was Sir Fredrick Kenyon and he was never really on our side. He was a very great scholar but he was unenlightened about what science could do for him; absolutely unenlightened. In fact when we were eventually handed over from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to the museum, as a ledger transfer, the laboratory wasn’t moved at all. We became a part of the museum staff and years were to pass before we could qualify as a museum department in our own right. TL You weren’t initially part of the museum staff? HP No, I was initially part of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. TL But yet your work was entirely for the British Museum. HP Entirely in the British Museum within the premises. First of all the laboratory was considered to be a first-aid measure and then it turned out to be so useful to the Annexes 240
Trustees that they decided to make the lab a part of the museum establishment. In the course of time when eventually Dr. Scott retired, I had attained the dizzy height of what was called an Assistant Keeper then a Deputy Keeper in charge and finally where I was made Keeper, we were reorganized as being a full-fledged department of the museum. By the time we had an adequate staff extra accommodation had to be found for us in the main museum building and in other trustee’s property. When war was declared in 1939 we were very scattered and the laboratory was bombed. Then it was strengthened and pinned up and so on. It wasn’t large enough to cope. Another building existed across the garden which had belonged to some foodstuff company and it was a laboratory. They had given it up and it was empty. The museum took it over. It was in the museum grounds. So that was a major extension to the premises. TL That became your… HP By this time we mostly worked there, you see until they strengthened our place and then I went back to a much improved room. We were reasonably well off and we extended out the back into what became the analytical lab, radiocarbon rooms, etc. Things were growing a fair pace. We had come of age as it were. TL This was all after the war? HP This was after the war and I believe probably as a result of the war. We were planning to extend the bombed laboratory in Russell Square by taking extension over the house next door to it and this would double our accommodation. At that time after the war I had Robert Organ on the staff and he was very useful in developing the drawings with the Ministry of Works. We had the whole thing on the drawing board for I should think three years before it actually came into existence. I had retired just before the building was finished. The research laboratory as it exists today came into existence under the Keepership of my successor, Dr. A.E. Werner who had the satisfaction of recruiting many new specialist scientists to the staff adding greatly to its importance and by obtaining the funding essential to an important central research organization. TL It has always been separate from the museum? Was there any problem with objects coming back and forth? HP No, the laboratory is still within the museum precincts. TL I see, but you physically had to go outside? HP You had to go outside but by the backdoor, that’s quite true. TL Did you find any problem then since your facility was not physically connected with the museum working with the archaeologists and curators? There was a physical distance. HP No, not at all. In fact it will amuse you to know that I had a number of visitors who on one excuse or another would come down to the laboratory to see things for the simple reason that they were allowed to smoke in my department. I didn’t smoke myself. I had given it up long before. I didn’t mind at all. So they came around and had their cigarette and discussed what went on and off they went. But that was a means of cementing friendships. Annexes 241
TL Let’s talk a little bit more about the war. We talked about if before. You started earlier in the tape talking about preparations that you and Ian Rawlins had written a pamphlet, an article on… HP That was published as a booklet by the little committee of museum directors in London. It was circulated widely; I don’t know how many… I haven’t got a copy now. It went around all the museums through the museums associations. We tried, as it were, to standardize procedures. During the war and afterwards during unpacking we learned a lot from actual experience. When we started packing our own things, for example we found that if you packed a thing on a wet day, in a wet place, you packed a sample of damp air with it. When you closed it up that damp air remained. Although we didn’t have any damage from the things we packed, fortunately there were manuscripts from the department in a certain type of cardboard box and when we opened this box we found mould growing on the wrapping inside. Of course, we feared the worse but the outbreak hadn’t gone any further. We checked this up. The packing had been done in a very wintery sort of time and in a rather damp basement. We had thermal hydrographs all over the place by this time and so we knew the atmospheric conditions. So we were very careful after that. The general idea had been that if you wrapped a thing in waterproof paper it was alright. But it was shown to be very dangerous to wrap a thing in polythene or anything like that unless you are wrapping a sample of nice, safe air with it. TL What percentage of the collection had to leave the museum? HP It was quite impossible to move all of the library because there were millions of books there. We tried. I wasn’t involved in this, to move all books that were worth £100.00 or more. Such books were all sent to Aberystwyth in Wales. TL That is a…. HP The Welsh National Library. They were getting houseroom there during the war. Appropriate scholars were working there, working on the books and keeping an eye on them. These books survived in good condition but those that were left in the museum had to suffer bombing. You remember that the museum room is a great big round building like the Albert Hall with four quadrants attached to it, making in plan a rectangle. Well one of these quadrants got a direct hit and we lost a tremendous lot of useful technical books and religious books, medical books. I think a great majority have been replaced thanks to gifts, many from Germany. This was just an odd bomb that did the damage but it was quite appalling to crawl into that place, as I did in fact, when it was all on fire. The place was full of smoke. You couldn’t have stood up. You could however, for the air was clear for a space of about a foot above the floor, crawl along like a snake. You could see right along and you could see the flames coming from the books – it was the leather bindings which caused all the smoke. TL What did you have to do? Take out as many books as you could? HP You couldn’t touch the books. There were firemen there from all over the country and they eventually put out the fire but the books were all soaking with water. My plan was to put up clotheslines. As soon as possible, we got these books out and hung them on clotheslines. I got blasts of air going through them. Of course, you must not heat them or they would start to become mouldy. Books are full of nutrient material that in damp conditions promote the growth of Annexes 242
micro-fungi. Then I began to take an interest in fungicides. You see, a study of mycology…. TL Came in handy! HP Of course, lots and lots were salvaged in a semi-useless condition but could be dealt with by the bindery that was attached to the Department of Printed Books. They did a wonderful job. We fortunately had a very good summer in 1946 and I had these chaps working in the open. Turning all the pages and when the paper was finally dry brushing off the molds and so on. The binders were experts at handling this kind of work you know. TL These were just volunteers then? HP No, these were permanent staff from the museum bindery. TL Was your staff increased at all at this time? HP I had no staff. You see everyone who was there was in the army or engaged in war work. I had had my whack in the army in the First World War. Of course, I was now over age and much more useful at the museum than anywhere else. I knew the museum. It was a very complicated structure; acres of rooms. I had to train staff from other departments who didn’t know the museum. Where were the places you could get out if you were trapped? Where were the places where the most valuable things were kept? Where were the keys? And of course, there were literally many hundreds of keys. And then my own man who had been the museum locksmith and knew everything was far too valuable to leave with us. He had to go in the Air Force to train and supervise the work of people using lathes and other precision tools. Oh, it was a busy time. Of course when you have a staff of a thousand or so in the museum you can always find 50 of these people irrespective of their grade; thoroughly practical men you can trust in an emergency. There was a marvelous carpenter man who was a great help and one or two of the senior staff were very good too. I used to arrange training emergencies you see on Sundays for example, a wooden hoop covered with paper like a drum and marked as an incendiary bomb – 500 pounds bomb. I would stick that somewhere in the museum and then I would blow off the alarm. These trainees were the salvage people, it was their job to find the so called bomb and take appropriate action. They were timed, you see. They had to report what action they had taken. Where was the nearest hydrant, because we had our own pressure hydrants all over the museum? They had to act as firemen too. We used to have that sort of emergency training and it served to be very valuable. TL During this entire period you lived at the museum? HP Yes. I lived at the museum all the time. TL So that was six years? HP I was asked to go in and do this by Sir John Forsdyke, the Director, to come in on the weekend that the war was declared, September 1939. While I was there he said, ‘wouldn’t your wife come in too, and look after the commissariat?’ She was very pleased to do this and so we went in together. That was fine but it didn’t work very well. We asked if we could have our own place to live and accommodation was found for us in adjacent rooms where Tibby (Mrs. Plenderleith) did a lot of the cooking. At night time when the alarm went she Annexes 243
went down to the basement with the other women who lived on the premises (wives of resident staff) and I went up to the roof with two assistants. TL You didn’t spend every night on the roof, did you? HP Every night all through the war except one weekend but not the whole night only after the alarm went and we got some rest generally after the all clear sounded. TL Your function was to watch and see if any bombs fell? HP Yes, and take appropriate action and at the same time watch and see what was happening in London and to ensure that our trained firemen, salvage men, and ambulance men were alert and ready for any emergency. TL How long was this? HP I don’t know. All I know is I stuck it till the end of the war. TL Was there co-ordination between the British Museum, the V&A, The Tate and the National Gallery during the war? HP Oh, yes. The National Gallery things went to Festiniog – the slate quarry. Our things went to Bath, a limestone quarry. So we were not very far apart. Ours was the closest co-operation with the National Gallery. With Victoria and Albert Museum we had a joint interest in the safety of the valuable things either down the tube or in a multitude of big houses in England and eventually in Bath quarry. Of course, I was in frequent contact with members of the staff and the directors of many museums and collections. TL Were there many other conservation people in museums at this time? HP They had no conservation departments. TL But Ian Rawlins… HP Was at the National Gallery, yes, but he never touched the pictures, you know. He was a scientist. He wasn’t a conservation man. Well, that’s wrong. He was a conservation man but he didn’t work in the conservation studio at all. He, for example, was responsible for planning the Festiniog repository with the Ministry of Works just as I had planned the Bath thing with the Ministry of Works. Only in his case, he discovered that this huge slate quarry was of such humidity that if you built in it little buildings and applied heat to them, to a certain degree you could obtain an approximation to the 60/60 figures so that maintenance was much cheaper at Festiniog in there. Actually Rawlins opted for 50% relative humidity at 60 degrees F. I don’t think it makes any difference personally. Two degrees doesn’t make all that difference as long as wide variations can be prevented. There was no damage. The pictures were found to benefit greatly by storage in these conditions there. In fact, the restorers were out of a job. They discovered from this experiment that if you controlled the humidity like that you stopped getting blisters in the paint layers and panel paintings became stabler so that any cracking tendency ceased to menace the works of art. TL I remember when I talked to Mr. Keck he said that during the war he served in a special branch, I think it was in the Army, that went overseas and were checking collections, particularly in France. HP and in Germany… Annexes 244
TL Were you…? HP No, I wasn’t part of that. TL You were purely in England? HP I was responsible for a whole lot of stuff – just yes, just that. But many of restorers from outside GB went from Brussels to Berchesgarden across to France and Germany. Coremans was across there, too. It was quite near where Hitler had his place. Then I was involved together with M. Rawlins with the Van Meegeren forgeries. I was a referee for that. That was the most exciting inquiry. Of course, Van Meegeren sold a picture that he had faked to Goering and that was how he got into trouble. TL That was his big mistake. HP But that’s another side issue. TL What about the museums in Scotland? Were they pretty safe? HP I was only once in Scotland during the war. In Glasgow they had put a whole lot of valuable books in the basement of the university and the Clerk of Works had covered a pile over with tarpaulins. The whole idea being that if you put an impermeable layer on top you preserved the contents. It was quite wrong. It was in a basement, you see, and moisture comes up through the floor and can’t go through the tarpaulin. The Clerk of Works had put a lot of valuable furniture, as he thought, in the same place and he couldn’t get at the books to inspect them. Then an awful bad smell appeared. They thought, ‘oh dear, oh dear’ and they sent for me. I went up and crawled in there and found that some of the manuscripts looked alright but you couldn’t open them. They were all stuck together. The insides had been completely eaten by micro-organisms and it was almost as if there had been fermentation going on to. They lost a number of things. They were the big picture book type of thing – loaded paper that stuck together when damp and sometimes the glue went as well and caused much staining. I was around the cathedrals a lot too, flying visits – Canterbury Cathedral had a lot of problems. TL Were the windows taken out of the cathedrals before the war? HP Yes, the valuable ones. They were taken out at York Minster -Seven Sisters windows. Canterbury had trouble because the Dean was not a scientist but was anxious to save things. He got cart loads of earth brought into the cathedral and dumped around the ambulatory with the view to preventing bombs, if they fell, doing any damage. But of course he imported tons of water in doing that and their documents got into a sorry condition. I was called along there and put up clotheslines in the cathedral nave and we saved most of the material. TL Was it the policy of the Germans to bomb indiscriminately or did they have targets such as Canterbury? HP I would not know. I should not have thought they would want to have bombed Canterbury. They didn’t actually as far as I know. They didn’t bomb the cathedral but unfortunately they adopted a tragic policy of destroying cultural property by carrying out a series of so called Baedeker raids. TL What are Baedeker raids? Annexes 245
HP Baedeker wrote the famous tourist guidebooks or handbooks for tourists. We called them Baedeker raids because the planes seemed to be bombing famous sites deliberately. They seemed to be going for the definite targets that were tourist attractions like Coventry Cathedral for example, which they blotted out. Canterbury however survived. I don’t know if they came for the British Museum or not. You could scarcely avoid hitting the British Museum as so much fell on London. I only once heard a plane flying at roof level over the museum. I didn’t see it as the sky was full of smoke. But it was flying very low and I thought that it was going to be the end of everything. Fortunately they didn’t drop anything. Another thing, too you would get planes that were being chased and they would drop their bombs to lighten the load and get rid of them. TL So if they (the planes) were hit they wouldn’t explode? HP They would explode alright, that was a good reason to drop them as quickly as possible and explained why bombs hit things that were not military targets. TL You said you lab was hit. Was it badly damaged? HP Oh, it was hopeless because all the windows were gone, you see. The doors were off their hinges. No bomb went through the lab. The damage was done by a land mine falling in Russell Square some 200 yards from the front door. A bomb went through St. Paul’s – burst in the basement. I went around there the next morning to see the damage and take stock of things. There really wasn’t much at this time and the building was considered unsafe. I rarely went around to the lab. We had emptied it more or less. There were no museum objects there. So damage was largely structural. TL What amazes me is that at this time you seem to be doing a tremendous amount of work and had responsibility for the British Museum but for damage that occurred in other places. Did the British Museum think, perhaps, it would be time to train other people to take the work load off you? HP Oh, I had been doing that all the time. You see, I wasn’t consciously being given work by anybody. I was now an authority in my own right. I carried the master key to the British Museum on my person throughout the war. I came and went as I liked. There was quite enough for the Director to do carrying on work at the British Museum, knowing where things were and seeing that they were properly documented and so on. But much connected with handling staff or salvage or preparing for emergencies or indeed dealing with emergencies was my job. When we had that big awful night with the quadrant being hit, for example, we had fire engines from as far away as Birmingham. We were surrounded by fire engines. We had more than a hundred hydrants of high pressure water in the museum. It was an incredible state of affairs. By that time I had had my lists of staff coming and spending their week of fortnight or so on doing specific jobs. They knew exactly where things were kept and what was expected of them. They were responsible for their own rosters as we called them. I made them responsible for their own things as far as possible. I never had any trouble with them at all. TL The museum wasn’t open was it during this time? HP Oh, no. The library, a bit of the library, was open for Foreign Office work – special work. There wasn’t much there, you see, so many books were away. Annexes 246
