Behind the scenes of conservation

Join hosts Mel and Perry for a 'Small Island's Big Stories Session' on all things conservation and restoration.  Jersey Heritage Conservator, Harry Richards, talks about how the Conservation Team get involved in everything Jersey Heritage does, from working in the conservation lab, to preparing objects for exhibitions.

With a wide variety of work, Harry talks about some of his recent work, including restoration on a 150-year-old stuffed fox, a new object in the Jersey Heritage collection to objects owned by surrealist artist Claude Cahun.

Some of Harry's favourite moments include; carefully putting back together a 2,000 year-old amber bead which was in 40 pieces and rediscovering a glass jar full of dehydrated sea creatures. His work has also included working on a vandalised  ancient standing stone, putting it back together piece by piece so it can be returned to the landscape.

Support our conservation work by making a donation on our website Fundraising | Jersey Heritage

Transcript

The Jersey Heritage Podcast: The Small Island, Big Story Sessions

Behind the scenes of Conservation with Harry Richards

Perry (00:02):

Welcome to the Jersey Heritage Podcast,

Mel (00:05):

The Small Island Big Story sessions.

Perry (00:08):

You are listening to Mel and Perry. In today's episode, we are joined by Jersey Heritage conservator Harry Richards. Harry will be sharing his knowledge and experience of how our team look after our collection.

Mel (00:21):

Join us for this behind the scenes account of all things conservation and restoration. Welcome to today's episode, Harry.

Harry (00:30):

Nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me

Mel (00:31):

I thought it would be nice for you to kind of start with explaining to our listeners what you do.

Harry (00:37):

Okay. Yeah. Well there's two conservators here, me and Neil Mara. And we sort of care for the collections here as our sort of first and foremost. But that does extend to the sites as well. So it's our job to make sure all the objects that Josie Heritage has in their collection are well cared for and kept in the conditions that they're in or stabilized. So we sort of help prolong the experience of these things. We help things like last the test of time. Yeah,

Perry (01:05):

You guys are basically the, I always say it that sort of the, the back, the backbone of the whole operation. Like I actually don't think anything could be done without you guys and it's you. I don't know, there's something about like you guys as well is that you kind of are involved in everything. Like you have to be involved in everything. Yeah. And you guys know how to do basically anything <laugh> like, you know how to fix anything <laugh>. You could honestly, yeah, we couldn't do it without you guys.

Harry (01:32):

It, it's kind of a bit of a jack of all trades job sometimes. I know in some institutes, like conservators will work in a lab only, they would just be conservators. But it does extend to exhibitions, prep work, bit of carpentry, a bit metal work here and there. We do extend to like a lot of things, not just conservation. So it's, it's a really very job, especially Jersey Heritage compared to some other places.

Perry (01:52):

Yeah. You have to be like a polymath. 'cause You're the only ones really. You don't even have like a network on the island course rather than you guys,

Harry (01:58):

So,

Perry (01:59):

Yeah. Yeah. Well actually we were talking about that in the last conservation episode with Neil. Like, he just made that the mold for the, you know, to, to make a copy of the hor and stuff like that. And it's like, you know how, yeah,

Harry (02:11):

A lot of ton, the stuff we do will sometimes be like, not novel, but I mean, sometimes novel. I mean, the lifting of the hoard was novel. Yeah. It's the first time the ho's been lifted is one piece. But we do sort of make up as we go informed by our professionalism, so, yeah.

Mel (02:26):

So what are some of your favorite things about being a Jersey Heritage Conservator?

Harry (02:31):

I'd say it's the, like, the variety. It's it's not often that two days will be the same. There's a nice variety throughout the week. It's a lot of like site work, a lot of like lab work exhibitions are exciting 'cause it'll be a sudden change. There'll be prep work to do for exhibition and we'll have a new range of objects come in thematically for that exhibition that we'll work on. So it's a constant change. Nothing's ever the same. It's not a day to day to day. Everything's just like the same. It's, it's different all the time. And I love that variety. It really makes it exciting and interesting.

Perry (03:01):

So what, what are some of the recent things you've been working on then

Harry (03:05):

Recently? Well, we've been sort of in a post exhibition period, so we're going back to sort of lab conservation on specific things. I've worked on a stuff Fox. He's about 150 years old. He was originally in the old soldier in town, the old shop. And a few people remember him. We had him at Meet the Collections Day. So they actually saw him and Oh yeah, I recognize that Fox. He was in the old Soldier <laugh>. And he was brought back by CS Beson, who's the owner of the shop from South Africa when he fought in the World War.