TL What happened after the war when you started to bring things back? Was there a lot of danger that had occurred to objects that you had to once again…? HP We were extremely lucky in a sense because there was no damage at all to the stuff or the museum objects coming back from Bath Repository other than what I have admitted to you, i.e. there was mould growing inside some of the boxes but it didn’t do any damage to their contents. There was one amusing thing. We had a flood in the main hall of the museum in London when all these firemen were pouring water on it you see. It got through and dropped down a little hole in the floor that had been made for an electrical conduit pipe. And the water dropped into a strong room underneath; there were rows of strong rooms filling the museum basement and one couldn’t possibly go into them all regularly. I tried however to keep an eye on things and opened one such room to find the thing just thick with mould. There were two, four, six mummy cases piled there all containing Egyptian mummies – water had been dropping through onto these mummies for more than a week before this was discovered. The mummies were lying there soaked to the skin. At this time I had supplies of first-aid beds and bedding and everything for emergencies. So I set up a little hospital and put a mummy on each of the beds. I got blasts of air from a battery of electric fans coming in the side and dried them off gradually. Then I got some volunteers with brushes to get rid of the loosened mould. Then eventually I gave them a coating of paranitrophenol, an efficient fungicide that completed the sterilization, and in the end they were very little the worse it seemed. The worst case of all was at the Royal College of Surgeons where they had a wonderful museum of articulated bones. Just about the finest in the world; animals and human beings of many types, monstrosities, and deformities, etc, etc. everything. All in the one place – nothing but bones. Among these they had the oldest mummy in the world – Ra Nofer. It had been excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie. This had been studied by students – you know what students are. They dropped it and it broke. The authorities were in a great state about this. They decided that it had to be put back together anatomically correctly. I am no anatomist but I was called in to do the job. The surgeons formed their own committee of anatomists to advise me. This mummy was interesting because it had been buried with the body lying on its right hand side. That’s what they did in the case of the earliest examples of mummification. This mummy was dated to the 5th dynasty of Egypt. Ra Nofer was the high priest of Cheops, it seemed and they tried to make him into a statue. They had covered him with a thick carapace of cloth bandage soaked in a molten mixture of wax and gum resins and they painted the features on the cloth at the top. The head had become detached and two or three ribs had been completely reduced to powder. We made him some new ribs from a suitable plastic material, a synthetic resin called ‘gallolith’. We put him together and then found that the weight of the carapace was just so great that it broke the ribs again. So we stuffed him. I bought some sponges at Woolworths, soaked them in molten wax and resin and we stuffed him with those. He was now looking quite respectable again. We put him in a special glass case they’d made – this was during the war. They were very pleased with him – they had a staff meeting and a little cocktail party and everybody was happy to celebrate his recovery. Well the first bomb that fell on London fell on Ra Nofer. There wasn’t a fragment of him left. He was literally blown to smithereens, together with much of the priceless collections of bones for which the College of Surgeons was so famous. Fortunately their spirit collections had been evacuated to a place of safety in good time before the bombing started. Annexes 247
TL They hadn’t taken any other precautions? HP They couldn’t as regards the bones. They were too frail and too many. They had taken precautions in regard to things in inflammable spirit. They got them away because of the danger of fire. But they just left the skeletal material and I suppose they would recognize some of them and be able to salvage something of value from the wreckage. TL At this time Ruhemann had come to England hadn’t he? HP Helmut Ruhemann was there, yes, Ruhemann was working hard for the Courtauld Institute and for the National Gallery as well as he was working away at home in his own studio. He lived out near Regent’s Park. I think he went away with some of the National Portrait Gallery things for a time to the country. I used to see Helmut as often as possible. He did some excellent work in the Courtauld Institute. He was very conscious of the importance of codifying things, lecturing, publishing, teaching people. He loved to lecture and he lectured to the students at the Courtauld. You knew his book, of course. It’s a wonderful source book for dates and early history in general. He was a very fine person. TL Well, during this time did you still have contact with Americans and European conservators? HP Oh, yes. First, as for the Americans, well that started off in an unexpected way. I was invited as the one scientist to join a group of museum directors and visit museums and galleries etc. in the USA. That was my introduction to America. I have been across since I suppose on half a dozen times on one excuse or another; generally, on invitations from the Metropolitan to look at something. I did a term of lecturing for NYU and I gave lectures on two occasions down in your part of the world (Winterthur, Delaware). TL The NYU lectures were to their conservations students? HP Yes. TL That’s jumping up to the 60’s then. Well as for Europe who instigated the Rome Center? Yourself and well, you mentioned…. HP No, it was an idea ongoing with UNESCO. UNESCO created a committee to consider establishing an International Conservation Training Center. TL It must have been about… HP It must have been about 1950. I am sure we spent three years and more looking for people. Meantime, unknown to me, negotiations were going forward to see whether it should be in Brussels which seemed the natural place or elsewhere. Rome equally had so much of interest in the way of antiquities, churches and things you see. Rome had a variety of materials whereas Brussels had the paintings and the great Royal Institute which Coremans had been instrumental in starting. TL How come the Rome Center didn’t come out of IIC? HP Because at that point IIC had grown and entailed many countries. Yes, but IIC was very junior at the time in international know-how and had no contact with the United Nations whereas UNESCO had. It needed negotiations at a Annexes 248
government level for the Centre to become established. I needed to have diplomatic status or we couldn’t negotiate at an appropriate level with either Belgium or Italy and while this was done or for us by UNESCO life was difficult until such time as I was given diplomatic status by the government of Italy. They then gave us the premises. They were extremely generous. I can say they never refused me once anything I asked for. I never asked for anything I didn’t need. On the other hand they have been over generous in many ways. But they haven’t lost by it. On the contrary, they started from nothing. We started with five countries. TL Which five countries? HP Belgium, Spain, Dominican Republic, Italy and the Netherlands. Now we never got any money at all from the Dominican Republic. From the others, it was agreed that they would pay 1% of what they paid to UNESCO. We would build up from that. Well with only four countries paying 1% of what they paid to UNESCO was extremely little. It was just about enough for the salaries we were given by the Italians, you see, as our office staff. But still it meant that we didn’t have money to pay the salaries of anybody else for awhile. We started from nothing. Now we have 70 odd countries at the Rome Center and a budget of around $1 million. TL How come only five joined originally? HP Well, they thought it was going to be a flop you see. Although we had good friends at UNESCO who did their best, many countries couldn’t see why it was necessary to have a separate Rome Center when UNESCO was as its title indicated the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organizations. The very name, Rome Center conveyed little information. They didn’t see the importance of having specialists who had handled antiquities and were accustomed to urgent and often very delicate salvage work, who had had experience in packing, transport and exhibiting things and knew the damage that could be done by exposure to light and water. They didn’t realize the almost complete lack of such knowledge in so many countries where damage to the national patrimony was occurring through lack of such knowledge. It took a long time to put this across. Our policy has been not to do the work ourselves but to train locals to do it for themselves and so ensure long time benefit. TL So you simply act as advisors? HP So we have been training formally and informally, demonstrating how to tackle problems in the field, advising, and when justified carrying out conservation work all over the world. Today the Centre is a vast concern. It has more than 70 supporting members and a budget of over a million dollars a year coming in and today this is not nearly enough to satisfy our programme which is world-wide. But it went through several stages before this could be achieved. My stage was diplomatically to get it started; to get it viable to the stage where it could be handed over to a younger man. My successor in office had been my deputy, Professor Philippot, a Belgian art historian. Our premises were enlarged several times and Philippot’s successor as Director is today (1979) Dr. Bernard Fielden, an English architect. So science, art history and architecture have all been well covered in the training programme and artifacts as well as public buildings and sites are properly treated. Before Fielden’s appointment we had very effective Annexes 249
architecture help from two Italians of international renown, Professor de Angelis D’Ossat and Dr. Piero Gazzola, Director of ICOMOS. TL What it ICOMOS? HP The International Commission for the Study of Monuments and Sites. A sister organization is ICOM-the International Commission on Museums. These are the two professional organizations relating to our interests. The Rome Centre is now denoted by the initials ICCROM signifying International Centre for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Museum Materials, in the widest sense. So you’ve got ICCROM, formerly the Rome Centre, first of all which is primarily training and was created by UNESCO and then these two professional organizations, ICOM and ICOMOS. ICOM is mostly museum work following in the tradition established by Georges Henri Riviere. He was incidentally a member of the foundation committee of the Rome Centre known later as the ‘conseil provisoire.’ TL And those three organizations are separate? HP Quite separate but we support each other. For example, the secretary of ICOM is on the Council of ICCROM and the Italian representative on ICCROM’s Council, Dr. Gazzola, is currently Director of ICOMOS. So, there is close liaison together and also with UNESCO, the parent institution. We have no permanent representative from IIC (International Institute of Conservation) which I think perhaps is a mistake. It may come in time. IIC has much to offer. TL You personally have had several posts with IIC? HP Yes, I worked my way through as it were. I was an association member and treasurer then I was Vice-President, then President. Then they kindly made me an Honorary Fellow. IIC doesn’t deal with the training in the way we do in Rome. It operates by holding periodic conferences of experts. We in Rome take people who are not the slightest bit trained. If you go to a place like Ghana, you don’t really expect to find someone necessarily who can even read the IIC literature. You’ve got to meet him on his own ground. If he is the right type of person he may develop to become a great asset to his country. We had a Ghanian man who did miracles in the Florence floods, for example; preserving books and fumigating and so on. A very good chap. He was trained at the Rome Centre. TL So when you went to Rome in 1959 the Centre was already established? HP Yes and no. TL You had the building in Rome and you had a staff that consisted of….? HP That consisted of Italian Civil Servants. A man called an Administrative secretary, two lady typists, a part-time accountant, a janitor and another man who hung about and helped. These were all Italians. The man who hung about and helped became eventually my chauffeur. He was invaluable in so many ways. The other man, the janitor turned out to be a very useful man too. He used to look after all the tickets and bookings and accommodations, administrative things like that and does so still even today. Two girls, both typists, in due course got married and had families. They’re still there with us as things are now. The administrative secretary went back to his Italian department on my referral and was given a very senior post there, thanks in part to his international training. And for the rest we Annexes 250
tried to cooperate with any worthy professional organizations all over the world that offered the prospect of furthering our aims. TL So you had a very small professional staff. HP Oh, yes, only two! Philippot has always been with me from the beginning. His father a dear old man was a picture restorer in the laboratory in Brussels of Dr. Coremans. Paul Philippot, the son took up art history as his subject. TL So it was just you and he at the beginning? HP Yes. TL So in that first year were you organized enough that you could actually go to let’s say the Dominican Republic if they had a problem you would go there? HP Yes, but at first we could never have time to so far off field. They wanted me to go to South America, I said no. I’ll do Europe first. TL So you went to countries that didn’t belong? HP To begin with, yes. I did a lightning trip around Europe and visited a number of countries there. I tried to make contact with the right people and visited countries that didn’t belong with a view to trying to suggest that it would be useful if they did belong. Gradually, a few more countries were added each year. We got a little more money. Then they began asking if we could go and help them with various things on the spot. Then we started training students and sending them on missions establishing a kind of international Red Cross for helping in emergency to protect cultural property. TL You started training in the 60s. HP No, it began a little later than that. No, we didn’t send people out until we had expanded the staff and were in the new premises and had trained people we could rely on and had the essential facilities. TL The new premises are…? HP In the OSPIZIO di San Michele in Trastevere, Rome, 13 via de S. Michele. TL And those you occupied in the 70s? HP Yes, yes. TL So there was a 10 year period between ‘60 and ‘70 when your professional staff was going out advising people? HP Between the 60s and the 70s I find that we had gone to Albania, Mexico, India, Egypt, Greece, Malta, Bulgaria, India (twice) and Honolulu (twice). We concentrated on helping in Venice and Florence during and after the flood damage. Then our professional staff visited Israel, Germany, Algeria, France (many times) USA (many time). Then 1970 Egypt, (many times), Brussels, Scotland, Hong Kong, Korea (twice) Japan and all the rest of it you see. In addition I sometimes did a mission myself on the invitation of UNESCO. Once they asked me if I would go to Korea and look at some monuments. TL So that would be separate from the Rome Centre? Annexes 251
HP Not quite. It was a service by the Rome Centre to UNESCO. It was the Rome Centre acting for UNESCO as the founder, as UNESCO had contributed financially for several years in the early days. Without such financial assistance the Centre could never have been established. I took care to put on all our publications ‘created by UNESCO’ at the top to show that UNESCO really was behind the thing. Well, they gave me a list of things to see in Korea and when I went to Korea, I found I had a beautiful car put at my disposal by the Director of Education. I had to go right down to the south and see all the monuments. The first place to go to was Kwong Ju. We got down there and I found I had to go up a mountain and look at a temple called Sokkulum which was near the summit. It was just a bit high up for a chap of my years to go to. But these people were very good. They had made a path up there so that a jeep could go. We waited a couple of days until it was finished and then we had a hair-raising journey up this mountain to the temple. Well when I saw the Sokkulum temple it was sort of sticking to the precipitous side of the mountain among a whole lot of trees. It was a round temple with a conical dome like a beehive and was built right up against a rock precipice. When I went in there I found that the Bodhisatras carved in granite around the side walls (a great Buddha was on an island site at the centre of the circle) were things I recognized because I had seen pictures of them in the British Museum. These were tremendously important things and water was rushing in through the back of this temple down the sides of the Bodhisatras and staining the light colored granite brown with an iron rust deposit. It was an absolute shocker. Well, I had nine people with me. There was a modern temple at the side being used for worship. I saw the priest there. I said I am not going any further. We’re going to start an excavation and find out where that water is coming from. So I sent a message to the Korean Ministry of Education by car back saying I had scrapped my program of visits to monuments. My idea was to find out where this water was coming from and make it run around the temple instead of through it in order to save the monuments. We made some headway but it was a slow process. For one thing the Koreans don’t like to see the boss working and I had to sit down and watch them. As long as I watched them they worked like fury. But if I got up and picked up a spade, everyone would stop and wonder what I was going to do. We started but we didn’t make much of it; for one thing because of an accident. I had a sling bag in which I kept first-aid equipment and as it happened, a damp sponge in a bag. A stone fell off the top of the temple and crushed a man’s foot. I began to apply first aid. In the meantime he lay and grinned – you never can tell what an Oriental smile means. TL It doesn’t mean happiness? HP No, no. He was awfully good about it. Even after I had it bandaged up and all the rest of it, he would reach out for a spade and try and do some work. But I wouldn’t have that, of course. Through an interpreter he said this was his unlucky day. That morning his wife had been in the rice fields and she had been bitten by a poisonous snake and was not expected to recover then this happened. He was smiling all the time. TL Such tragedies! HP Oh, it was terribly touching. Well, what happened was that my message so electrified the Koreans that on the Monday they sent a hundred coolies with spades and picks and so on and a tent and a chair. They brought the tent and put the chair down in a place where I could be shaded from the sun and the whole Annexes 252
operation. And I sat there with a broad hat and a stick and watched these people getting down to this business through the day. In the evenings I went down in the jeep to the little hotel place at the bottom to stay. They worked very hard but what had happened was that at one time this temple had been reinforced with cement by the Japanese. The Koreans disliked the Japanese and they didn’t approve. They had no details as to how much the Japs had done. The excavators got down several feet to the concrete and it was quite obvious that the water was coming up from this seeping in at the back between the rock face and the temple wall. I went up in the morning and there they were sitting squatting on their spades. I was informed through this one man who could speak English, a newspaper man, that they couldn’t go any further; they couldn’t get down the hole. They didn’t do any chiseling, it was impossible. My reply was that’s nonsense. Nothing is impossible. Dead silence. All of a sudden, a terrific burst of laughter from this newspaper man. He turned around to me and said, ‘You’re Napoleon!’ Apparently once Napoleon said, ‘Nothing is impossible.’ He explained this to the workmen – roars of laughter all around. I kept very, very solemn. I said, ‘Now, I am coming back on Friday morning and if that hole isn’t dry down and that water brought around the side, I’ll want to know the reason why.’ Well, this was explained to the men. When it came to Friday morning my car didn’t come to the hotel for me and I feared that worst. I thought the whole thing’s gone flop. I had almost given up hope when the car appeared in the afternoon. I got in the car and up the mountain we went to the temple. When I got to the temple I could see all the men sitting around there grinning from ear to ear and I sort of sensed they’d been successful with this thing. This was confirmed by the newspaper man and I could see the water running around the temple in a fast little stream. So I said that was fine, who had done it – a man with a boy. So I said, ‘Bring them to me.’ So a man and a boy were brought across. What they had done was to send to some place and get this man with a boy – chiselers, you see. And they made a hole in the cement big enough for the man to get into. When it was no use for him, the boy was put into the hole. He made the hole a little further and then they released the pressure; so all is well. In the course of talks, I was aware that one man was grinning more than anyone else and sort of jumping about. It was quite obvious that he wanted to speak to me. Then the message was that this was the man who I had patched up and he had walked all the way up that mountain to tell me that his foot (he showed me his foot) was better and that his wife was well having recovered from the snake bite. It was awful touching. And so I returned to Rome from Korea and elected to join the Rome Center. I was out in Korea a second time later on their invitation. It was a terrific thing to them, you see, to have their famous temple preserved. I suggested to the authorities that I would like to visit Korea again to see the temple. I wanted to see the temple again. Oh, fine. Do you know, believe it or not, they had built a road up to the temple by this time, a broad road up the mountain. The temple had been painted vermilion. It was quite appealing. TL Why did they do that? HP Tourism. When I was there on the first occasion there was so much interest in the country around and they were talking about tourism. I was saying it would be marvelous if you could have a little airport here, a helicopter or something to fly over and show these people the different sites and then show them the temple and so on. They have even got one of the earliest observatories there – they have got some awfully interesting things around there. So we worked out a scheme for Annexes 253
development of the thing. I had to do something when I was hanging around waiting there at the hotel and I did that quite seriously but they carried it too far. There was nothing one could do about it. The mystery seemed to have departed but the tourists were there with fine hotels and parking lots etc. etc. and they had cut down so many beautiful mature trees. TL How do you deal with all these problems then? It seems that every year you must have inquiries and requests from many, many countries. HP Well there is much you can do by being in touch with other people, by their visits or our visits to them or conferences and being able to send junior people, or engaging a series of practical and experienced experts. I was fortunate in the staff who joined in the early years. One such was Gael de Guichen. Do you know about him? TL No. HP Well, I was looking for a young energetic scientist. I heard about a Frenchman who was an engineer, who had been appointed to the Lascaux Caves. This was Gael but he was on military duty in the French army. I was in Paris and got in touch with him. He was allowed to come in uniform and see me in my hotel, the Louvre. He turned out to be just the kind of chap I wanted. So I appointed him on the spot. As soon as he had finished his army career he came along. He brought a new kind of expertise to the Centre and was very active and has now travelled I think more than any of us. He can handle people in a diplomatic way and won’t take no for an answer if he knows a thing ought to be done however he is an excellent lecturer in French and English. TL So when he joined your staff it consisted of …it was growing larger at this time? HP Yes. I don’t remember how many people were there but it had an excellent senior scientist, an Italian called Giorgio Torraca who was soon appointed as my Deputy Director, we were taking in volunteer workers. We had acquired by that time a library. I wrote to Gulbenkian and said I would like to have £20,000 to start the library. I got it. We had a volunteer librarian to begin with. Now, of course, we have trained librarians and documentists as well and everything is computerized. It has grown into a very useful conservation library covering many languages. TL In conjunction with ICOM, when did the conservation meetings start? HP The ICOM meetings were earlier than the Rome Center and ICOM was at first a little suspicious of the Rome Center, although Georges H. Riviere and Paul Coremans, both from ICOM were keen to see it established. They were both on the appointments committee for the Directorship of the Rome Center, but it was a little difficult to draw a definite line of demarcation between the different interests. We in Rome went out of our way to encourage ICOM to continue to exist because they didn’t have the annual income that we had at that time from our members. They weren’t allied to UNESCO in the way that we were. So we formed a conservation committee which we called the ICOM Conservation Committee and a joint Directory Board to plan working programmes and conferences. TL When was that? Do you remember? Annexes 254
HP About 1963, I suppose. We worked very, very closely with ICOM, of course, all the time, and it has been of extreme value to me for I have attended many of their conferences and met so many fellow professionals in that way. I learned so much from them. TL They hold a conference specifically for conservation every three years? HP Yes. ICOM does and so does IIC. TL I know one has been in Venice, where have the others been? HP Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Paris and in many other countries most in Europe. TL Mrs. Plenderleith has joined us. We are discussing the Florence floods and in particular a letter which Mrs. Plenderleith wrote to her sister which chronicles the problems they encountered during the flood. This paper, this is the one you wrote on the Florence floods? EP Yes, on the Florence flood. I don’t like it but you can read it sometime. It was a letter I was sending to my sister to tell her about the journey. TL So you had been in Scotland and were delivering those samples from the National Gallery, London to Rome. HP I was taking them to Rome. They eventually landed up in Rome. TL They survived the flood? HP Oh, yes but they were thoroughly flooded en route! They had all been painted out in different media, you see. We wanted to find out which of the ones would withstand humidity and which wouldn’t. We never thought of dipping them in water. We had other ones which had been tested at lower humidities but this had to be tested at a higher humidity. By George it was. In Florence the cars were floating by and my own car was waterlogged too, filled right up with water. I just wondered if I should throw the samples away. But they weren’t mine so I thought they might as well remain in the boot of the car and so I left them in the car in a garage. The car was brought down to Rome eventually and there they were. So I said to my Deputy, G. Torraca, ‘These darn things are in the car still!’ He said, ‘That’s fine, let’s have them.’ By now they had been exposed to dry air but they had been soaking for a matter of two or three days in the water! G. Torraca published all the results from these – quite useful. They were mounted on an aluminum frame made with angle aluminum. Plaster blocks were fitted in so the thing didn’t warp or disintegrate, all had survived. Fortunately the labeling was all done with Indian ink. So that survived too. TL Next is the Van Meegeren controversy. How did you come into this? HP Well, a constantly recurring problem in museum laboratories is the question of fakes and forgeries so it wasn’t really a surprise to be asked to cooperate in the inquiry into fake paintings in Belgium. These were alleged to have been done by a certain Mr. Van Meegeren. They were supposed to be fake Vermeers. Mr. Rawlins of the National Gallery of London and myself were invited to go across there and look at the paintings in question. That is how it all started for us. TL This was in 1948? Annexes 255
HP Yes, 1948. We were to talk with those working on the paintings and act eventually as referees in the inquiry. Well, we did that and incidentally I impounded some of the samples and brought them back to London to that we could work on them ourselves. The samples turned out to be glyptol resins that were mixed with oil and had been used as binding media for pigments. The paints worked quite well with the brush when we ground mixtures in linseed oil. It dried quite well and when we heated it, we found that it developed a beautiful crackle just like an old master painting. That was actually the technique which we exposed in the end and which on his later admissions had been used by Van Meegeren. The story is very well known how he was a struggling artist and was most upset when he found the critics were not very kind at the end of the year at his exhibitions. He decided he knew a lot more about techniques than they did and he would fool them; a very human reaction, but of course it was an illegal one. He played about with these things and found that he could not only make a pretty good imitation of ancient crackles but could paint in the manner of Vermeer and give his paintings quite a good representation of the crackle that one expected to find in a genuine Vermeers. He took care to discover what pigments Vermeer used. He discovered moreover that Vermeer had been credited with painting a number of holy pictures that had never come to light. So he decided that he would paint the holy pictures. TL They came to light? HP Exactly! Well I had seen all the subjects he invented. One of them was The Disciples at Emmaus. Just at the outbreak of the war, he produced this thing when people had sent their equipment away and didn’t really have the opportunity to do an x-ray or micro-graphic study. He produced this thing. He was very successful in getting it on the market as a genuine Vermeer. It was bought by Von Bonigen, a millionaire collector for a vast sum of money. He bought more than one of Van Meegeren’s paintings. Well to pay a sum of money like that for a painting like that without preliminary scientific inquiry was of course, very hazardous and would be unthinkable today. They didn’t have the x-ray equipment. But it was all safely away in war repositories and they felt they couldn’t perhaps lose a prize, if as seemed likely to the buyers that the painting was genuine. TL It was war time? HP They didn’t want lose the chance of getting this painting. So it was bought for the Boymans Gallery in Rotterdam. Van Meegeren got ten or eleven of these pictures sold one way or another. Then he sold one to Goering Will; that was a mistake. This was discovered eventually and Van Meegeren was charged with trading with the enemy. That was the beginning of the end and the excuse for collaring him in the first place. Later inquiries developed from this. TL So it wasn’t that they suspected him. It was just that he was selling to the enemy. HP Well, they may have suspected him but you have to have some reason for taking a person into custody. He must have broken the law in some way. Van Meegeren expostulated first of all of course but without avail and finally claimed that it was fake anyway because he had painted it himself and he didn’t do anything wrong in planting a fake Old Master on Goering. It wasn’t a genuine Vermeer. Well, few would believe him to begin with. It was examined by the experts and there was a Annexes 256
considerable shadow of doubt about the technique, the style and even the subject matter. TL The experts were art historians or restorers? HP Art historians plus Dr. A.M. de Wild, for example, a chemist and picture restorer: Dr. Froentjes who was a detective, I guess in the police lab: a micro-chemist and a forensic scientist. These people worked very hard. They collected all the faked Vermeer paintings together at the police lab in the Hague and they borrowed the genuine Vermeer, little girl from the Mauritshuis, you must know it the little girl with a tight blue turban with yellow shawl with a blue border wearing earrings looking rather frail or delicate. They placed this Vermeer among the fakes and just don’t know why anybody every bought a Van Meegeren fake. These fakes looked so awful as compared with the genuine Vermeer. They had all the same characteristics – the eyes were too big, and too heavy – many other things. TL Now your job was as referee? HP Yes TL What exactly does that mean? You reviewed all the evidence that the restorers and art historians had and from the police laboratory as well? HP Yes. I went and saw the man himself in prison. When I was there, the judge was there too. The judge, an ideal choice, sympathetic and scrupulously fair and quite unbiased. TL But Van Meegeren had admitted that he had faked them so people were trying to prove that? HP He admitted that he had faked them in the first place. In the second place he shouldn’t have sold anything to Goering. Then there were all the other paintings which they felt were wrong but couldn’t prove to be false. And Dr. Coremans was working actively in his lab in Brussels all this time to prove that they were wrong and spending a lot of money on this work. As you will understand the authorities are often sure that a crime has been committed but are unable to convict unless they have absolute cast iron evidence and this is often not easy to obtain. Well I went to see the man in prison. They brought him up from his cell, a large room with a long table in front of the windows. I won’t make this longer than I need. When I went in there this little man was screwed up like a spider in one of the chairs. A frightened little man, his own worst enemy as I believe he drank far too much and took drugs and things. It was said of course he was suffering because he couldn’t get any of these things in prison. When we went in there, I remember saying, ‘This will never do. You come across here.’ I picked up his chair. He hopped off and followed. I took him round and put him with his back to the light because the light had been shining on him and he was just sitting blinking curled up as I say like a spider. He sat in the chair again. I smoked in those days, I regret to say, and I took out a cigarette and bunged it in his mouth and lit it. It put him at ease and he relaxed. Then Coremans and I said that we had been given the job of looking at his things and we had come to the conclusion that so and so and so. Was it not true that he had used glyptol resins and that he had done this and that? He puffed away at this cigarette and said, ‘Yes, of course, it’s true. I did it this way.’ And he showed us step by step how it was done. His response was perfect as we had discovered his process there was Annexes 257
nothing to gain by denying anything. He was so touched by being treated kindly, he would have done anything. Well that was quite satisfactory. The judge was pleased. We went back to the legal headquarters and when there I said there was one thing I would like to see. Whether or not this man has faked these things, I would like to see his own work. He is an artist in his own right and his pictures have been condemned. Are they as bad as all that? Has anybody connected with the trial seen them? Oh, no they hadn’t seen them so I said I would like to see them. So, yes they would arrange that. I had a telephone call to our hotel later that evening they had heard in the court from Mrs. Van Meegeren. She had said she had been in contact with her husband and he had told her that we had been kind to him. He wanted her to invite us to come out and have a drink at this house on Friday evening and look at his own work. So we went along there, Coremans, Rawlins and me on the Friday evening and found him living in the Herrengrat, a luxury mansion. Mind you, he was a very clever rascal. Realizing what was coming he had divorced his wife having given her all his money- everything. He divorced his wife but went on staying with her. So they couldn’t touch his money and they couldn’t touch his home. After discovering his house we rang the bell and the door opened and there as the little gentleman, who was before sitting in the chair all screwed up, now immaculately dressed. He took our coats and hats and showed us into a long gallery. A wonderful house, you’d have to be a millionaire to live in such a place and on the left, on one side of him was a Tudor table and a mass of bottles of things. He turned around and said, ‘I needn’t ask you what you’ll have Dr. Plenderleith.’ There were all the whiskeys all lined up. So we sat down to drink and had a pleasant chat. I noticed, looking out of the sides of my eyes, one or two paintings hanging there. They were all outsized paintings. You would get a canvas about 30’ by 40’ and full size man’s face taking up the whole canvas. It was a kind of bizarre thing to see paintings done that way. The man obviously had something unusual about him. There must be some medical name for it. I asked him in the course of our discussion how he began what was doing and how did he paint. Oh he’d let us see but he had a grumble about the way he had been treated by the critics. He said they didn’t know a damn thing about painting. All they knew about was the picture – whether it pleased them or not, whether I was a popular or not. They didn’t know anything about media or pigments or conditions of canvases or anything like that. They were completely ignorant regarding technique. TL In many ways he was right. HP He was quite right. Well, we had a drink or two. We yarned away for a while. Then one of us made an excuse that it was time to go. His wife came in and was introduced to us – a nice person. She disappeared and left us. He was showing us out to the coat places. He asked us if we were satisfied and I said no, I did hope to see some of your work and I haven’t seen it. I have only, by chance, passed certain pictures on the wall which you must have hung there many years ago. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I forgot.’ He was leaning back against a door and he turned a handle and opened a door and at the side was a great block of switches. He ran his fingers along the switches and there in a blaze of light was a hall, quite a large hall with a musician’s gallery at the far end. The walls were decorated with gigantic pictures – the biggest pictures I had ever seen in my life. At one end was a picture of someone sitting at a concert grand piano – a full concert grand, you know the size of that? I don’t know how big the glass was if it was glass in the frame. This pianist had flowing hair like Beethoven and was absorbed in his music. The sky Annexes 258
was filled with ghost’s kind of wraiths of Chopin, Brahms and all the rest of it. The idea being that the music was inspiring the player and while he was thinking would you believe it? And this great picture of the great composers; a marvelous idea. It was all executed on white paper with the stump of a cigarette. Yes, he smoked cigarettes. He smoked continuously. He would draw on the white paper sort of arabesque in cigarette ash. The whole thing you could have hoovered off the wall. An incredible chap and an incredible picture. TL About 20 feet by 12 feet? HP Perhaps not quite so large. There were tall vertical pictures of things done in the Japanese style – reed warblers fluttering among the grass over a pond and the reflections. Kingfishers, storks and things like that. At least that’s the impression – that’s how I remember it. These hung along the sides of the hall. But it was the big picture at the end that got me. I have since seen reproductions of these because there is a published book; very clever things but quite ephemeral. TL He appears as someone who was criticizing the materials and techniques of the time period and then to use cigarette stubs on huge white pieces of paper… HP I know an experimentalist. Well the upshot of this was, of course, that I produced a canvas without any pigments at all using only this stuff that made crackle on it. Coremans found zinc white among Van Meegeren’s white lead. Yes, there were little things like that – they all added up. Dr. De Wild made his contribution, too. Dr. Froentjes did a lot in the police lab. It was enough to condemn the man but as I had suggested the poor fellow was now terribly ill. TL How old was he? HP It is awfully difficult to say. I would have said, he was prematurely aged, of course. He’s died now but I would have said a little younger than I was. A little younger, but not much. He might have been a great deal younger… TL How old were you Dr. Plenderleith? HP At that time? 1947/48 – about age 50. They had the trial and it was long and drawn out. It was complicated by the fact that Van Bonigen, who was a wealthy collector, didn’t want to be thought of as having ever bought a fake. All sorts of obstacles were put in the way and in fact, he threatened Coremans with all sorts of horrible things if he did not stop working on the fakes. TL He didn’t want to have his paintings proved to be fake? HP No, that was it. It was awfully difficult for in the end they had to be condemned. That was an awful shock to everyone particularly because soon after the war The Disciples at Emmaus had been put for exhibition at the Boymans Gallery and the public walked around that picture with brass bands playing and Persian carpets on the floor, and all this ceremony. After the trial was concluded I went along to the Boymans Gallery and said I would like to see Van Meegeren’s’ Disciples of Emmaus but it wasn’t on exhibition. So I said ‘Why not? That’s a perfectly good Van Meegeren.’ They wouldn’t accept it as a Van Meegeren and they wouldn’t show it. It’s been on exhibition now but it takes a generation for people to recover from that sort of shock. The man, Van Meegeren, was given some trivial sentence in the end. I think he was given a year in prison. He died before he left Annexes 259