Mel (03:37):

So, so this fox is from South Africa.

Harry (03:39):

Well, he originally Europe. He's, he is European fox and we assume that South African family had brought him there from Europe at some point in time. And then he'd been stolen from South Africa and brought back to to Europe again. Well traveled Fox.

Mel (03:52):

You must come up with some, like, you must, you guys must find some really interesting stories based on all these objects. 'cause Obviously part of what you're doing is looking after them, but you also have to do like, research into understanding what it is you're looking at. And so you obviously must have to find experts. You must be in touch with experts across the world

Harry (04:11):

Occasionally. Yeah. So a while ago one of the objects that belonged to Clark Hun sort of came up as a point of interest. There was a ceramic cat figure in a South American cat and we wasn't sure, we weren't really sure what what culture it was from. So I sort of looked into that. It just as a personal interest really, it was, it wasn't first and foremost I think it needed doing, but I was just intrigued by it. And I reached out to a few people across sort of South America and America to ask about sort professionals of in interest in south American pottery. And I got a few links and found out it was a require culture. Pottery Cat could be a few thousand years old. We don't know for certain yet. It's a bit of an open end, but yeah, it sort of involved. There's a university in Mexico that sort of be name about it. Someone from New York, an art dealer that emailed me about it. So a few contacts for that one. That's so exciting. That's still open-end. Yeah.

Perry (05:07):

And you have to be so knowledgeable, knowledgeable about so many different aspects of history and, and, and archeology in your role, don't you? Because you're always, one minute you're working on a bronze age, who the next minute you're working on, you know, a shipwreck from the 18 hundreds. So

Harry (05:22):

Yeah, it's, it's definitely helpful to have a general knowledge. It, it definitely helps having people in, in heritage who are really sort of well read in those specific subjects, but having a, having a sort of well-rounded, even if it's just surface level sometimes, just to know what something is when you find something. So it helps in, for example, if archeological finds come up just brief assessment of what they might be sort of helps inform how we'll clean something, how we'll treat something. So it's good to know generally across a range of histories what things could be. Mm-Hmm.

Perry (05:55):

Yeah. Yeah. And Harry's recalled a lot of archeological fines that come through from me. I'm the fines latest officer. And then a lot, if something needs, needs to be conserved, if it's if something's kind of at risk then you know, Harry's the first person I get in contact with. And also we've had lots of discussions about identifying things as well, you know, because you've seen so many objects that

Harry (06:15):

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I definitely get that like knowledge through, like proximity to other people. So a lot of stuff that Perry sort of knows about, I then it sort of rubbed off of me in interacting with him as fans, as an officer, you know, so there's a bit of shared knowledge there. It sort of helps out a lot.

Mel (06:32):

Sounds very bonding. Yeah.

Perry (06:33):

Really good. Honestly, there's probably no one else apart from Neil Harry that I can just sit there and talk to about like, socketed axes, <laugh> and like

Harry (06:42):

Copper,

Mel (06:42):

Very

Perry (06:43):

Beach, like bronze casting and stuff like that. I mean, you know, they're, they're probably the closest to

Mel (06:48):

The bromance strong. I totally get it. I can understand. Like, nerding out over these things is like massively unifying. What are some of your favorite things you've worked on? Harry? Ooh. Like if I had to say top peak jersey heritage, like object to work on. What's been like your favorite?

Harry (07:08):

I don't think I could pick one. Then give us all the top, they all sort of scratched the niches. I was lucky enough to work in Cat on two, the Coin Hoard. Before I even worked here, I was on placement as a student working with Neil at LA Hbe quite early on when that was found. Just sort of volunteering for a bit. And then I was put on placement again through university. Came back to Jersey to work with him once again, HBE. So it was a few years later and a few years after that I applied for the job and worked on the last sort of bits of cataloging on the coins there. So I've been involved in that for a long time, even before I worked here. Yeah, it's, it's been really great doing that. And specific object wise, what would I pick? I had the pleasure of putting together a an amber bead. It was a 2000 year old amber bead that was in rough condition. It was in a, a few pieces, at least 40 different pieces. And I had to carefully sort of piece this back together. It's been meticulous work, but I really enjoy sitting there and just working out how all the pieces fit together. Getting all the break edges sort lined up and just assembling piece by piece and glue back together again. So it's, it's one piece again.

Perry (08:16):

It's crazy. I don't know how you do it. I've seen that bead and you literally could never tell that that bead had ever broken

Mel (08:22):

Really? Well. You can't even like see the cracks or anything. How big

Perry (08:26):

The, I couldn't, I'm sure Harry could,

Harry (08:27):

I'd say maybe it's an inch diameter. Yeah. 25 mil maybe. So

Mel (08:31):

It's tiny. It's a

Harry (08:32):

Little thing. Yeah. Some of the pieces were pushed into position using a hair from my brush that I cut off.

Mel (08:38):

I mean, my silence is my mind just blowing right now. I'll

Perry (08:41):

Tell you, tell you, one of my favorite things that Harry's worked on is Sarte. Do Dolman. Yeah. the, the Passage grave there. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. So it was vandalized and there's, there's kind of an upright thin stone that some horrible people smashed the bits. Yeah.

Harry (08:57):

Really?

Perry (08:57):

And yeah. Yeah. I didn't know about that. Well, it's, that's the thing. So Harry and Neil put together, well you tell us about, about Oh yeah.

Harry (09:04):

I think the story went, there was a group of kids like showed up on bikes one day on scooters and I think they're having some sort of, I dunno, pie or something there. And they ended up smashing some things up and they smashed one of the standing stones in the doman into about, I'd say maybe 30, 40 pieces <laugh>. So we shut up the next day and just picked up every piece of loose stone in the area. So we, we just couldn't identify which, which parts of bits of the stone and which were just bits of stone in the area. Mm. And we had to sift through all those pieces and try identify the color of the stone against other pieces where lichen would line up with more lichen other pieces of stone and eventually piece together this piece of stone back together idea all the pieces together using epoxy resin. We asked building firm v and v for some tough stuff for that because this was a sort of a case of, usually conservation stuff has to be reversible, but in this case, one of the glued to be as strong as possible, it's got a standard test of being weathered outdoors all year round. So this was a permanent fix.

Perry (10:09):

And it's basically you, if you look at it, if you go out there and look at it, you actually just can't tell. Mm. If, if, if I hadn't told you that that stone had been broken, I don't think you'd, you could know

Harry (10:18):

It. There's crazy one little patch on it that is colored resin to make it sort of match the rest of it. A piece was missing, we just couldn't find it in the end. So we colored this resin using granite powder and now this like, and grow on it. I've been up to have a look at it and you can see little tiny bits of like, so it's starting to come back.

Perry (10:33):

No way. What? I mean, they can do everything. They're so cool. They're like wizards.

Mel (10:37):

So you must do a lot of work on site generally, like across the island then.

Harry (10:40):

Yeah, and that's the thing, we have to be pretty flexible. It's not just lab conditions all the time. As much as it'd be nice if it would be, but some things we can't bring back. So we have to be able to bring ourselves and our kit to those places and work in those places themselves.

Mel (10:54):

What else you got for us? Anything else?

Harry (10:56):

Anything else object wise? 

Mel (10:57):

Well, just anything, any kind of projects

Perry (10:59):

That What about the sea creatures?

Harry (11:00):

Oh, the sea creatures. Okay. So in the I guess you'd call 'em sort of bunker stores at the museum around the back we sort of clearing out stuff from there. Loads of loads of bits and bobs and just like kit equipment, things that had been piled up for years and years. And we found a little tray with glass jars with marine specimens. Like there was some shells there was some gooseneck barnacles and some seaweed. Most of 'em are dried out. So the Melde Hyde solution had slowly leaked over the years and they'd gotten dry and dry and dry as the level had gone down. So we had to take them all out, soak them again, sort of rehydrate them and then put them into steps, solutions of ethanol to get them rehydrated again and carefully redo all these little jarred specimens. And, and

Perry (11:49):

These were in the old like sa <inaudible>

Harry (11:51):

Collections? Yeah. Yeah. They're old SGM numbers. Yeah. So they're all also tier ones.

Mel (11:56):

And how I saw, I remember seeing them a few weeks ago. 'cause You were working on 'em in the lab. How are they doing now? Much

Harry (12:01):

Better <laugh>. The, the sea mouse particularly, we've got a sea mouse, which is a deep sea worm has this iridescent fur down the side. So it sparkles like a, almost like a rainbow. And it now sparkles again. It's got a lovely distance back to it. So it's it's come back.

Mel (12:13):

Wow. Well done Harry.

Perry (12:14):

Probably bring it back to life if you can.

Harry (12:16):

Yeah, yeah.

Mel (12:17):

Well the wizards,

Perry (12:17):

This, this leaking formaldehyde, that's not the kind of thing you want leaking, is

Harry (12:20):

It? No. we often sort of have to be in contact with chemicals that we use a long time ago in conservation that're now deemed dangerous. So we, we from time to time come across things that are not to sort of modern standard in one specs. We have to sort of redo those treatments for current, like contemporary safe, safe ones. Yeah.