the prison. It was a tragic finish. I must say in many ways I was full of sympathy for him. It was very sad that it should have happened in this way. TL At the same time, back at the British Museum your staff was exactly what? HP My staff was growing. After the war I got two very good people; one was Dr. Moss. Dr. Moss had been on special war work. He came along and although he wasn’t a museum minded man at all he had a good scientific approach to problems and was a very hard worker. TL He was a chemist? HP He was a chemist, yes; a meticulous chemist. TL Where had he been before? Was he with the government? HP Yes, he was with the government. He settled down and took over a new section that we had built at the back. He worked with Mavis Bimson a young girl, who was immediately interested in porcelains, especially English porcelains; working all the time on x-rays, crystal structure and micro-photograph. That was one team. Then Moss brought in Barker. Barker was a young scientist who was only too anxious to begin a research project and be put in a corner and left to get on with it. During the war he had been sent from one department to another on special work and being a married man with a family he just hated it. He was pushed around all the time. So he wanted a steady job. Just about that time we’d been talking about the possibility of setting up a radiocarbon lab. So I talked to him about the possibility of this and found that he was immediately interested and he seemed exactly the type for that. He was the kind of man who was keen in the first place and who had already done some physical work related to the project, handling radioactive substances. He realized that in order to go ahead with this he would have to build a steel ‘castle’ around his equipment to cut off certain interfering rays and then also a shield of paraffin wax to cut off other rays. And he would have to be proficient in glass blowing; it was a big job. He realized that he wouldn’t have an adequate lab for a long time and that he would have to make practically all his own apparatus. TL You can make all the apparatus for radiocarbon dating? HP Yes, if you are able to make all the glass apparatus at any rate. I found that Barker already was an expert glass worker. TL It’s a huge undertaking. HP Indeed, yes. You should have seen the way he did it. His work was solidly turned out. He could make anything. Once I broke a measuring cylinder. I was using it for making a certain diluted mixture of glycerin and water and couldn’t replace it at short notice. To my surprise Barker made us a new one apparently without any difficulty and in the course of an hour. The first thing Barker did in preparing to make his radiocarbon apparatus was to clear all our old glass tubing out of the lab. He must have a certain kind of glass in the lab and not have it contaminated with any other kind. He made his apparatus after overcoming all sorts of difficulties even as he found interference waves coming from a hospital nearby and that was unhealthy accommodation to work in and most unsuitable. It was all that we could offer him. TL He was in the same building as you were in? Annexes 260
HP Yes, he was in the building immediately beneath Moss’s lab. He stuck it and worked away at first without an assistant and lab. He stuck it and worked away bitterly and then got in touch with the Cambridge labs and got some help from them. He got some promising results. Then things went wrong, one gremlin after another but he dealt with them all the time. Eventually he got the process established and it gave repeatable results. It was a remarkable achievement. He was a very great asset to us and was well known for his dogged and meticulous works. TL Is he still with the British Museum? HP No, he has now retired after promotion to be Keeper of Conservation in the museum following the retirement of Dr. Werner who had been my immediate successor as Keeper of the Laboratory. TL When did this new department begin to form? Initially there was your research department that did everything with larger additions to staff. Did the department begin to branch? HP Yes, when I was there the building was bombed and later partially repaired, extended and then a plan made for rebuilding. Then we took over responsibility for the little conservation labs that were attached to the different departments in the museum and made ourselves responsible for the most intricate parts of the restoration work as well as training in conservation and giving advice for all the restoration work. The staff increased in Dr. Werner’s time to between 30 and 40. The splitting of our department in two was an operation carried out after I had left and after Werner had left. One half came under Barker, the Department of Conservation and the other under a new scientist, the Department of Scientific Research. And I believe from all accounts that the new arrangement has been found to be very satisfactory. I think it has been going extremely well but I think it is absolutely the most unscientific thing to do. They were solving a local problem by sacrificing what was really a growing concern. TL So there are actually two divisions in the museum? HP Yes, there are two laboratory departments, scientific and technical, one devoted exclusively to research the other to conservation. TL So, it is similar to the National Gallery of London. HP Yes, in a sense but the BM Dept of Conservation is responsible for the photographic department as well and even, I understand, for a section in making replicas in plastic of museum objects for sale to the public. TL When did Robert Organ come? HP Organ came shortly after Barker but about the same time. He came from telephones. He’s a very interesting case, a very interesting case, indeed. He’s a meticulous worker. He was given the new lab extension that I talked of that had been built originally by a foodstuffs manufacturer. It was quite a nice lab, well lit and all tiled in white but perhaps rather small. We put him in there. He immediately got hold of a whole lot of Dexion (shelving material) and converted the place into a laboratory that was able to do about three to four times the amount of work that was possible before that, because he could now work on different levels…doing things mechanically and so on. He was a great success and Annexes 261
a very able man eventually he was given his own assistants and encouraged to take over training activities. We had people from the University who were trained by him. Then we had Mr. Herbert Marion, already a specialist in his own right. Mr. Marion was older than any of us. He had already written the standard book in metalwork accepted by the Goldsmith’s Company and was the most patient man on earth. We got him on to the Sutton Hoo stuff? You know all about the Sutton Hoo? TL Yes. HP When Sutton Hoo arrived at the museum in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of war the first thing I did was to soak all the wood in water and glycerine, tie it all up in polythene bags and make sure it was put in a safe place in the lab in the underground until such time as we could excavate it again at the end of hostilities. At that stage, Mr. Marion came along and we adopted him as an attaché and he worked specially on the Sutton Hoo material. He was as I have said the most patient man. He would come in early in the morning and be quiet as a mouse all day; one almost had to look into his room at night to see that he hadn’t forgotten to leave. His powers of concentration were outstanding. He would have worked all night. He was an extraordinary man. TL What was his background? Was he a chemist? HP No, he was a teacher of sculpture and of metal works in Durham School. He was attached in some way to the Goldsmith’s company. He was a very fine metal worker in his own right. He wrote his book in the sort of language of Cennino Cennini about the thing as if you were doing it yourself. The publishers were bringing out new editions of that book after 40 years! The Goldsmith’s Company used to give it as a prize every year to their best pupil. He was a dear old chap, you would have loved him. TL It sounds as if the laboratory suddenly expanded. Did the attitude of the museum change? HP Oh, yes indeed, the attitude of the museum changed completely with the Second World War because one acquired a new stature in being responsible for training fellow members of the staff in technical matters, telling people how best to deal with this, that and the other of the many new patterns that confronted us. They found that there were all sorts of ways in which we the scientists and technicians could solve problems for them. Problems that were simple for the lab but often too much for the specialist in medieval Latin or cuneiform or the like. When the war came, we got on very well with them because we all worked very hard together, we had to. We worked terribly hard all the time. They were always anxious to help but realized that the brunt of the work came on the practical people whether they were officer grade or whether they were carpenters. If you were working with people in a pleasant sort of way, they work well too. So we had a feeling that we had come of age by that time. In the meantime conservation studies had developed enormously; I was one of those who had brought Dr. Tony Werner across from Ireland. He went to the National Gallery in London as Research Chemist. He came from Dublin of course where his father had been a Professor of Chemistry. We had scientific meetings of the National Gallery’s and I found him a most capable worker and attractive person. TL He was a chemist? Annexes 262
HP Yes, he was a very good chemist. It ran in the family. When the chance came I planned to get him transferred from the National Gallery to the British Museum and have him on my staff and I managed to wangle that. In fact, when I left the Royal Academy I got him, made him professor of chemistry as my successor there too. So tradition was being carried on, you see. It wasn’t a wangle, I am convinced. It was the best thing I could have done for both of the two institutes, the British Museum and the Royal Academy. TL So at this time you were teaching at the Royal Academy? HP I was giving talks on materials – artist’s materials to students at the Academy School, and to such academicians and associates who could attend, on pigments and medium ground for canvases and panels for painting and good conservation work. The art students had their own idea about how to paint, but they enjoyed the training and made and found their own pigments just as the old masters used to do. Tony Werner passed the job on to Stephen Rees-Jones who is still I believe in office as Professor of Chemistry at the Academy. I had twelve years of this. It was fun. First of all, one got tickets to all the private views and to the celebrated annual dinner and could visit the studios. One got to know the artists and talked to them. They had a nice dining club – it was extremely pleasant. TL Did you find the students very receptive to your teaching? HP Yes, most were enthusiastic and although attending lectures was optional there were few absentees. For painting grounds we used sail cloth and masonite and they formed these with various types of ground. We used jute, sometimes for studies. We got excellent sail cloth, a tent cloth however, very cheaply and used rolls of it. The students liked getting that as it saved them a lot of money. Canvas was expensive. There was a lab studio down at the Academy where we all worked together. I don’t know what it’s like now. Professor A.P. Laurie and, I am sure that you have heard me mention him before, my predecessor there. TL He had taught at the Academy. HP Yes. TL Were all these people at the British Museum working on individual projects? HP You are referring to the British Museum Lab Staff now? Yes, in the British Museum lab we tried to get them to behave in a responsible way in keeping the records of their work for future use and reference. I emphasized how important it was to get into the habit of making a little sketch of the museum object when it was submitted for treatment to supplement photography. If you make a sketch you are making a very careful study, gathering; obviously important should the thing turn out to be of doubtful authenticity. And if you make a measured sketch and you have a photograph too you can often come to conclusions about the better course of treatment. By the time you are finished you know your subject pretty well. Well the only person who would return to make a sketch was my secretary who demurred also to begin with; she wouldn’t touch it. But then when she saw me at it myself she began fiddling about too and found she could do it reasonably well. As she got keen she became very proficient. When I retired I left things to her and she eventually built up a great file of card sketches which have been of great value. Then she took some lessons in oil painting and painted some pictures. Her first painting in oils was accepted by the Academy and she sold it Annexes 263
for £250.00. What was more was the man who bought it inquired about who had painted it and had she any more? Yes, she had one or two more and would he like to come along for some coffee. He and a lady came along and they bought another one. This price was put on by the advice of the Academy because she didn’t really want to sell things. She wanted to keep them and perhaps have a collection and have a one man show or something. Well, the girl has just gone from strength to strength. The last thing I heard of her was that in her first year she had sold £750.00 worth of paintings. TL That is incredible. HP Well, I think so. In regard to her paintings, I have only seen a few. You may have some of her paintings at the Tate Gallery. TL What is her name? HP Sylvia Schweppe; she is a very talented girl and I think it all comes from me making her do these little drawings just at the appropriate time before her retiral from the Civil Service. TL You should take a cut in her sales! HP I told her she was my best pupil; that was an exaggeration as she was my only one! Now as you will gather we are talking about 1958/59, the period immediately preceding my retirement from museum and from the Academy. The museum laboratory had become a big institution and an enlarged, very diverse one. We were responsible not only for our big laboratory building but for all these little technical laboratories that had been set up in the different departments of the museum. It was a difficult job keeping contact with them all. It was a different job buying chemicals for them; getting equipment etc. but they are all well equipped now. Tony Werner saw to that. He was very successful in coordinating the scientific work and in obtaining official support. TL Werner took over after you had left to go to Rome? HP Yes. He took over as Keeper. TL Then he left? HP Yes, he worked away quite happily for a while, then he eventually decided to go. Of course Organ had left before this for Toronto where he did a spell in the museum laboratory before taking up his major work in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. TL Oh, I didn’t realize he had gone to Toronto before Washington, DC. HP Yes, he went to Washington from Toronto. TL He wasn’t in Toronto very long then. HP About a year. TL During this time you were also deeply involved in IIC? HP Yes, oh, that was nothing. That didn’t mean much work. It was a discussion twice a week with Rawlins. But in the meantime I was on international committees. Not the League of Nations, that was gone. But with what they now call UNESCO. We had meetings all over the place discussing various things. Eventually the idea Annexes 264
caught on and all self-respecting museums were beginning to build laboratories. People were coming along who could do research in their own right. As they got the equipment, each did some research. We made great headway. In Germany, Kuhn, for example, well, it would be tedious to mention names but you can get some idea of the proliferation by reading through the IIC lists of fellows of the period. TL Dr. Kuhn? He’s coming to a conference in Cambridge on microscopy. HP I understand that he’s probably coming. But I was told he had gone into industry and abandoned museum work. TL Oh, that’s a shame. HP If it’s true it’s unusual because when you get involved in this kind of thing, you really are involved. You are really interested. You forget about the money. Forget about everything but the job. That’s not only my opinion it’s to be seen all around you. TL You mentioned earlier in the tape that you went to New York, to the New York University Center. This would have been when they had started their conservation program? HP Yes at or near the beginning and now who is Director, Mr. Keck? TL Yes, Mr. Keck came from Brooklyn and he started the program. HP Yes, he started the program. Caroline Keck didn’t come. Not much. Then, of course, they eventually went to Cooperstown when they had finished their stint there. I went for a term I think to NYU. I gave them talks on various things. TL So you went when Mr. Majewski was head of the program? HP Mr. Majewski was there certainly but not yet appointed head. He followed Mr. Keck, I think. TL So you went when Mr. Keck was there? HP Yes, and an Australian lady lecturer. She left. She was very good. TL During this time, your involvement with the United States was more as a lecturer or were you helping to set up certain labs and give them advice as to what they should be looking for and considering in regards to conservation? HP I was there primarily as a lecturer after, on several occasions, being a consultant to NYU and to the Metropolitan Museum under the Directorship of J. Rorimer to Williamsburg, Winterthur, Richmond, Va., etc. TL A consultant in object conservation? HP Yes, the Metropolitan had collections of gold objects that had not yet been put on exhibition. Some were considered perhaps to be a bit doubtful. I did some work on that with Murray Pease, and with Kate Lefferts. Lawrence Majewski was doing similar work later. Then I went to Williamsburg once or twice on various occasions. TL This was when Williamsburg was just being constructed? Annexes 265
HP Yes. I had to find out what were the safest procedures for conserving many types of objects and again at Winterthur it was a question of discovering if anything was wrong, what was wrong or what might be in conservation techniques. My job was then to act as a trouble shooter. I enjoyed this very much. Everyone was very kind and helpful. TL So the facilities were there and you just went around and said, ‘You need this or that.’ HP Yes, you must do this or leave that like that, or you need this or that kind of laboratory with such and such equipment. At Williamsburg I had more or less the feel of the city as it were for a while. I was greatly amused because the first time I went there I was walking down the street and to my amazement someone shouted, ‘Dr. Plenderleith, Dr. Plenderleith.’ Here was a man in plush trousers. Would I come back because I had passed the place where they were working on books and they had my book and they wanted especially to show me that they used the leather dressing I had devised for use at the British Museum? Did I mind? Of course, I didn’t mind. I would come and see what they were doing. When I got there I found the place alive with the people with cine cameras and so on. They took photographs of me standing beside a bottle of the leather dressing. Somebody else pouring it out, or something like that. It seemed so weird or funny to me but the folk were all so kindly and sincere. On another occasion at Williamsburg (1972, I believe) I was put up in one of the houses beside a restaurant. I was with William Barrow who had done so much for the preservation of paper at Richmond, Virginia. My third and last visit to Williamsburg was for the conference devoted to conservation matters in 1972 right before America joined the Rome Centre. I had been lecturing in Washington about Florence the previous year and was invited to return and give a talk in Washington about the problems of Venice. That was when I met Peter Powers. He, of course, was very helpful in advertising the importance of the Rome Centre together with Ms. Helen Burgess and the USA soon after became a member. TL Who is Mrs. Burgess? HP Mrs. Burgess was the wife of the first American Ambassador to NATO and she was chief officer of American women in the services during the war with the rank of General. TL So she eventually became a heavy supporter of the Rome Centre. HP Oh, yes, oh, yes. Quite a part of the organization. We seemed to see things the same way. She had no time for people that were, you know, stuffed shirts and not doing their job and pretending to be more important than they were. She being in a key position herself, was quite accustomed to having people try to conceal things from her. She was very quick to see through anything like this and that’s why she was the general in charge. TL She was the general in charge of the WACS? HP That’s right. Her husband was a particularly fine man. He was very quiet and very efficient and friendly. TL From Washington you went to Winterthur? Annexes 266
HP I went to Winterthur, yes. I went twice. TL Yes, once as a trouble shooter for Charles Montgomery and the second time to make a speech at the newly completed Winterthur. HP Yes, once as a trouble shooter the newly completed Winterthur lab. I saw Mr. Charles Hummel around then and I must have met many of your acquaintances. I think I probably met Mrs. Stoner at that time, did I? TL She did not come until two or three years ago. HP Oh, well, I couldn’t have met her then. I went about that time to see the Barrows outfit for preserving books at Richmond, Virginia. TL Were you invited in any of the scientific Committees in the United States? HP Don’t think so. No, it was just in a friendly way. I remember going across with my usual tourist ticket for the Metropolitan and had to return to Rome, I had to come back. I couldn’t stay. But Jim Rorimer who was Director at that time insisted saying that he had a collection of gold objects that he wished me to examine. I said, ‘Well, really, I must go back, my ticket is dated.’ He said, ‘Let’s have your ticket. We’ll do something about that.’ He transferred to a first class ticket and eventually I returned in the greatest luxury.