Mel (12:42):

So how do you risk assess against stuff like that? It's

Harry (12:44):

Sort of knowledge of what has been done in the past, what used to be used. So if you're working in taxidermy they used to use something called arsenic soap to treat the inside of the skin to stop pests from eating through the skin. Isn't that poison? Yeah. Yeah. It's poisonous. Yeah. So you, super bad. You just have to know that for certain objects there might be things like that. So for preserved specimens, smelled hides, often used for stuffed animals. Arsenic, it's just knowing what might be there.

Perry (13:12):

And it's stuff you wouldn't expect. Like if you were working on like an early bronze age ax head. Mm. That's a, that's arsenic copper. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Just, just having some archeological knowledge and stuff just, just to make you go right. I've gotta be careful here. You know? Yeah. And then not to mention all the lead you

Harry (13:27):

Probably Absolutely. Yeah. Come across all the lead things. Yeah. Cast lead was very popular back in the day for kids toys for paint, all sorts. So yeah. You just have to know what you might come across.

Mel (13:36):

And what, and so to counterbalance that, what have been some of the like most challenging things that you've worked on in your career here so far? Ooh.

Harry (13:45):

Challenging things

Mel (13:47):

Sums that you've just been like, whoa, that's actually quite tricky.

Harry (13:50):

I'd say repairing some bits from the lacot Deral finds. So there's a lot of things from you know, the mammoth bone heap mm-hmm <affirmative>. Every time you move something from that collection, pieces fall off. It's just the way they are. They are, they're preserved in the seventies they're basically powder held together with glue. So moving them is dangerous. From time to time they will just form cracks. 'cause The weight of them bearing upon themselves, they will eventually sort of subside from time to time sometimes. And there was a mammoth tusk that had cracked down just radially. So it'd come across in two pieces. I come apart in two pieces from the old display. And putting it back together again was a hard thing to do because removing the two parts from each other along that crack causes more to fall in. And you gotta consolidate that and try and wiggle it back together again without more falling off. So kott stuff that is a hard fix all the time. The less you touch it, the better.

Mel (14:52):

But that's hard when you're transporting it and stuff,

Harry (14:54):

Isn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Mel (14:55):

Or cataloging or whatever it is you are doing. It's tricky.

Perry (14:59):

Speaking of, of the bone heap and the mammoth stuff. Mm. In, in the new a Terry Deje exhibition, there's, you, you guys have put a lot of that together, haven't you?

Harry (15:09):

Yeah. So we have a replica of the bone heap. So using images that were, or plans that were sort of <inaudible> drawn up during the original excavations, we were able to see where the skulls were found in the bone heap. When you remove stuff from a site like that, you almost, you almost destroy a organization of like where things were originally. It felt like the coin hole, when that was disassembled, it ceases to be a hoard. When the bone and heap was disassembled, it ceased to be a heap. But preserving that location of all the skulls and pieces we're able to make a replica to show if all the dirt was removed, what you'd see, where the skulls would be in this heap. We think there may have been an organization to it. They may have piled the skulls and tusks in a way that was meaningful to them.

Mel (15:59):

Like a ritual type thing?

Harry (16:00):

Yeah, like a ritual sort of thing. Yeah, like a site like that. So we had fiberglass mammoth skulls made and fiberglass tusks and all sorts carefully painted and sort of decorated look like the real things as much as possible. And then reassembled using that plan to show a, almost like a snapshot of what the heap could have looked like in the new Earth period when they built it.

Mel (16:22):

It's really impressive. If any of you guys haven't seen it, you must go and see it. It's so, it's, it's a really large mm. Display and it's very impressive.

Perry (16:32):

Yeah. It's really cool. And, and there's some of the actual ones from the observation there too, so you can compare, see

Harry (16:38):

You can deer. Yeah. Yeah.

Perry (16:39):

You know, and there was the, the deer you made.

Harry (16:41):

Oh yes. The ded deer. So bell ho I think it was f wasn't it the bones? Yeah. Yeah. So the bones from that are from a subspecies of deer that sort of, I guess came about in Jersey between sort of, it was intellectual periods when the because the multiple ice ages weren't there. Yeah. As this sort of temperatures rose and and dropped again. And these deer were isolated on the island. The red conventional sort of red deer, I guess much like contemporary red deer. But due to the lack of resources on the island, they slowly sort of, I say slowly, quite fast actually for for evolutionary sort of sake. They shrunk. I guess they became sort of dwarfed, like island dwarfs. You get it quite a lot nowadays too. Mm. So the subspecies was specific to Jersey and we found a few bones from this deer or this species of deer be ho. And we were able to able to take these bones and displayed them within like an entire skeleton, which you don't actually have by having the rest of the skeleton 3D printed. So we had this thing 3D printed in Europe and sent to Jersey, assembled it, worked out the locations of all the bones that we actually had and put those into this model. So now you have a model showing locations and the stature of the entire idea.

Mel (18:01):

Yeah. It's, again, that's a really beautiful display as well. 'cause It really, it brings to life how tiny the steer is in comparison to what we'd have now. Yeah.

Perry (18:08):

Yeah. And it really tells the story. 'cause When you are just looking at a couple, you know, leg bones or whatever, you're like, oh yeah, cool. You know? Yeah. Once, once it's put into an entire skeleton, you're like, gives it concept. I can understand now like how big this thing was.

Mel (18:20):

Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's so impressive.

Perry (18:22):

One thing I really like that you've, that you did recently again in the new exhibition is the, the way you've put the the bronze age hoard in there.

Harry (18:32):

A spire. Yeah. Yeah. So we're trying to find a way to display that that really sort of had a nice sort of artistic side to it to show this hoard sort of like billowing out of the pop because it was all found in this one ceramic sort of vassel all sort of packed in there. It was a collection of bronze, probably a a metalwork collection of material to reuse. And we sort of just displayed this by having it fan in like a almost a stream out of the pot. And each object has individually has an object mount made to hold it on this backboard. Whoa. So piece by piece in size sort of order going from the smallest ones to the largest ones. This thing sort of fans out from top to bottom

Mel (19:17):

That must have taken ages to me.

Perry (19:19):

And it's like this tiny little bits of like casting waste and then all the way to the top where like the axes and the spearheads are. Yeah. It's so cool.

Harry (19:25):

Yeah, it was nice nice doing something where there was a bit of sort of artistic side to it as well to sort of combine proper display with aesthetic display.

Mel (19:34):

I'm pretty sure I've seen it and I probably wouldn't have even noticed that wasn't even supposed to be like, like that's actually how it is. Yeah. That goes to show the level of detail that you guys go to, to display these objects and to be as authentic as they can be.

Perry (19:49):

Have you ever stumbled upon what you believe might be an archeological object at Jersey Heritage? We are committed to preserving an understanding our rich history through our public fine scheme. I'll photograph, identify and record your fines. Every artifact recorded contributes to expanding our archeological knowledge. Call me at eight three three one four one.

Mel (20:14):

The other day when we were actually coming to record a podcast to someone else. 'cause What's really sweet about this podcast suite is that we're actually right next to the lab. So came over to say hi. And you were working on this chair. Oh yes. This really beautiful a nature. And when I asked you about it, you said it was Queen Victoria. Victoria. Queen Victoria.

Harry (20:35):

Yeah. So it was made for Queen Victoria when she visited Jersey with Albert Prince Albert, yes. In 1846. So quite early on actually. And this was made in Jersey carved out of I believe his teak in mahogany really beautiful thing. And at some point in time it was quite severely damaged. It sustained quite an impact as a severe breakage through the headrest. Decorative pieces had been broken off. So we spent a while carefully sort of ces the condition I to take the chair partially apart, to remove the headrest, which would be built into this chair without taking the whole thing apart. 'cause That would've been an absolute deal and a half to do. And slowly sort of sealed the cracks back up with glue and used colored waxes to sort of blend the cracks in and make sure they were invisible as possible. We got it to a point where it was able to get back on display again. So it's back in the royal court. It's if you ever get the chance to see it, it's it's upstairs there and it's, you wouldn't know it was broken, which is

Mel (21:36):

Yeah. Literally I was, yeah. Yeah.

Perry (21:39):

As, as with like, everything you guys fixed, I, I genuinely wouldn't be able to tell that that had ever been broken.

Mel (21:43):

No, I, I had the, I just thought it was maybe being reupholstered or something. 'cause You know, fabric isn't that great at aging, but when you showed me where it was that it needed to be fixed, I literally couldn't even really tell.

Harry (21:54):

Yeah. I, I wasn't even sure we'd get the cracks as close as po as as close as we did. But in the end it looked quite good. I'm, I'm happy with it.