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Annex II: Personal Reflections on Conservation Research in Scotland: 1984-2008 – Historic Perspective
Ingval Maxwell1
Devolved responsibility in the care of Scotland's important built heritage is nothing new. On 31st January 1827 George IV ordered, by Royal Warrant, that the Office of Works for Scotland be established in Edinburgh. This was to be staffed by a Head and Principal Officer of the Establishment, a Clerk with a competent knowledge of building concerns and accounts, a Clerk of Works or Labourer in Trust, and a Junior Clerk or messenger. Its responsibilities were described as being the care and superintendance…[of] all of Our Royal Palaces and other Buildings, our property in Scotland, the Register House, all Buildings appropriated to the several Courts of Justice, and all Houses or Apartments occupied by the Revenue Departments or by Establishments maintained at the Public Expense, the maintenance whereof is now provided for either out of our Civil List Revenues in Scotland, or the Revenues appropriated to the support of the Courts of Justice or out of any other Public Funds whether granted by Parliament or otherwise Significantly, the Office was to be independent of the Office of Works in England and was controlled by the Barons of Exchequer based in Edinburgh – although the London Treasury retained the power to approve the appointment of staff. Whilst independent in theory, clearly the Treasury could exert considerable control over the Office should it consider it appropriate! The same Royal Warrant also nominated a professional as its Head and Principal Officer with the appointment of Edinburgh architect, Robert Reid. Prior to this initiative the maintenance of the Scottish Royal Palaces, and other relevant structures, was the responsibility of the Master of the Kings Works. This appointment was to the Royal Household, as it had existed for centuries, with a parallel position in England. In 1829, two years after it was formed, the first ideas of a policy on the restoration or preservation of ancient buildings in Scotland emerged from the Office of Works. This was primarily as a result of the interest taken by Sir Walter Scott in Falkland Palace, and the Magistrates of Dunfermline regarding their ruined historic Abbey. Robert Reid was commissioned by the Barons to produce a report on the Abbey, which, in opposing any form of restoration, stated I conceive that in all cases of this kind, restoration of embellishment should not be the object, but that repairs, on such decayed and ancient edifices ……. should be executed for the purpose, and with a view, solely to their preservation and in effecting that object, the less appearance of interference with their present state and construction the better. In essence, such a significant key statement of policy in the preservation of ancient monuments in Scotland has lasted for the greater part of two centuries with only some minor variations. The death of George IV in June 1830 also led to the loss of independence of the Office of Works in Scotland. Although a new Warrant from William IV was issued to Robert Reid in
1 Please note that all views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the organisations for which he has worked. Annexes 268
December 1830 the control of the Office of Works in Scotland was soon to be transferred to Whitehall. This was brought about when William IV gave up the Crown Lands in lieu of an enhanced Civil List. That move enabled the Whitehall Parliament to vote on the issue of all funds required for public buildings. Consequently, in January 1831 the Treasury proposed to the Barons of Exchequer that Robert Reid should report to the Surveyor General of the Office of Works in London, General Stevenson, and this was accepted. As a result, the four-years of devolved independence enjoyed by HM Office of Works in Scotland came to an abrupt end. This Scottish/Whitehall relationship regarding the responsibilities for the care of ancient monuments in Scotland remained until 1978, with a variety of Whitehall departments including the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, the Department of the Environment, and the Property Services Agency (PSA) exercising overall control of the budget and provision of inspectorate, architectural, technical, industrial and custodial staff. However, the first attempt at creating a devolved government in Scotland led to some changes when the then Scottish Ancient Monuments Branch of PSA’s Directorate of Scottish Services was transferred to the then Scottish Office. The Inter-Departmental Transfer: 1978 This transfer was not without problems as the PSA was, in itself, under threat at that time. Although the Scottish Office fielded a comprehensive team to oversee the transfer, the PSA chose to present minimal information to the Scottish Office regarding the transfer and only fronted a retiring Principal administrative officer to deal with the negotiations. On the transfer being agreed, staff were given little or no choice in the offered options. As a result, staff in the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, and professional, technical, industrial and custodial staff in the Ancient Monuments Architects Branch, with minimal administrative support, found themselves under new masters who had little immediate knowledge of how they worked or what they did. An example of the sleight of hand played out during the transfer, it only became evident at the start of the next summer growing season, when hitherto up to 60 casual employed staff were hired for ground-care duties, no covering funds for the task had been passed over – casual staff were not considered to be ‘on complement’. It also became apparent that the administratively orientated Scottish Office had little understanding that the Branch actually did physical work on the ground and, as a result, the transferred staff were regularly informed that what they needed was a good dose of administration! This was to be metered out in significant amounts, especially during the Thatcher Government era when over an eight-year period, some 14 different reviews, scrutinies, audits and other market testing investigations were initiated on the Ancient Monuments Architects Branch structure and staff. From 1984 onwards each investigation systematically produced a plethora of recommendations – each aimed at streamlining, integrating and reducing the size of the staff complement. It is perhaps not surprising that, under such circumstances, little thought could be given to developing a conservation research strategy, let alone carry any out. At the point of transfer some 600 (mainly industrial and custodial) staff were involved but, reflecting the meagre beginnings of the 19th-century Office of Works in Scotland, only five full-time specialised conservation architects were responsible for a considerable range of activities across the face of the country. Under a Superintending Architect a single conservation architect, supported by an out-stationed technical team of four or five, managed each of the four Ancient Monument Areas – South; Central; North and Edinburgh. Whilst the Edinburgh Area architect had responsibilities focused on Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and its Royal Park, and out-stationed Glasgow Cathedral, the three other architects covered the rest of Scotland. Broadly speaking, this meant each architect having the day-to-day working responsibilities for over 100 Guardianship Ancient Monuments, a remit to produce Architects Advisory Reports on Scheduled Ancient Monuments and (as a professional service originally provided by the PSA to the Scottish Office) Historic Buildings Council Grant-aided cases in Annexes 269
their area, along with reports on the occasional listed building in support of Listed Building Consent considerations. With considerable travelling involved across the country throughout the year, and each individual frequently producing over 50 advisory reports per annum, this was a not inconsiderable workload. The individual benefit, of course, was the vast range of experience that the diverse range of project and advisory work created. Following the creation of the Historic Buildings Council for Scotland, and the start of the Historic Buildings Repair Grant program in 1953, the administration of giving grants and the inspectorate workload in support of listing and listed building consent cases had always resided in the Scottish Office. On the point of transfer of the Ancient Monuments Branch from PSA debate rained as to whether or not the Branch should be accommodated alongside other advisory architectural staff within the Scottish Development Department but, eventually, the decision was taken that it should be accommodated as an independent administrative unit. This interim situation existed until 1984 when the independent Historic Buildings Branch staff and Ancient Monument Branch staff were amalgamated into a new unit – the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Directorate. This was a logical step as the Ancient Monuments Branch Architects had always provided the advisory architects reports in support of the Scottish office Historic Buildings Council grand aided programme, and as operational working patterns had steadily grown closer. This amalgamation, and the emergence of the new Directorate took place at the same time that English Heritage became a quango – the fundamental difference being that the Scottish organisation stayed within the fold of Government, and remained directly responsible to Ministers. Prior to the 1978 transfer, scientific and specialist conservation support and expertise to Scotland was provided by English Heritage’s predecessor, the Directorate of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings (DAMHB), through the good offices of John Ashurst. But, increasingly, this fell away following the formal separation from PSA and as English Heritage developed its own more independent status. In-house Scottish specialist conservation activity focused on stone and paint conservation provided by a small team of conservator based in Edinburgh. Initially, the stone and structural paint conservation studios were located in a Nissen hut complex in the grounds of Newbattle Abbey to the south of Edinburgh – subsequently relocated in an industrial shed unit located in the west of Edinburgh at South Gyle. During the late 1950’s a National Trust for Scotland (NTS) easel painting conservation studio was located in the 17th-century Stenhouse Mansion – a building owned by the NTS. Originally only occupied by the NTS conservator, a "gentleman's agreement" had been negotiated with the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works whereby the work of that conservator would become integrated with official specialist provision. Consequently, the number of paint conservators was slightly increased on the basis that MPBW staff would undertake conservation work on the NTS easel paintings on a cost re-payment basis, with the Government renting the use of the mansion as their paint conservation studio. Brokered in the early 1960s, this effectively brought together Scotland's key expertise in easel and structural painting in an arrangement that lasted until 2008. The Creation of Technical Conservation, Research and Education Group: 1993 I joined the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works in 1969 and saw service as a Trainee Architect, a Conservation Architect with responsibility for the central third of Scotland, a Principal Architect with responsibility for all activities north of the Forth and Clyde and, in 1984, for the whole of Scotland as Assistant Director of Works and Professional Services Division (WPSD). In the latter role, I also acted as Architectural Adviser to the then Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland, the Historic Buildings Council for Scotland and the Scottish Conservation Bureau Advisory Panel. Consequently, from a practical base, I acquired a unique overview of the Annexes 270
practical, professional and scientific building conservation needs and requirements of Scotland in the period leading up to 1993. In consequence of the various studies and investigations undertaken by the Scottish Office leading up to and during the Thatcher Government period, in 1993 a significant reorganisation was to take place across the whole of the Scottish Directorate – ultimately becoming publicly explicit in the renaming of the organisation as “Historic Scotland". As part of these changes, the 1984 challenge to integrate the four Ancient Monument Areas into a unified WPSD was reversed with the creation of three new Ancient Monument Regions, each with its own autonomy under an administrator/director. Also as part of the changes, and with the job-description challenge of ‘improving the quality and standard of building conservation work in Scotland’, I was given the task of setting up a new group in Historic Scotland – Technical Conservation, Research and Education (TCRE). Although retaining management responsibility for the specialist stone and paint conservation staff based at Stenhouse Mansion and South Gyle, TCRE’s remit was launched with a limited budget and a small group of five headquarters-based staff. Recognising the impossibility of the task there was a need to set about capitalising on a previous wide range of Scottish connections in related scientific, academic, professional, educational, training, commercial and industry worlds whilst utilising the TCRE’s limited resources in innovative ways through partnership recognition and working. The 1970s and early 1980s experienced a great commitment to clean Scotland's buildings, the majority of which were built of sandstone. In consequence, it was increasingly recognised that a considerable amount of irreversible damage was being caused through the inappropriate range of techniques that were being used. As a precursor to the work of TCRE, in WPSD a multidisciplinary academic and scientific research team from the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen was contracted to investigate the issues involved. This culminated in April 1992 in a major international conference on stone cleaning and the nature, soiling and decay mechanisms of stone, and some significant and far-reaching informative technical publications. Setting the trend that TCRE was to follow in its research endeavours, this experience led to a strategic approach that identified the most significant and critical areas of practical concern and lack of knowledge in Scottish building conservation. Another set of seminal guidelines emerged in 1993 with the international endorsement and promotion of the ICOMOS Education and Training Guidelines. Setting out 14 key issues that all involved in conservation should be familiar with, these Guidelines provided another backbone of TCRE's activities. The adopted underpinning strategy was the need to ensure that there had to be appropriate levels of the correct ‘knowledge, skills and materials’ if practitioners and others were to improve the quality and standard of building conservation work through better specifying, using informed craftsman who, in turn, used the correct building materials. Also recognising that a broad range of relevant technical information and practical guidance for practitioners was lacking, a number of major Scottish research projects were initiated to help address the situation. These involved detailed investigations into sourcing indigenous stone, lime, sands and slate; chemical consolidants and water repellents for sandstones; evaluating limestone and building lime technology; cleaning granite and graffiti; controlling biological activity on sandstone; fire loss; controlling dry rot; vernacular building construction such as turf, clay and thatch; traditional window construction; graveyards; cast-iron structures; ferrous metal cladding; recording and non-invasive surveying techniques; and the corrosion of masonry-clad early 20th-century buildings. With limited in-house scientific expertise, virtually all of this work was contracted to a variety of Scottish scientists, academics and practitioners. In doing so, an additional benefit of developing a wide variety of associated conservation skills and abilities emerged at the various institutions that were involved. Annexes 271
Promoting the researched findings as they became available a series of major conferences were enabled, addressing lime technology in 1995 and 1998; traditional building materials in 1997; fire protection in 1998; historic graveyards in 2001; timber in 2002; and stone in 2008. The wide-ranging and intense research programme carried out from 1993 to 2008 also enabled the production of over 140 technical publications on building conservation topics. Working on the basis that scientific and academic research findings could be ‘translated’ into pragmatic advice for practitioners which, in turn, could be ‘translated’ into layman’s language, the volumes were promoted in a family series of Research Reports, Conference Proceedings, Technical Advice Notes (TAN’s), Practitioner’s Guides, and, specifically for the homeowner, INFORM leaflets. Produced, printed and distributed in-house, this material steadily gained increasing national and international acclaim for their relevance and applicability. Recognising that integration and collaborative working could also produce more relevant results with a greater likelihood of their uptake by participating partners, a number of ad-hoc Scottish conservation bodies that also served as peer-review panels for the emerging work were inaugurated. Whilst some only ran for the duration of the associated research project, others had a longer lasting life. Addressing conservation education and training needs, in 1994 the Scottish Conservation Forum in Training and Education was formed. This spanned craft, technology, industry and professional interests in the on-going exchange of information and researched developments in practical conservation needs. In 2000 the Scottish Stone Liaison Group (SSLG) was created as a pan-industry body with Ministerial endorsement. With the remit of developing and promoting the Scottish stone industry the SSLG became the inspiration for the consequential establishment of both the Welsh and English Stone Forum. In conjunction with the eight Scottish Fire and Rescue Services, and the Chief Fire Officers Association, the Scottish Historic Buildings National Fire Database, along with the Scottish Historic Buildings Fire Liaison Group was established, along with the Scottish Vernacular Buildings Conservation Initiative, and the Cemetery and Graveyard Managers Liaison Group – all of which supported the production of topic-specific technical publications and, where relevant, accessible e-based technical data and information. Promoting the emerging research findings from TCRE's initiatives into the wider domain, participation influenced the British Standards Institute sub-committees in the creation of British Standards on the General Principles of Conservation; Stone cleaning, and Slate. From 1996 an Occupational Standards Working Group was chaired in its development of the Level 5 National Vocational Qualification in Architectural Conservation and, in 2001, the UK wide pan- professional Edinburgh Group was established with the aim of working towards achieving a unified approach to Accreditation in Building Conservation across the UK building professions. This led to a further initiative with the creation and launch of a related self-training website – understandingconservation.org in 2006. In a country built predominantly of local stone it was inevitable that one of the TCRE’s main research themes was getting a better understanding of Scottish stone and how to use lime mortars more effectively. The latter requirement also occasioned the first significant International scientific research link for TCRE following a staff member attendance at a Eureka Eurolime Conference in Denmark in 1992. This impetus triggered the eventual creation of the Scottish Lime Centre, based in Charlestown, Fife, a few years later. TCRE’s International Links At the suggestion of John Fidler of English Heritage, I represented the UK on COST Action C5 that was initiated during 1993/1994. Under the title ‘Urban Heritage – Building Maintenance’ Action C5 involved 10 countries who were supported by the European Commission’s DG Research to define ‘at the community level of evaluation, criteria for determining the historical importance of buildings and neighbourhoods in our towns and cities, and the effectiveness of methods and techniques used in preservation work’. Annexes 272
Aligning precisely with TCRE’s approach, and as a result of much integrated international activity, the Action presented its final report in April 2001. The benefits of such inaugural international scientific and professional connections continued with my promotion, and chairmanship of the 22 countries strong, EC approved, COST Action C17 ‘Built Heritage: Fire Loss to Historic Buildings’. This Action submitted its final report in 2007, and a complete set of papers from its various International conferences, in 2008. Also building upon and promoting the success of the various TCRE initiatives, participation occurred in the Council of Europe Panel of Experts work from 1997; the Network of Historic Royal Residences from 1999; the lead up to and final drafting of the Krakow 2000 Conservation Charter; the American NFPA Cultural Resources Committee from 2001; the Euromed Heritage IKONOS Distance Teaching and Learning Consortium from 2001; the EuroSprinkler Forum from 2003; and the Republic of Ireland Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government Technical Publication Advice Series from 2005, and in the European Construction Technology Platform Focus Area Cultural Heritage (ECTP FACH), and Cultural Heritage Research Activities FP7 Consortium, from 2005.
Ingval Maxwell OBE December 2010
Annexes 273
Annex III: Obituaries
Annexes 274
Norman Brommelle
Norman Brommelle died in his home in Rome on 19th November 1989 having devoted forty years of his life to the conservation of works of art. He was born in Nottingham on the 9th June 1915 and after attending the High Pavement School there, a scholarship took him to University College, Oxford. His subsequent work in metallurgy and spectroscopy led him to the Research Department of British Aluminium at Chalfont Park. It was, however, his love of paintings which in 1949 decided him, at the age of thirty-three, to join the newly formed Conservation Department of the National Gallery, London. This bold change of career was an indication of the imagination and determination that he was to bring to bear on the problems arising in the conservation of art. Arriving at the Gallery soon after the controversy aroused by the exhibition of newly cleaned paintings, he found that the time had come for a rigorous re-appraisal of painting conservation. Having absorbed the literature, Norman became a practising restorer under the aegis of Helmut Ruhemann, then Consultant Restorer to the National Gallery. Amongst Norman’s major achievements were the lengthy and complex restoration of Pollaiuolo’s St Sebastian and Titian’s Noli me tangere. He turned his scientific training to good account by a critical analysis of the restorers’ materials then in use. It was at this time that Joyce Plesters, who was later to become his wife, started her own work in the Scientific Department of the National Gallery on the micro-analysis of pigments and the methods and techniques of the painters. The decisive progress made in the last thirty years in the stability of restorers’ materials and in the understanding of Old Master painting methods has greatly contributed to the consequent, relative, longevity of paintings, and is largely due to these pioneering efforts. An instance of this was the development of a synthetic picture varnish, similar in appearance but without the disadvantages of rapid deterioration of the hitherto used natural varnishes. In 1960 Norman was appointed Keeper of Conservation at the Victoria & Albert Museum. He always maintained that the management prudently did not reveal the magnitude of the problems he would find until he had signed up. He therefore faced a Herculean task in bringing the conservation of the great variety of artefacts, looked after by a staff of thirty, into line with scientific and rational attitudes to the care of works of art. It was his policy to appoint craft people of manual skill and artistic empathy to carry out the work, and to instil in them the basics of conservation science. Here he brought the same intellectual skills to bear on the subject that he had previously applied to thinking about the preservation of paintings. Since 1957, and virtually continuously until his retirement to Italy in 1987, Norman was the Secretary-General of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. It was in this international field that he was able to deploy his abilities to greatest effect. Over these years the membership of IIC has grown to over 3500. Apart from the journal Studies in Conservation and the publications of ‘Art and Technical Abstracts’, now published jointly with the Getty Conservation Institute, its strength lies in the internationally located biennial conferences, each held on a specific discipline within art conservation.2 These seminal events were inevitably organised by Norman, who devoted great time and energy to ensure their undoubted success. He vetted and edited the contributions, negotiated the events with local organisers, inspected conference halls and tried the menu for the official closing dinners. On his retirement from the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1978, at the age of sixty-two, Norman took on the task of Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute, a department of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, for the training of painting restorers. He was able to combine
2 Studies in Conservation and the proceeedings of the biennial conferences are published by IIC, 6 Buckingham Street, London WC2N 6BA. Annexes 275
the administrative work involved with lectures to students on the scientific basis of conservation and to instil in them an insight into the workings of the museum world. His devotion to and success in the circumscribed life of conservation was flavoured by a somewhat caustic view of his fellow workers and an ability to laugh at their and his own foibles, expressed in a constant stream of comic reminiscences, a mixture of prejudices and enlightened thought. This brief note allows no space for comments on his extensive collection of taped classical music, his energetic efforts to produce the perfect English lawn, or for his excellent home-baked bread. The museum world is fortunate that his love of art led him to devote his talents for its benefit.
Herbert Lank Hamilton Kerr Institute
Originally published in The Burlington Magazine, Volume 132, no. 1045 (April 1990), page 275 and reproduced here by kind permission of the publishers.
Annexes 276
A. D. Baynes-Cope
Pioneer in the study of globes Arthur David Baynes-Cope, chemist: born London 4 January 1928, Principal Scientific Officer, British Museum 1960-1984; died Stanton, Suffolk 27 December 2002.