Mel (22:01):

Yeah. It looked amazing. Don't downplay it. It looked, it looked sick. It looked so good. What's interesting about the conservation that you and Neil do is that there's a focus on objects and there's like an element of restoration that's different to the stuff that we do at the archive, which is the paint conservation. So how, how is that different

Harry (22:23):

Sort of between sort of conservation and restoration would you say between those two? Yeah. I think restoration, restoration is the thing people really like people love to see repair shop. They have to see things being put back to like a new condition. They have to see cars that have been restored or pictures that have been sort of taken back to their original bright colors. We don't usually do a lot of restoration work. Sometimes it could be considered a bit too invasive. It might destroy some things that you might wanna preserve. Things like the patina on an object might be removed by restoration work. So it's certainly visually appealing. We get people asking us sometimes, oh, can you restore my so and so for me? And we most of the time won't do that through sort of a professional point here. We sort of stick to conservation itself. So conservation's more so preserving what already exists, any damage that's there, we usually deem to be historic and as part of the object's history. So preservation, you won't see a difference in the object. Much restoration will be an entire sort of, wow, this is like new again.

Perry (23:36):

Yeah. Yeah. So like if you, if you had like, you know, a bronze age sock that ax had, that had been broken in half in, in the past in a hoard, you wouldn't stick it back together because that's an old break. Right. But you know, if it somehow got broken, you know, on display or something, God forbid, then, then

Harry (23:53):

You probably would. Yeah. So we do bridge that. We do bridge doing restoration work. 'cause Sometimes restoration is appropriate and it helps keep the object in the way that it's deemed to be to represent what it represents. It's, it's what I make it my intent for people to see. So we will sometimes put things back together again. Quite often actually if it's a a contemporary break. Yeah. We'll we'll restore things from time to time.

Perry (24:15):

See a good example actually recently that I saw you guys working, was that, was that frame? 

Harry (24:20):

Oh yes.

Mel (24:21):

The lily. The lily

Harry (24:23):

Lily frame. Yes. Yeah. So that was a nice one. Frame restoration is kind of a separate kind of a profession really. And yeah, there are other people who work just as frame restorers.

Mel (24:35):

And why is that?

Harry (24:36):

I guess art conservation and art restoration are for some reason sort of a, a separate camp to museum conservation. You will have art restorers who work for museums or conservators, but it's usually considered quite a specialist. A very specific and specialist a profession. So doing frame conservation was interesting. It's not something I've done much of. I've done it once during my degree at Lincoln. So it was nice to sort of dip back into it again. But I did have to get in touch with a frame conservator and ask him for advice for pointers just because sending this thing away to the UK would've been quite a a f to do, to box it up, to send it to someone else, to have 'em do it. It was nice to do it in-house.

Mel (25:25):

So you needed pointers for the pointer. Pointers

Harry (25:27):

For the pointer, yeah.

Mel (25:28):

<Laugh>. So as you said that I was like, I couldn't not say it. It's just too good. <Laugh>. Yeah. The, also, the other thing that you, you worked on, which I think looks insanely beautiful, is Lily's traveling Twilight case. Yeah. Because that used to be in the, the bottom floor of the museum and now it's in the Terry de, but it's so shiny. Yes. It looks so different. Like what was that process like?

Harry (25:50):

We didn't do an awful lot to it. A lot of the, the visual sort of improvement is just lighting. It's, it's a much better case. It's spot as a side object rather than the case around everything else being lit in a, in a corridor. So that's most of it. There was a lot of sort of cleaning work done to the objects inside. We try not to polish just because that thing has been polished for many, many, many decades. And I think a lot of the original gilding has been lost just through abrasion a polishing again and again. Mm-Hmm. So we tend to keep quite a light sort of level cleaning, that sort of stuff.

Mel (26:25):

Yeah. It looks, it looks so beautiful. Mm-Hmm. Never seen the Lily case. Looks so nice. It is so sparkly. Oh yeah. It's

Perry (26:31):

Really cool.

Mel (26:32):

It's insane. I

Perry (26:33):

Really like the lily part of the new exhibition

Mel (26:35):

Actually. Yeah. The lily part is, it's pretty cool. Chef's kiss.

Harry (26:38):

Yeah. You gotta wonder what it cost to build something like that now to have a traveling case built from this. Like burwood silver hinges, silver, everything tor shell. It's crazy. Crazy.

Mel (26:48):

The other, the other element that I really like of the new exhibition is the we, we've actually put on display the book about the witch trials. Mm. Did you, did you do any work on that? Did you have any

Harry (26:58):

On that? No, that's one of Neil's that book mount beautifully made out of card, sort of holds this thing just in the right sort of level openness to support the spine. It's one of Neil's books. Yeah. It's a nice piece. Yeah. That one nice

Mel (27:07):

Piece. That's beautiful. Mm. It's really nice to see that on display. Definitely.