A.D. Baynes-Cope was an expert in the field of document examination and conservation at the British Museum for over 20 years. He is best known for his pioneering work on the structure and conservation of globes and his small monograph, The Study and Conservation of Globes (1985), is still the main work of reference on the subject. More popular, but equally authoritative, is his Caring for Books (1981) which is deservedly still in print. David Baynes-Cope's father had served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, and his sister, Beryl, was one of the few WAAFs to be killed, in a bombing raid on an airfield in the Second World War. Baynes-Cope thus felt a special affinity with the RAF which was to come to fruition some years later when he worked with the authorities at the Church of St Clement Danes in the Strand on the environmental conditions for the display of the RAF Books of Remembrance in the 1960s. Born in London in 1928, Baynes-Cope was educated at the Stationers' Company School at Hornsey, and then at Trinity College, Dublin, from which he emerged with a degree in Chemistry in 1951. His first employment was at the Laboratory of the Government Chemist where his meticulous laboratory technique was put to good use on analysis for government contracts and on the safety of the carriage of dangerous goods at sea. One of his projects was a contribution to showing that Piltdown Man was a modern hoax by an analysis of the uranium in the ‘fossil’. In 1960 he transferred to the Research Laboratory of the British Museum with responsibility for the investigation of artefacts made of animal and vegetable products, where his head of department was Dr A.E. Werner, with whom Baynes-Cope had come into contact during his first year at Trinity. He quickly narrowed this field down to paper, in all its forms, and he was soon seen as the person of first (and last) resort for paper conservators throughout the UK with a technical problem relating to books or archives. His knowledge of chemistry was encyclopaedic, and many years ago a former colleague explained why; Baynes-Cope's father had gone blind at a relatively early age and he feared the same fate. Thus he set about ‘learning the textbooks’ so that if the day ever came when he could not read, he would still be useful to those around him. Many of his projects were, perforce, not for publication, like his work on the Vinland Map. When he first saw it he was sure that it was a fake, but could not prove it. It was left to an American team with the latest scientific equipment to show that the ink contains titanium, and is, therefore, modern. He also worked on the authenticity of a manuscript letter from the Prophet Mohammed to the Emperor Heraclius, which analysis proved was undoubtedly a contemporary chancery copy, and was involved with the original copy of the Magna Carta belonging to Lincoln Cathedral. When it was proposed to send this precious document on an ill-considered series of foreign exhibitions, Baynes-Cope was asked to advise on the safety of the document in transit between the various venues. He got to fly in a Vulcan bomber to the United States to monitor the conditions within a mock-up of the travelling case, thus fulfilling his dreams of flying with the RAF. For Hereford Cathedral he designed the suspension system now used to support the world famous Mappa Mundi and advised on the environmental conditions for its display. On a more mundane level, at one stage he spent many happy hours trying to discover the source of leaks of confidential management information into the hands of the British Museum Trade Unions by comparing the products of a number of photocopiers which may have been Annexes 277
used by ‘the mole’. He was particularly at home with this type of forensic work, as attending meetings of the Medico-Legal Society were one of his great pleasures, together with listening to light operetta and Radio 4. He eschewed television. For many years he was also a regular at the Thursday Discourses at the Royal Institution until he resigned after a disagreement with one of the senior officials. Baynes-Cope was a fellow of the Society of Archivists and of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a Liveryman of the Stationers' Company, a sometime member of the Architectural Advisory panel of Westminster Abbey, and a former chairman of the United Kingdom Group of the International Institute for Conservation. He was, however, most proud of his Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry and his membership of the British Standards working parties on the storage and exhibition of archival documents (BS 5454) and on the binding and treatment of books (BS 4971). Baynes-Cope was an old-fashioned chemist who, in many ways, was born half a century too late as when instrumental methods of analysis began to replace the classical micro-methods in the 1960s he soon began to be out of his depth. He clung to the techniques that he knew, but when the British Library was born out of the British Museum in 1973, the decision was made not to have a laboratory with a paper chemist on the staff, but rather to rely on contracting out scientific research. For 10 years Baynes-Cope applied his knowledge to other organic artefacts in the British Museum, but in January 1984 he accepted early retirement, sold the parental home in London, and went to live in a cottage at Stanton, near Bury St Edmunds, which he had purchased some years earlier. Here he honed his expertise as a maker of jams and pickles, especially pickled walnuts collected from his own tree. From Stanton he made regular trips to London and Copenhagen and kept in touch with a legion of correspondents to whom he was a firm, if sometimes exacting, friend and for whom he was a never-ending source of advice. ‘BC’ Baynes-Cope will be remembered as a kind man, but rather an eccentric one (he once attended a conservation conference in Hungary in the height of summer in a bowler hat and carrying a rolled umbrella). He was good company and enjoyed cooking for himself and for friends. He had a wicked sense of humour but was able to laugh at himself; in retirement he was granted a coat of arms, one of the devices on which was a sloth. He will be much missed by a large number of friends and ex- colleagues from around the world. He never married but tended his mother, who exercised a dominant influence over him, through a long widowhood.
Andrew Oddy Friday, 3 January 2003
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
Annexes 278
Sir Bernard Feilden
Dynamic architect who led the post-war conservation of British cathedrals
Bernard Melchoir Feilden, conservation architect: born London 11 September 1919; Partner, Feilden and Mawson 1956-77, consultant 1977-2008; Architect, Norwich Cathedral 1963-77; Surveyor to the Fabric, York Minister 1965-77; Surveyor to the Fabric, St Paul's Cathedral 1969-77; Consultant Architect, University of East Anglia 1969-77; OBE 1969, CBE 1976; Hoffman Wood Professor of Architecture, Leeds University 1973- 74; president, Ecclesiastical Architects' and Surveyors' Association 1975-77; president, Guild of Surveyors 1976-77; Director, International Centre for the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, Rome 1977-81; Member, Cathedrals Advisory Commission for England 1981-90; Kt 1985; married 1949 Ruth Bainbridge (died 1994; two sons, two daughters), 1995 Tina Murdoch; died Bawburgh, Norfolk 14 November 2008.
Bernard Feilden was an outstanding leader in the post-war conservation movement. St Paul's Cathedral, St Giles' High Kirk in Edinburgh, York Minster and Norwich Cathedral, all complex buildings, owe their continuing power to inspire in part to the courage and skill of Feilden and his partners in the firm he created, Feilden and Mawson of Norwich, London and Cambridge. Always alert to take expert advice, he drew in M. Bertrand Monnet, of Chartres and Strasbourg, to save the endangered spire of Norwich, and Ove Arup to secure foundations ingeniously inserted under the 16,000-ton central tower at York. In 1977 he became Director of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), in Rome, and even after his retirement he continued his world tours giving advice on outstanding buildings in Europe, Asia and America. There was a dynamism about Feilden's leadership rare in the world of ecclesiastical conservation. He excused his late arrival at a meeting of York Minster Chapter by explaining that the tides were adverse as he sailed his inflatable dinghy from the north Norfolk coast. His engineering skill in driving a vital fire-lift through the Wren staircase to reach the Whispering Gallery at St Paul's might lead to raised eyebrows in today's heritage world, but has certainly saved lives. When he lost his left eye in a shooting accident, he used the compensation to capitalise his firm. To surmount objections to his new Wessex Hotel at Winchester, a group of his supporters secured a special Act of Parliament. Feilden felt that cathedrals require a response today as courageous as that which the architects, workmen, citizens and church people had shown when their dreams rose to the skies in stone. He did not hesitate to say (to meet the criticism of purist conservationists): ‘The cathedral gives the orders’. By that he meant using the most modern methods, as the first builders had used the latest techniques of their day. Bernard Melchior Feilden was born in Hampstead, London in 1919 to a family proud of its public service. His mother was descended from engineers and architects, including the chief architect of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. His father, who won an MC in France during the First World War, later ran a ranch in British Columbia where Feilden received the scar on his face from his twin brother, who was careless with a pickaxe. Feilden was sent to Bedford School, where in those days he found the same ethos as in the units he joined before being commissioned with the Bengal Sappers. His Second World War service took him to India, Mesopotamia and Italy and gave him campaigning enthusiasm which enabled him to win confidence among others with leadership roles. When he set up his first office in the Close in Norwich, he rapidly made friends in the community, as a leading member of the Norwich Society, the Norfolk Club, a Mason, a fisherman, sailor and painter. Annexes 279
Feilden described his style as "moderate modernism". He shone as team leader of Feilden and Mawson, which became in the Sixties the largest architectural firm in East Anglia; he left much of the designing to his colleagues. The firm built hotels in Cambridge, Winchester, worked for schools at St Paul's in London, Bedford, Gresham's and Norwich and for the universities of York and East Anglia (taking over at the latter from Denys Lasdun in 1969). Feilden personally designed the elegant United Reformed Church in Norwich, and the firm worked on enlargements at the May and Baker chemical factory in Norfolk, as well as caring for 250 medieval churches and producing a conservation plan for Chesterfield in Derbyshire. But it was for his work at British cathedrals that he will be remembered. At Norwich after the Baedeker raids of April 1942, all the roofs needed restoration and the spire was in such danger of collapse that one recommendation was that it should be demolished and rebuilt. At York and St Paul's there was serious subsidence and in Edinburgh, the High Kirk of St Giles needed an entirely new floor. In every case Feilden's work, though controversial, has left these buildings a delight – as well as safe and secure. He always insisted on archaeological digs despite occasional protests from clients anxious about the cost. He never closed the buildings while the work was in progress and, especially at Norwich and York, maintained happy relationships with contractors and workmen. His skill in lighting and treating the surface of stone and mosaics was imaginative but restrained. Norwich's spire strengthened by concealed steel wire, York's exposed foundations carrying the tremendous tower and the west-end trumpets at St Paul's were among his most imaginative solutions to complex problems. For his cathedral work and his world conservation advice from Rome he was knighted in 1985. The depression in architectural work in the mid-Seventies led Feilden to retire from active control of his firm. He and his brothers restored the Elizabethan Stiffkey Old Hall, on the north Norfolk coast, with its five flint and stone towers and terraced gardens, creating four homes for the family. He continued to travel and sail and in 1982 published the major guide Conservation of Historic Buildings. He also served on the Cathedrals Advisory Commission for England. In 1986 he was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, for his restoration work on Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Feilden had been a great leader of his firm (with office outings and even its own croquet rules); he trained 15 architects, now principals of their own practices. And he created confidence among those responsible for cathedrals that they can be preserved at the highest standards for the good of the community around them.
Alan Webster (Alan Webster died 3 September 2007) Thursday, 20 November 2008
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
Annexes 280
Professor H. W. M. Hodges
Henry Woolmington Mackenzie Hodges, archaeological scientist and conservator: born Deddington, Oxfordshire 19 July 1920; Assistant Lecturer in Archaeology, Queen's University, Belfast 1953-57; Lecturer in Archaeological Technology, Institute of Archaeology, London University 1957-74; Professor of Artifacts Conservation, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario 1974-87 (Emeritus); married 1965 Jane Davies (one son, one daughter); died Burwash, East Sussex 19 May 1997.
H. W. M. Hodges played a crucial role in shaping archaeological conservation and the study of ancient artefacts. His academic career started at a point when conservation was barely defined and was only just beginning to emerge as a scientific discipline, and he was instrumental in establishing two quite separate conservation training programmes, one on either side of the Atlantic. He was an extraordinarily lucid and stimulating teacher, and some of the flavour of his teaching is captured in Artifacts (1964), his review of ancient technology, still an indispensable text. Henry Woolmington Mackenzie Hodges was born in 1920 at Deddington, Oxfordshire, the son of a GP. In 1938 he went up to St John's College, Cambridge, to study human pathology, but, as with so many of his generation, his education was cut short by the Second World War. He joined the Royal Naval Air Branch (later the Fleet Air Arm) and flew as observer in Swordfishes with the Atlantic Convoys, until he was invalided out with tuberculosis. From 1946 to 1949 he taught in a preparatory school but the TB recurred and it was during the year he spent in hospital that he became interested in archaeology. He went on to take a Postgraduate Diploma at the Institute of Archaeology, London University, which launched him on his future career. The institute had been founded by Mortimer Wheeler, who believed that teaching should include the practical techniques and skills of archaeology, so all students were given a basic training in conservation of archaeological artefacts in the Technical Department (housed in a dilapidated First World War operating theatre, and largely equipped from Woolworth's, and Gamage's Bargain Basement). In 1953 Hodges became Assistant Lecturer in Archaeology at Queen's University, Belfast, where he began experimental work in early technology and developed his interest in conservation. Then in 1957 he returned to the Institute of Archaeology as Lecturer in Archaeological Technology, and joined a team of eminent archaeologists, many of whom had worked with Wheeler, including Ione Gedye, who had initiated the teaching of conservation. This was a time of enormous change. The institute was about to move from its elegant but makeshift premises in Regent's Park to a purpose- designed building, with modern laboratories. At this time, too, conservation was becoming established as a recognised scientific discipline – the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) with its journal Studies in Conservation were founded in the early 1950s and Harold Plenderleith, Keeper of the Research Laboratory at the British Museum, had just produced his influential book The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art (1956). Until that time the conservation of archaeological materials had been largely the province of chemists (like Plenderleith) and highly skilled restorers who acquired their experience through apprenticeship. At the Institute of Archaeology, Gedye and Hodges developed a university training for archaeological conservators, which combined the study of chemistry, archaeology, and ancient materials and technology, with methods of conservation treatment, and extensive practical work on excavated and museum objects. This programme was attended by students from all over the world and, from the start, it was internationally recognised as an essential professional training. During his time in London Annexes 281
Hodges concentrated his research in the field of ancient technology, giving an entertaining and highly successful course of lectures every year to both archaeologists and conservators, and bringing together the results of his research in a number of papers, and in two major books: Artifacts and Technology in the Ancient World (1970). Henry Hodges's international reputation was firmly established and, in 1974, he was invited to Canada to become Professor of Artifacts Conservation at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. In London he had hoped to link archaeological conservation with training in conservation of easel paintings through joining with the Courtauld Institute; at Queen's he was able to achieve this link and work together with a sister programme in conservation of paper and paintings. He became an influential figure in the Canadian conservation scene, and from 1977 until his retirement he was Director of the whole Art Conservation Program at Queen's. His former students will remember him for his forthright views, for his wide-ranging knowledge, and for his ability to illuminate almost any topic by using impromptu drawings or pertinent and witty stories. There was always a touch of showmanship about Hodges' teaching. Throughout his professional life he had strong links with the International Institute for Conservation (IIC), becoming a Fellow in 1960. Between 1971 and 1974 he was Treasurer and established rigorous practices which ensured that IIC survived during the galloping inflation of the 1970s. He was Secretary General from 1988 to 1994, and when he retired he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of all his services. Despite the effects of TB which left him with only one lung (and he was never really healthy), he worked with enthusiasm. In his early years in London he was regarded as a particularly dashing bachelor, but he was essentially a shy and very private person, and when he married Jane Davies in 1965 he immersed himself with obvious happiness in domesticity and fatherhood. When he left Canada in 1988, he and Jane returned to their home in Sussex, and he spent his retirement enjoying village life and working in their delightful garden which slopes down to strikingly beautiful, and very English, views.
Elizabeth Pye Tuesday, 17 June 1997
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
Annexes 282
Harold Plenderleith
Harold James Plenderleith, museum conservator: born Coatbridge, Lanarkshire 19 September 1898; MC 1918; Assistant Keeper, British Museum 1927-38, Deputy Keeper 1938-49; Keeper, Research Laboratory 1949-59; member, Honorary Scientific Advisory Committee, National Gallery 1935-81, Chairman 1944-58; Professor of Chemistry, Royal Academy of Arts 1936-58; Director, International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property 1959-71 (Emeritus); CBE 1959; President, International Institute for the Conservation of Museum Objects 1965-68; FBA 1973; married 1926 Elizabeth Smyth (died 1982), 1988 Margaret MacLennan (nee McLeod; one stepson, three stepdaughters); died Inverness 2 November 1997.
Harold Plenderleith was Keeper of the British Museum Research Laboratory from 1949 to 1959, and first director of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property in Rome (now known as Iccrom) from 1959 to 1971. He had been recruited in 1924 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to work, under the direction of Alexander Scott FRS, in a small laboratory established five years previously at the British Museum to investigate the causes of the deterioration of certain types of museum objects during wartime storage in underground railway tunnels. In the 1920s he was involved with Howard Carter on the scientific analysis of finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun and in the 1920s and 1930s with the analysis and conservation of Sir Leonard Woolley's finds from the excavations at Ur of the Chaldees. His first 10 years of museum experience led to the publication of his book The Preservation of Antiquities in 1934. The Conservation of Prints, Drawings and Manuscripts followed in 1937 and The Preservation of Leather Bookbindings in 1946. Plenderleith's early years were difficult as Scott was rarely present and the laboratory was ruled by a former retainer of his called Ernest Padgham. However, in 1931 the laboratory was transferred from SDIR to the British Museum and Plenderleith became an assistant keeper; he was promoted to deputy keeper in 1938. In the 1930s international co-operation in the field of museum conservation was gathering pace, with Plenderleith playing an ever-increasing role. The League of Nations established an International Museum Office which organised conferences in Rome (1930), Athens (1931), Paris (1933) and Madrid (1934) to discuss the conservation of works of art, antiquities and monuments. Plenderleith was present at Paris and Madrid and was joint editor of a manual on the conservation of paintings which derived from these meetings. However, this co- operation came to an abrupt end with war in Europe. Even the first specialised journal devoted to this field, to which Plenderleith contributed several papers, Technical Studies in the Field of Fine Arts, published by the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, ceased publication in 1942. Harold Plenderleith was born in 1898, the eldest of four children of an art teacher at the Harris Academy in Dundee and the daughter of a medical missionary in New Zealand. He was educated at the Harris Academy, where he won the Dux Medal in his final year, and then went up to the University College of St Andrews in 1916 to read science. He left after two terms to go to Officer Training School, hoping then to join a Highland regiment. He found himself, however, gazetted second lieutenant to the Lancashire Fusiliers, who, as Plenderleith himself once said with a grin, ‘needed stiffening with Scots officers’. He served on the Western Front from 1 August 1917, being wounded in the arm by shrapnel at Ypres, and awarded an MC for a successful night raid across no man's land to knock out a pill-box and take prisoners. He returned to university after convalescence, but this time at University College, Dundee, and graduated BSc in 1920 and PhD in 1923. Annexes 283
Plenderleith was too old for war service in 1939 (although his batman from 1917-18 wrote to say that he would like to be his servant again), but he played a key role in saving the British Museum collections from bombing by working with the Director, Sir John Forsdyke, to get as much as possible away to safety in various country houses and a slate quarry in Wales. This time round, however, thanks to the work of Harold Plenderleith, much more was known about the optimum storage conditions for antiquities so that the "safe" destinations were not only safe from bombing but safe from the point of view of the environment. Plenderleith was later to record in a lecture delivered at the British Museum in November 1978 to mark his 80th birthday that ‘all the antiquities came back this time in perfect condition’. With the cessation of hostilities, Plenderleith became involved in the examination and conservation (by Herbert Maryon and Herbert Batten) of the finds from the Anglo- Saxon royal ship burial excavated at Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge, in August 1939 and then quickly ‘reburied’ in the Aldwych tube for the duration. Many of the objects have since been reconserved to better effect, but this does not diminish the contribution made to our understanding of the ship and the king who was buried in it which was made by this trio. One of their ‘mistakes’ was to restore the pair of silver-mounted drinking horns on the basis of measurements made on the skull of an aurochs, the prehistoric wild cattle of Europe, at the Natural History Museum. They were unaware, however, that the aurochs had undergone a dramatic reduction in size during the last glaciation, so that by Anglo-Saxon times the horns were more modest in size. The drinking horns have since been re- restored and reduced in size from a volume of 12 pints to four, with a consequent reduction in our admiration for the bibulous capacity of our forebears. In 1947 Plenderleith was invited by the Dutch government to be part of the commission of inquiry into the van Meegeren affair. Henricus van Meegeren had been accused of collaboration with the enemy for selling a painting by "Vermeer" to Hermann Goering, but van Meegeren's defence was that he had sold Goering a fake that he had painted himself. However, he also had to reveal that he had sold fakes to Dutch museums and collectors, so he was charged with fraud instead of collaboration. Some of those members of the Dutch art world who had been deceived refused to co- operate, and a panel of international experts was invited to inquire into how van Meegeren had managed to create the paintings. Plenderleith felt sorry for van Meegeren, giving him cigarettes during the interrogation, and himself failing to see how anybody could have been fooled by the paintings, which had been made to look old with a false ‘patina’ created using modern synthetic resins. Plenderleith was appointed Keeper of the British Museum Research Laboratory in 1949 and published The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art in 1956 (a second edition, prepared with A.E.A. Werner, appeared in 1971). He was one of the founding fathers of the International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and its first honorary treasurer (from 1950 to 1958). He became a vice-president in 1958, and President from 1965 to 1968. Under Plenderleith's vigorous leadership, the British Museum Research Laboratory branched out after the war into Carbon 14 dating and developed the scientific examination of antiquities by acquiring a battery of analytical instruments for the rapid analysis of metals, pigments, ceramics and gemstones. Plenderleith had, by this time, become an international figure, much in demand as a lecturer and consultant and it was no surprise, therefore, when he was invited by UNESCO in 1959 to be the first director of its new International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property in Rome. He spent 12 years there, developing teaching courses and travelling the world on advisory missions, until final retirement, to Dundee, in 1971. Harold Plenderleith was a big man with a broad Scots accent, of which he was proud. He was universally liked, and regarded as the doyen of museum conservators right up until his death. Annexes 284
He gave his services instinctively, being a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Gallery for 46 years and its chairman from 1944 to 1958, Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1936 to 1958, and Rhind lecturer at Edinburgh in 1954. In 1987 he attended the Jubilee Conference of the Institute of Archaeology of London University and its proceedings were dedicated to him, as were those of a British Museum conference in 1988, the year in which his former colleagues around the world celebrated his 90th birthday with a manuscript book of reminiscences. As recently as November 1995 he was in Rome to receive a bronze bust by the sculptor Peter Rockwell, which will stand in the new laboratories at ICCROM which will bear his name, and in September 1996 he travelled to Edinburgh to receive a specially struck silver medal from the Conservation Committee of the International Council of Museums which was holding its triennial conference. Within the space of half an hour he received three standing ovations from 600 conservators, many of whom were not even born when he retired from the British Museum.
Andrew Oddy Thursday, 6 November 1997
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
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Professor Edward Hall
Edward Thomas Hall, archaeological scientist: born London 10 May 1924; Director, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University 1955-89, Professor 1975-89, Emeritus Professor of Archaeological Sciences 1989-2001; Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford 1969-89 (Emeritus); Chairman, Hon Scientific Committee, National Gallery 1978-84; Hon FBA 1984; Chairman, Goldsmiths' Antique Plate Committee 1987-99; CBE 1988; President, Council, International Institute of Conservation 1989-92; married 1957 Jeffie de la Harpe (two sons); died Oxford 11 August 2001.
Edward Hall was throughout his academic career a dominant force, nationally and internationally, in the development of archaeological science or ‘archaeometry’, an aspect of archaeology concerned with the use of scientific techniques in the study of archaeological artefacts and sites. He came to public prominence with his role – one he relished – in the 1988 carbon-dating tests for the Turin Shroud. As a DPhil student in the Clarendon Laboratory, he played a significant part in the start of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art which was established at Oxford in 1955 through the combined efforts of his supervisor, Lord Cherwell, and Christopher Hawkes, the then Professor of European Archaeology. From its beginning, he directed the laboratory in his inimitable fashion for some 35 years until his retirement in 1989. And in addition, prior to his retirement, he was instrumental in raising the funds required to endow a Chair in Archaeological Science, which has since been named the Edward Hall Professorship. Teddy Hall was born in London in 1924, the son of Lt-Col Walter D'Arcy Hall, a First World War MC and bar, later Unionist MP for Brecon and Radnor, and brought up at Shipton Court, a Jacobean manor-house in Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire. From Eton, where he excelled at the Field Game, he went into the RNVR (as an ordinary seaman) and then, after the Second World War, up to New College, Oxford, where he read Chemistry (an unusual course then for one of his background). He switched to Physics for his DPhil. He had always been fascinated by gadgets. With his elder brother Bill (who was killed in the war at Anzio) he had made a television set in the Thirties. In later life he constructed at his house what he boasted was the most accurate pendulum clock in the world. Sunk in 18 tons of concrete, it varied some 0.01 seconds in three months and was, he said, ‘the biggest waste of time anyone has conceived’. He had a particular enthusiasm for the design, development and application of new instrumentation, taken especially from physics and chemistry, for the analysis of archaeological and art objects. In the early years of the laboratory, he was directly involved in the development of special equipment for non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis and he built one of the very early electron-beam microprobes for the analysis of small samples taken from artefacts. Together with Martin Aitken, his long-term colleague at the laboratory, he also participated in the development of equipment for archaeological prospection, taking a special interest in the development of a proton magnetometer for underwater archaeology. Much of such equipment developed in the laboratory was subsequently made available to the archaeological science community through its production at his scientific instrument company, Littlemore Scientific Engineering Company (Elsec), based at his home in Littlemore, outside Oxford. In the late 1970s, he was quick to see the value of the revolutionary new method of radiocarbon dating then being developed (called accelerator mass spectrometry or AMS dating) and became fully committed to establishing the method at Oxford. In the early days of setting up the AMS facility at Oxford, he could be found crawling inside the accelerator tank, or discussing Annexes 286
design modifications, or even sweeping the floor. Such total involvement got its reward especially in his participation in the dating of the Shroud of Turin in 1988. Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, the Archbishop of Turin, had authorised the removal of samples of the shroud for testing by three laboratories: in Arizona, Zurich – and Oxford. Hall's laboratory dated its sample to between 1260 and 1390. The mix of good science, intricate instrumentation, the attention of the world's press, the ambivalence of the religious authorities and sheer importance of the outcome for so many people appealed to him immensely; he also took pleasure in, as he saw it, the debunking of any conviction that could not be rationally demonstrated. ‘There was a multi-million-pound business in making forgeries during the 14th century,’ he bluntly told a British Museum press conference. ‘Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up and flogged it.’ And again, ‘Some people may continue to fight for the authenticity of the shroud, like the Flat Earth Society, but this settles it all as far as we are concerned.’ As important as Hall's own research contributions was his crucial role in helping to establish archaeological science as a discipline that was valued by archaeologists and, at the same time, commanded the respect of scientists in other fields. At Oxford, he was involved in establishing the journal Archaeometry that has since become one of the two major international journals in the field, and in starting and sustaining the International Symposia on Archaeometry. Nationally, Hall was a prime mover in the setting up of the ‘Science-based Archaeology Committee’ of the then Science Research Council in the mid-1970s, a development that was only possible because of the respect in which archaeological science was held by other scientists. The resultant increase in public funding for university research in archaeological science helped in the progressive establishment of a large number of academic posts in the subject in the UK, so that work in archaeological science remains especially vigorous in this country as compared to the United States and other parts of Europe. As a collector himself of Chinese porcelain and antique clocks, Hall was extremely active in the world of conservation and museums. For many years, he was a member of the Scientific Committee of the National Gallery and a Trustee of the British Museum, in the latter case taking a particular interest in the Departments of Scientific Research and Conservation. In both these institutions, he provided the scientists and conservators with invaluable support in ensuring that their work received both the funding and recognition that it deserved. In all the many parts that he played, Teddy Hall will perhaps best be remembered for his enjoyment in demolishing pretentiousness with a few robust phrases, and for the refreshing encouragement provided to all who worked with him by his conviction that scientific research should be primarily motivated by a desire for intellectual fun. He was perhaps fortunate to have retired before such a view would lose all headway in the newer climate of accountability and cheese-paring. It was this energetic and free-spirited approach that was perhaps his major contribution both to research in the Oxford laboratory and, nationally and internationally, on the many academic committees on which he served. As a colleague, he was a pleasure to work with, he rarely interfered, and his judgement of people was shrewd. Above all he enjoyed life. His parties for the laboratory itself and for participants at the many symposia, seminars and workshops organised over the years at the laboratory were legendary; and often convened at a few hours' notice. One held after an International Workshop on AMS dating was still being fondly recalled 20 years later.
Robert Hedges and Michael Tite Thursday, 6 November 1997
Annexes 287
Teddy Hall enhanced the life of all who knew him, writes Sir Martin Jacomb. He was a true lover of life in the fullest sense, and this he conveyed to all around him. He was a big man physically and his personality more than matched this. With his wife, Jeffie, as his enthusiastic and alluring support, the hospitality at Beenhams was legendary. With an ample supply of the very best claret, stored in a wartime air-raid shelter in the garden, and cuisine to match (he was an excellent cook), the parties were frequent; friends were always willing to cancel other commitments to get to them. For the warmth of the welcome and the sense of fun was irresistible. But he was much, much more than a good host. His outstanding intellect made every conversation enthralling. His explanations of the mineral colouring of his amazing and highly distinguished collection of Chinese pots (started when he was virtually still a schoolboy) fascinated scientists and non-scientists alike. And the clocks were not only beautiful, but masterpieces with mechanisms which he loved to reveal to everyone, whether schoolboy or of his own generation. There was in fact always a bit of a schoolboy in him. His manufacture of scientific instruments was the basis of a serious business, but the creation of the most accurate clock on earth was the realisation of the schoolboy dream as well as serious science. The choice of his Oxford University laboratory (which was for many years financed by Teddy Hall personally) as one of those few entrusted with the analysis of the Turin Shroud fragment was a true accolade. He suspected what the answer would be, being a firm non- believer, but prejudice was never allowed to interfere with science. The pursuit of truth as revealed by science was a firm principle with him. He was a true original as well. It was he who started the hot-air balloon fashion when, years before anyone else, he created one of his own (Flaming Pearl). He made the sophisticated "iron lung" chair that kept Robin Cavendish, paralysed aged 28 by polio from the neck down, alive for 36 years. And who else would have acquired a genuine Enigma machine and learnt to send messages in code to another possessor. When dividing the cake with his mess-mate at Eton, Sir John Smith of the Landmark Trust, he measured the slices with a protractor. Scientific exactitude, a delicious cake, sharing life with a true friend and ensuring good-humour was always present: that is how I shall remember him.
The Independent, Thursday, 16 August 2001
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
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Joyce Plesters
Rosa Joyce Plesters, conservation scientist: born Studley, Warwickshire 13 April 1927; married 1959 Norman Brommelle (died 1989); died Citta di Castello, Italy 21 August 1996.
Joyce Plesters spent the whole of her working life, from 1949 to her retirement in 1987, in the Scientific Department of the National Gallery. If to some this is suggestive of the ivory tower or cloistered seclusion, it is also a demonstration that a talent allowed to grow and flourish in a relatively stress-free environment, free from oppressive management structures, can maximise the benefits for all. Her work on the technical examination of paintings was seminal and its effect was felt throughout the world of art history and paintings conservation. Joyce Plesters was 22 when she was appointed by Ian Rawlins, the then Scientific Adviser, and A.E. Werner, the Research Chemist, to join them as an assistant in their very small department. She had studied basic science at Royal Holloway College, London University, but had no specialised qualifications for the job since none existed at that time. She helped Rawlins with the X-radiography of the paintings – something he had started in the 1930s – but more importantly she embarked on her main theme, the examination of small paint samples by chemical microscopy. One of the aims of this research was to assist the restorers of the newly created Conservation Department to address problems in their work which could not always be solved with the naked eye alone; distinguishing between the original paint, the artist's own repaint and later restoration, for example. This was done both by the identification of individual pigments and, most importantly, by the study of cross-sections of minute paint fragments embedded in a transparent synthetic resin block. For many years her only apparatus was an 1895 Leitz microscope, but her extraordinary aptitude for this sort of work was promptly recognised and it soon became clear that the study of the technical aspects of paintings was emerging as a subject in its own right, and one which art historians could in future disregard only at their peril. By the time of her retirement she had further helpers and the best equipment, including an electron microscope, while parallel activities in the Scientific Department had also greatly expanded. It is a commonplace of certain art journalism to represent conservators and scientists in this field as white-coated soulless technicians blind to the beauties of the works beneath their scalpels. This would be a vile slander if it were not so obvious a caricature. It cannot be too much emphasised that Joyce Plesters loved the paintings. Her daily familiarity with them over decades and her minute study of the methods of the old masters could only serve to increase her delight at what they accomplished with the limited materials at their disposal. In the 1950s and early 1960s almost no other institutions in Britain, and few in the United States and on the Continent undertook this sort of work. Thus her help was often sought and analyses of varied kinds were undertaken for other museums and galleries. Increasingly invitations came from abroad for advice on individual projects or in setting up centres for similar work. In those more liberal days such absences were not thought incompatible with responsibilities closer to home. In 1966 and 1967 she helped to set up laboratories in both Venice and Florence for the microchemical study of paintings, following the floods there and the urgent conservation problems which resulted. She retained her connection with Venice for many years and it was probably Venetian painting of the 16th century which was her main love. The restoration of the church of the Madonna dell'Orto, financed by the Venice in Peril fund, together with its enormous paintings by Tintoretto, probably helped to form her particular attachment to and study of that artist which continued into the years of her retirement. Annexes 289
In 1959 Joyce Plesters married Norman Brommelle, who had been a restorer at the National Gallery and later became Keeper of the Conservation Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Norman also became Secretary-General of the International Institute of Conservation, so together they were a weighty presence in the conservation world. Norman could be rather touchy and sooner or later had fallings- out with many colleagues but Joyce never allowed this to affect her own relations with them. Uninterested in administration and promotions she despised those whose activities seemed only to be stepping stones on the career ladder. Extremely feminine, in her younger days she seemed to me much to resemble an often reproduced portrait sketch of Jane Austen, and like Austen too her wry good humour and sense of fun were much appreciated by her many friends. She was a wonderful cook and hostess and her reward came, perhaps, with the after- dinner conversation, from which professional gossip was not absent. Among her fund of stories she would sometimes recall with amusement an early abortive job interview with the Zoological Society, at which a kindly board member had cautioned her not to expect to handling the larger mammals right away. Smaller mammals, in the form of cats and dogs, were always a part of her home. In 1987 she retired and removed with her husband to an Umbrian farmhouse, on a hillside outside the small village of Morra, which they had partly ‘done up’ during summer holidays. It had a large piece of land attached which was to be terraced, landscaped and planted in the years to follow, activities to which they were no strangers having furnished no fewer than three houses and gardens previously. Sadly Norman died suddenly in late 1989 but Joyce resolved to stay on: she had no relatives in England and Italy was now her home. For six years – it should have been many more – she continued with the improvements, fortified by the help of many neighbours, both Italian and immigrant, and her house was a magnet for old friends and colleagues when they were in Italy.
John Mills Wednesday, 28 August 1996
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
Annexes 290
Westby Percival-Prescott
Pioneering picture conservator at the National Maritime Museum
Westby William Percival-Prescott, conservator and painter: born Cambridge 22 January 1923; Head of Picture Conservation Department, National Maritime Museum 1961-83, Keeper and Head of Picture Department 1977-83; married 1948 Silvia Haswell Miller (one son); died St Leonards, East Sussex 22 January 2005.