Harry (27:10):

Yeah.

Perry (27:11):

Do you find yourself doing a lot of work with, with our archive conservators? Laura and Lisa?

Harry (27:18):

Not an awful lot. From time to time we do sort of crossover usually when exhibitions are going on. So whenever an exhibition collections tend to be mixed, so there'll be archive collections and museum collections. And in those points in time we will work with them. 'cause We have a sort of crossover of both collections coming to one space mm-hmm <affirmative>. And from time to time we'll sort of assist with things for them. So when we had the photographic prints for Victor Hugo and Thomas Sutton on display at the new exhibition, those were archival but needed glass put in the frames. So we sort of took over that part. Lisa and Laura were mounting them. We prepare the frames and prepare the glass. So occasionally we'll have a crossover. It's quite nice to to work across departments sometimes.

Mel (28:09):

Yeah. It must be really nice to have teamwork, especially because you've got such different, there's slight different skill sets from different things Yeah.

Harry (28:15):

And it all comes together. Yeah. Yeah.

Mel (28:16):

It's really, really, really cool. The other element that I find really fascinating about what you guys do is how you temperature control and how like you control an environment for an object like that really blows my mind that you could, like, I've seen Neil walk into a room and say, too warm, too. Like too cold air's not right. Yeah. Lighting's not right. And just that instinctual ability to kind of work out an environment is fascinating

Harry (28:40):

To, I'd be, I'd be surprised how much it matters. Light is a, is a huge one. Your eyes will adapt so much to to lighting. You can go from a lit room to daylight and it's not a massive difference to you. You'd think, oh yeah, it's a bit brighter outside. But really it's difference between 200 LuxS and like hundreds of thousands of lux. The light outside is just magnitudes higher than indoors. The objects definitely feel it. We don't so much we, we can sort of adapt to that. We adjust to that other eyes. But objects can be bleached by sunlight. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. So we have to really control the light and make sure that UV is low. The lighting's just right for some sort of delicate objects dyes in things and colors tend to be sort of washed out by light. So the more we can sort of control that and keep that load the better. And

Mel (29:29):

Whether you've worked on it or not, do you have like a favorite thing in our collection? Like a favorite item or?

Harry (29:35):

My favorite item is definitely Claude Han's Cat.

Mel (29:40):

Yeah. <Laugh>

Harry (29:40):

The cat. I studied. Yeah. I I like that cat a lot. That's my favorite.

Mel (29:44):

I remember the buzz around the cat. I remember when you coming in to speak to Louise to say, oh, I think

Harry (29:49):

I've could be really old.

Mel (29:49):

Yeah. This could be a thing.

Perry (29:50):

It's a cool cat.

Harry (29:51):

I've gotta chase you up. I've, I've gotta continue that and see if we can find any any real answers. Yeah, that

Perry (29:56):

Would, did you make some t-shirts with it? Yeah. It's a cool,

Mel (29:58):

That be nice. That would actually make a really cool t-shirt. Having the cool ka care. I'd buy one of those and a tote bag.

Harry (30:03):

Oh yeah.

Perry (30:04):

So I guess how, how did you kind of get interested in conservation and what kind of brought you to this, this line of work? You know,

Harry (30:14):

I'd say I always had an interest in sort of like, hands-on hobbies. I did a lot of carpentry, a lot of metal work. I got really into sort of blacksmithing when I was younger. I almost wanted to to go into Hereford and study an artisan blacksmith course. And I was almost, almost about to do that. And then a a tutor of mine at Highlands College recommended the conservation course to me at Lincoln. Just 'cause you knew I was interested in sort of history as well. And that's sort of where the path narrowed and diverged into into conservation. I got interested through knowing about the course, realizing that it was something I could study and actually sort of hone skills into.

Perry (30:52):

Which is kind of great for you 'cause all those other things you just mentioned that you were into, you still kind of do <laugh>. Absolutely.

Harry (30:58):

Yeah. Yeah. Coming, coming to the role with with those skills, it really sort of diversifies what we can do. And the more you bring to a job like this, the more you can feed in and sort of diversify what we can get involved in and what we can create. Hmm. Yeah. It supports the the collection very well.

Mel (31:17):

And in terms of like on a, like a, a global scale, has there been like any conservation work done in the world that you think I would've totally loved to have been involved in that?

Harry (31:27):

Ooh,

Mel (31:29):

I, anything, anything at

Harry (31:30):

All? 

Mel (31:31):

Anything at all?

Harry (31:32):

Do you know? I've always wanted to go and it's, it's not conservation, but I've always wanted to go on an archeological dig. I see these digs in like Turkey and in the Mediterranean as well. And I think it's amazing getting to be on site and see objects come out the ground. And I know it's sort of outside my professional sort of world, but I would love to go on an archeological dig one day <laugh>.

Mel (31:53):

I would've thought though, I mean, oh my God, I'm gonna literally maybe get murdered by an archeologist here, <laugh>. But I would've thought that surely as a conservator you could literally, that would be quite a thing that you could do. Like your skills are so vast. I'm sure you could. Yeah.

Harry (32:08):

I dunno what the 

Mel (32:09):

What's like, what would be the difference between like, could I know Harry would think, well,

Perry (32:13):

You could, you could learn the, the skillset. I mean, it's its own job with its own its own ways of doing things, you know? But you know, Harry could definitely learn how to do it

Mel (32:22):

In two seconds. You'd

Perry (32:23):

Learn how to and conservators are like completely involved in, in the archeological process. Yeah. It's

Harry (32:27):

The process.

Perry (32:28):

Yeah. The post excavation stuff is, you know, conservatives are completely vital, you know? Oh yeah. Absolutely. and, and you know, when objects are found on digs that like are at risk, then the conservator is the pers first person to get in touch. Mm. I mean, most units will have a conservator know archeological conservator.

Mel (32:48):

I always wondered what it would've been like to be the, like, on team for like scarab bra, the scar bra archeological dick. Like imagine finding that. Mm. That would've, that to me is like one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in terms of like historic site.

Perry (33:03):

Yeah. There, there's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of different kind of disciplines in within archeology, you know? I mean it's not just like one job really, you know, you've got surveying, you've got conservation, you've

Mel (33:19):

Got Yeah. So many layers. Literally so many layers to it. Yeah. But

Perry (33:23):

On, yeah, literally. Literally. And then all the sciencey side and conservative, I mean, definitely evolved really with the, a lot of the sciencey side of it as well, you know? Mm-Hmm.

Harry (33:30):

For sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Mel (33:31):

Have you ever worked on something and been like, I literally have no idea what this is

Harry (33:36):

From time to time? Yeah. when things come up arche archeologically a lot of the time. There'll be things that I have cleaned that I have just assumed were like pieces of scrap metal like brass things and then Perry's gone, oh yeah, this is a bronze age, like horse bridal piece of something. And I wouldn't have guessed, I would never have guessed it was something important like that. So my knowledge isn't infinite. There are a lot of things I don't know still. And it's always nice to be surprised and find out something is really important and it is really interesting.

Perry (34:08):

Sometimes it takes a while to work things out, you know? Yeah. And sometimes you think something's one thing and then Yeah. You know, then you look, you re-look at your old records and go, actually I can say more about that. You know, I can update that. Or

Mel (34:20):

I think I'd really like the process of the mystery and like, working stuff out. Yeah. That would really appeal to me. But also I'm just far too impatient, so I'd be like, I need to know what this is right now. Can

Perry (34:29):

Do some work with me.

Mel (34:31):

I'd actually love that. I'd love to do more like on site stuff. Like even just the times I've gone into the lab to see what Harry's up to is like, this place is actually amazing. Yeah. It'd be so interesting to just re 'cause you must create like a real, I don't know, maybe I'm being a bit like woo over here, but you must create like a bond with some of these objects. Like you must feel really attached to some things. Yeah.

Harry (34:52):

Sometimes something like, particularly in need of some conservation work, if it's in particularly bad shape and you sort of take it from that condition of being really sort of poorly all the way back up to being like stabilized and refreshed and looks better again. It's, it's sort of gained back. It's luster and it's intrigue is something important and historic. You do feel that sort of connection to the object. And once you hand it over it's like, oh, let's back off into the world again. I hope it's safe. You know? Aw,

Perry (35:19):

Yeah.

Mel (35:19):

Yeah. Like you must feel so

Perry (35:21):

Song.

Mel (35:22):

A song. Yeah. Like a proud parent sending their object off to the world. So cute. Yeah. I definitely think I'd feel really attached to lots of things. Almost like I'd be like, right, this now belongs to me. Yes. <Laugh>. Because I've brought it back to life. This is now mine. Well, thank you so much your time. Harry was really ing Thanks for having me. Lovely. Interesting. I'm sure we'll have you back for something else very soon. That'll be great. We next off, we next find our next coin hoard. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:46):

Well

Mel (35:47):

Tuned.

Speaker 4 (35:47):

Stitch tuned.

Mel (35:51):

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