Westby Percival-Prescott was one of the last surviving members of a pioneering group of paintings conservators in the era after the Second World War that took the old empirical craft tradition of picture restoration and made of it an ethical profession. The most productive part of his career was spent at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and he not only created the department of conservation there, but also gave it an international prominence and influence far greater than might have been expected for a museum of such specialised focus. In particular, he and his colleagues became associated with research into methods of lining paintings – the common practice of backing old canvases with new canvas and adhesive, until then routinely applied whether necessary or not. By questioning the very basis on which we view the surfaces of paintings, he helped to achieve a fundamental shift in attitudes in conservators and curators alike. Born in Cambridge in 1923, Percival-Prescott came from an artistic family. His mother, Edith, wrote poems and plays, and his father, William, was a Nonconformist minister, whose postings took the family to Plymouth and then to Edinburgh, where young Westby's early talent won him a scholarship to Edinburgh College of Art, studying under William Gilles alongside such fellow students as Alan Davie and Jeffrey Camp. After wartime commissions to draw historic landmarks and bridges of the Borders, his skill and admiration for art drew him – inevitably, it now seems – towards London and a career as a restorer. In 1945 he was Andrew Grant Scholar at the National Gallery, where he returned a decade later, in 1954-56, to work on Nicolò dell'Abate's great canvas The Death of Eurydice. But his principal occupation in the years leading up to 1960 was a series of huge restoration projects with the Ministry of Works – paintings at Lancaster House and Hampton Court, the Rubens ceiling in the Whitehall Banqueting House (from 1947 to 1951), the House of Lords frescoes (1953, as restorer in charge) and, largest of all, Thornhill's Painted Hall at Greenwich, where he directed the work between 1957 and 1960. During this period he also found his voice as an advocate for the emerging profession, becoming active in the unions, speaking out against dubious practices in the Ministry of Works and striving to get higher standards recognised for restorers – or conservators as they were beginning to be called. After completion of work on the Painted Hall, Percival-Prescott remained in Greenwich. He joined the National Maritime Museum in 1961, establishing the picture conservation department in the abandoned Old Royal Observatory – and his use of the South Building for the conservation studio saved it from almost certain demolition. His career at the museum was highly distinguished. He continued to direct paintings conservation until his retirement in 1983, but also became Keeper and Head of the Picture Department in 1977. He organised a number of pioneering exhibitions: ‘Idea and Illusion’ (1960), about the art and symbolism of Thornhill's work; ‘Four Steps to Longitude’ (1963), about John Harrison and the marine chronometer; ‘The Siege of Malta’ (1970), researched and organised with his wife, Silvia Haswell Miller (daughter of A.E. Haswell Miller, the painter and former Keeper of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery), whom he had married in 1948; ‘Captain Cook and Mr Hodges’ (1979); and ‘The Art of the Van de Veldes’ (1982). Annexes 291
Alongside these formal, public aspects of his work in the museum, Percival-Prescott was developing a remarkable team of conservators up in their studio on the hill in Greenwich Park. Energised by his intense interest in the materials of old master paintings and his passionate views on ethical methods of conservation, his department built an international reputation. With a few others working at the Courtauld Institute in London, in the Netherlands and in Denmark, they identified the lining of canvas paintings as a neglected area of research and it all culminated in one of the most significant art conservation events of the modern era – the 1974 conference on ‘Comparative Lining Techniques’ in Greenwich. Colleagues flew in from all over the world to discuss a single topic – how to line, indeed whether to line paintings. To the world at large it might have seemed an obscure concern, but it was important both in the narrow sense of considering processes that could irretrievably alter the textures of pictures – and in the wider sense of when it is ethical for conservators to intervene at all. As a result, we suddenly saw works of art in a different way: we were prepared to tolerate imperfections in untouched paintings that hitherto would have been routinely eliminated. We spoke with new conviction of the integrity of untreated canvases, of paint surfaces that had remained unaltered since they left the artist's hand, of treatment methods that would leave the material essence of a work undisturbed. Percival-Prescott's contribution to this change of attitude was immense. His celebrated keynote lecture to the conference, entitled ‘The Lining Cycle’, vividly sketched the spiral of repeated treatment and deterioration that inevitably followed the first major structural intervention. He called for an international moratorium on lining – which, although it did not materialise, did have the effect of concentrating minds on the sea change flowing through the world of ethical conservation. He was an inspiring figure, brimming with enthusiasm and new ideas – a natural communicator and teacher, at ease with museum directors and students alike. His disarming assumption that everyone would share his latest interest was enormously appealing: encountering him by chance in an art gallery or ancient church, one would be rushed to a painting to have some particular phenomenon lovingly pointed out and explained. The sight of him expounding on the technique of the beautiful Bellini Baptism of Christ in Santa Corona, Vicenza, blissfully unaware of evening Mass going on all around him remains fresh in the memory. His whole professional life was devoted to examining, researching and disseminating all he could deduce from pictures in public galleries and private collections all over Europe, from old treatises and documents, and from the innumerable experimental samples he made himself. His various studios were crammed with a profusion of paintings, paint tests, copies of old masters, frames, rocks, pigments, oils, resins, waxes, gums, varnishes, solvents, easels, palettes, brushes, costumes and lay figures. In his seventies, he applied for and was awarded a Leverhulme research fellowship to bring all this material together and to document and record it for others to use, and he continued with this work – and with his painting and writing – right up until his death on his 82nd birthday. Percival-Prescott was a man of great charm – unfailingly courteous, softly spoken with a faint but unmistakable Scottish inflection, and always impeccably turned out. His diplomatic skills served him well on several key international bodies, most notably the International Council of Museums Conservation Committee on which he was active from 1975 to 1984. He was also involved with professional bodies such as the Association of British Picture Restorers, continually demonstrating his deep commitment to the training of young conservators and the raising of standards of practice. Unexpectedly, he also had a sense of humour that bordered on the subversive. His reminiscences of good and bad times up the scaffolding for the Ministry of Works could be wickedly funny. However, the occasion that nobody who saw it will ever forget was his performance at an International Institute for Conservation conference on the cleaning of paintings in Brussels in 1990. Annexes 292
His published paper was entitled ‘Eastlake Revisited: some milestones on the road to ruin’ – and a sober lecture on the technical failings of 19th-century artists and restorers was anticipated. But he arrived complete with props and costume changes – and, roaming about the stage, he proceeded to enact, with shouts and cries and melodramatic dying falls, the withering away by time, neglect and foul mistreatment of a family portrait. It brought the house down, but the serious points it was making were not lost on his wildly applauding audience. It remains a much-loved memory of an unforgettable, deeply thoughtful and altogether delightful man.
David Bomford Saturday, 26 February 2005
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
Annexes 293
Garry Thomson
Conservation scientist and author of 'The Museum Environment'
Robert Howard Garry Thomson, chemist and museum conservator: born Carey Island, Malaya 13 September 1925; Research Chemist, National Gallery 1955-60, Scientific Adviser to the Trustees and Head of the Scientific Department 1960-85; Honorary Editor, Studies in Conservation 1959-67; President, International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 1983-86; CBE 1983; married 1954 Noy Saisvasdi Svasti (four sons); died Tilford, Surrey 23 May 2007.
Garry Thomson's book The Museum Environment, first published in 1978 and revised in 1986 around the time he retired from the National Gallery in London, remains an indispensable general text for all those interested in the preservation of museum and cultural heritage collections. The Museum Environment brought together all then-current research on the effect of environmental factors, such as light, humidity, dust and pollutant gases, on the physical wellbeing of the world's cultural heritage, particularly those items housed in the seemingly safe surroundings of museums. It also provided guidelines for the protection of collections from these vicissitudes and lay at the core of the emerging field that in the 1990s would become known as preventive conservation. The book owes its lasting popularity to two factors: the lack of a subsequent attempt to summarise the field and Thomson's foresight in writing a science-based book that was readable for a general audience. Thomson realised that as very few museums employed scientists – a situation that has not changed greatly over the years – any book that hoped to have an impact in smaller museums must be accessible to conservators and curators under whose control these collections fell. Twenty years on, The Museum Environment is still regarded as the ‘bible’ of preventive conservation and has been reprinted every year or two since its first appearance. Born in Malaya, Garry Thomson was educated at Charterhouse and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read Chemistry. Immediately before joining the National Gallery he worked as one of the editorial staff of A History of Technology. Thomson arrived at the National Gallery in 1955, at a time when the scientific staff was being increased after a period of nearly 20 years – punctuated by the Second World War – in which only one scientist was employed. In 1960, when Ian Rawlins retired, Thomson was promoted to be the head of department, or Scientific Adviser to the Trustees as the post was then termed, a position he held until his retirement in 1985. Although Thomson's own interests lay principally in the effect of the display and storage environment, particularly that of light, on the materials in Old Master paintings, he was responsible for building the department's expertise in the analysis of pigments and binding media – techniques pioneered by his colleagues during his period as Scientific Adviser. With a small staff at the gallery, not every type of expertise was available, so Thomson also drew in leading physicists to work with him, including Professor David Wright of Imperial College and Brian Crawford of the National Physical Laboratory. The Scientific Department was accommodated in a series of less than ideal temporary homes – including what is now the café – before moving to purpose-built facilities in the north extension in the mid-1970s. Thomson was proud of the designs for the new department and, with colleagues, he published details in the first (1977) edition of another of his creations, the National Gallery Technical Bulletin, a publication that is still produced annually by his successors 30 years later. Annexes 294
London in the mid-1950s was a perfect place for Thomson to be at the centre of the newly formed International Institute for Conservation (IIC), an organisation with which he was associated for the rest of his career, as editor of its main journal Studies in Conservation for eight years and as a council member from 1969 to 1986. He edited the preprints of many of the early IIC congresses, including the first in Rome in 1961 and that in London in 1967 on Museum Climatology, which he was also responsible for organising. Beyond the museum world lay Thomson's family, home and a lifelong commitment to Buddhist practice and teaching. With his wife Noy Saisvasdi Svasti, whom he married in 1954, and their four sons, Garry Thomson lived amid acres of woodland at Squire's Hill in Surrey. His Buddhism may have had its roots in his Malaysian childhood, but was certainly a strong influence by his time in Cambridge where he established a Buddhist group. He was closely associated with the Buddhist Society in London (whose premises were conveniently located close to the National Gallery) for many years; his openness to different views and traditions paralleled that of the society. He served on the Council, and contributed regularly to the Society's Summer School. Thomson was an influential, tolerant and kind teacher, who brought to meditation practice the objectivity and openness of an inquiring scientific mind. The second of his two books on Buddhism, Reflections on the Life of the Buddha (1982) and The Sceptical Buddhist (1995), summarised his attitude, sceptical but not negative – willing to investigate, test and, if convinced, believe. The Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, with its active monastic community, was located not far from his home, and he not only taught the Pali scriptures at the monastery, but worked to increase the local community's acceptance of the monastic order.
David Saunders Monday, 25 June 2007
Forty years ago, conservation, both as a cause and as a departmental necessity, was not as highly rated in the national museums and galleries, let alone the outside world, as it is today, writes Nicolas Barker. Interest that had been growing was given sharper focus by the Florence flood in 1966 and its aftermath, and the need to keep up with the latest techniques and demands induced the heads of conservation in all the national collections to meet and discuss them. This became an informal group that met regularly, each taking it in turn to host the group. Our agenda was simple: there was more to do than any of us had realised, resources were inadequate, and the size and complexity of the problems was greater than our colleagues realised. Shared experience always helped, and Garry Thomson, our senior in age and even more so in wisdom, was particularly generous in sharing his with us. This ranged from the scientific consequences and treatment of environmental pollution to practical devices to solve a particular problem. He could explain these in a few simple words that nevertheless carried great authority. Always sympathetic, distinguished in voice and appearance, he gave our meetings a feeling of solidity that we did not always feel ourselves. This deserves to be remembered among his many other achievements.
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).
Annexes 295
Tony Werner
British Museum conservator
Alfred Emil Anthony Werner, chemist and museum conservator: born Dublin 18 June 1911; Lecturer in Chemistry, Trinity College, Dublin 1937-45, Reader in Organic Chemistry 1945-46; research chemist, National Gallery, London 1946-54; Principal Scientific Officer, British Museum 1954-59, Keeper of the Research Laboratory 1959-75; FSA 1958; President, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 1971-74; Chairman, Pacific Regional Conservation Center, Honolulu 1975-82; married 1939 Marion Jane Davies (died 1973; two daughters); died Hobart, Tasmania 21 January 2006.
Tony Werner was Keeper of the British Museum Research Laboratory from 1959 until 1975. As an organic chemist, he was most interested in the application of modern synthetic polymers to the conservation of antiquities and works of art. The Second World War had seen the development of many synthetic adhesives for use in armament production, especially for the construction of aeroplanes, and in the post-war period Werner sought uses for these to mend and consolidate decaying museum objects. His successful work on synthetic varnishes for easel paintings and his development of a still widely used wax polish for use on wood, stone and metalwork have been tempered by the less successful promotion of soluble nylon for consolidating fragile surfaces; a treatment that has not endured due to the increasing insolubility of the nylon with the passage of time and the resulting difficulty in removing it thereafter. These treatments must, however, be seen in the context of their time. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of the conservation profession from an era of pre-war craftsmanship to one of post-war professionalism when conservators began to take their place as equals alongside curators. In pursuit of this aim, conservators sought to apply the latest relevant scientific discoveries to the objects entrusted to them, which occasionally resulted, by modern standards, in too much cleaning and restoration. Two of Werner's more important projects at the British Museum were the recognition (with David Baynes-Cope) that the Vinland map was a fake and his involvement in the opening of the coffin of Archbishop Walter de Gray (died 1255) in York Minster on 3 May 1968. This operation was carried out at night in great secrecy as the tomb was undergoing restoration to make it safe and, as a consequence, a coffin lid painted with a full-length portrait of de Gray had been discovered. This was the one and only time that Werner got his hands dirty on an excavation. It was he who removed the episcopal ring from the right hand and arranged for that and the other finds – chalice, paten and crozier – to be conserved at the British Museum. He was born Alfred Emil Anthony Werner in 1911 in Dublin, the only son of Professor Emil Werner, who was himself the third son of Louis Werner, a portrait painter who had emigrated from Alsace to Dublin, via London, as a result of the Franco-Prussian War. In Ireland, Louis Werner had found plenty of commissions from the gentry, but spent too much time chatting to his subjects, so his wife started a photography business to provide mute subjects for the brush of her husband. Her youngest son, Emil, became so interested in the science of photography that he taught himself chemistry and was subsequently to become Professor of Chemistry at Trinity College. Tony Werner was educated at St Gerard's School, Bray, and at Trinity College Dublin, where he went in 1929 as a Junior Exhibitioner, and received a BA degree with first class honours in the moderatorship examination in experimental science in 1933, an MSc in 1934. That year the German government awarded him an Alexander von Humboldt scholarship and Annexes 296
he thus taught himself to speak German in order to read for a DPhil at the University of Freiburg, which he completed in 1937 with a dissertation on the viscosity of cyclic compounds. He was immediately appointed to a lectureship at Trinity College Dublin, becoming a reader in organic chemistry in 1945. Disillusioned with the progress of his career in Dublin, Werner applied for a post as a research chemist in the Scientific Department of the National Gallery, London, in 1948. He and Ian Rawlins, the Scientific Advisor to the Trustees, decided that they needed to expand the experimental capacity of the two-man scientific department and thus, in the absence of money to finance permanent posts, the National Gallery applied for two Nuffield Scholarships. These were filled by John Mills, subsequently to become the head of department, and Ian Graham, who later pursued a career of archaeological exploration in Central America, becoming a world expert on the Maya. Under Rawlins's supervision, Graham, a physicist by training, studied the penetration of solvents into dried oil films, while Mills, a chemist, nominally supervised by Werner, applied the new technique of paper chromatography in the characterisation of dammar resin. Subsequently, with Joyce Plesters, Werner developed microscopic methods for the scientific study of easel paintings and investigated new materials for their conservation. At this time, Plesters and Werner were involved in the unmasking of the Piltdown hoax by showing that the staining on the teeth was not natural. In 1954 Werner took up an appointment at the Research Laboratory of the British Museum as a Principal Scientific Officer, filling a vacancy resulting from staff redeployment following a serious personality clash between the then Keeper of the laboratory and his deputy, who was transferred to another museum. Werner was the best possible person to fill this vacuum and, with his easy-going manner, the troubles of the past were quickly forgotten. It was thus a foregone conclusion that he would become Keeper on the retirement of Harold Plenderleith in 1959. He also filled the part-time chair of chemistry at the Royal Academy from 1962 to 1975. Werner was much in demand as a lecturer and adviser, carrying out many overseas missions (usually on behalf of Unesco or the British Council) to countries including Pakistan (1961), Yugoslavia (1962), Syria (1966), Australia (1970), South Africa (1971), Egypt (1972), Romania (1973), and Bangladesh (1974). In the early 1970s, he was a member of the team of curators who negotiated the loan of a magnificent exhibition of Chinese archaeology to the Royal Academy. These foreign assignments were manna to Werner, who revelled in foreign travel, but his frequent absence from his duties at the British Museum did not go unnoticed. Outside the British Museum, Werner was closely involved with the affairs of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, being elected a Fellow in 1952, and serving as President from 1971 to 1974, and Vice-President 1974-96. He was awarded the Forbes Prize of the Institute in 1992 and Honorary Fellowship in 2001. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1958 and a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1963. Werner was also very active in the Museums Association, becoming a Fellow in 1959 and President in 1967. The latter term of office coincided with the appointment of Sir John Wolfenden as Director of the British Museum. The museum world was understandably disappointed that its top job should have gone to an ‘outsider’ and Werner was in the unenviable position of being president of an organisation that issued a press release condemning the appointment of his own boss. In 1974, Werner was invited to advise on the conservation needs of the countries of the Pacific. He recommended that a regional conservation centre be established in Hawaii, wrote a job description for its director, applied for the position, and was appointed. He thus retired from the British Museum in 1975 and spent the next seven years in Honolulu, a job that turned out to be not all to his liking as he was expected to raise funding for the centre. Annexes 297
Tony Werner published many papers and articles on his chemical research at Trinity College Dublin and on his work at the National Gallery and the British Museum, culminating in writing a Royal Institute of Chemistry monograph, The Scientific Examination of Paintings (1952), and collaboration with H.J. Plenderleith on a revised second edition of the latter's The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art (1971). In 1997 the British Museum dedicated to him the proceedings of a conference, aptly titled The Interface between Science and Conservation (edited by Susan Bradley). Outside his chosen profession, Werner was a convivial and entertaining companion. He liked fine wines, good food, the Times crossword, playing chess and bridge and, in retirement, croquet. His advice to me on my first official trip abroad in 1968 (only to Paris!) was never to trust the local water and therefore to buy a bottle of whisky at Heathrow and drink a generous measure every night to disinfect the stomach and induce sleep. In 1939 he married an opera singer, Marion Jane Davies, by whom he had two daughters. His wife died in 1973. He spent his retirement living half the year with one daughter in Tasmania and the other half with his elder daughter in England; a life of perpetual summer.
Andrew Oddy Monday, 20 March 2006
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent (www.independent.co.uk).