February 2012
After months of planning and conservation work the curatorial and conservation teams have successfully reinstated Soane’s 1837 arrangement of framed artworks in the No.13 staircase recess between the 1st and 2nd floors. Although the 1833 Soane Museum Act stipulated that his house and collection should be kept ‘as nearly as circumstances will admit’, over the years different curators have made alterations and in 1918, the original arrangement of framed artworks in the recess was dismantled and replaced in part with different pictures. This was linked to the conversion of Soane’s first floor drawing rooms into a Research Library by the then Curator Arthur Bolton – his new bookcases meant less space for paintings and he moved George Jones’ oil painting of the ‘Opening of London Bridge’ to the staircase where it remained until this re-hang.
The ‘Opening of London Bridge’ by George Jones has now been replaced by a collage of drawings of a design for a ‘Triumphal Bridge’ by Soane, for which he won the gold medal for architecture in 1776 as a student at the Royal Academy. Three etchings depicting King George IV, Thomas Lawrence and John Flaxman have been reinstated below this. Five engravings of Shakespearean characters by John Mortimer and two circular plaster portraits of John Flaxman and his wife – close friends of Soane - have been moved into their 1837 positions.
The most significant conservation work carried out for this re-hanging project was to the ornate gilded frame which houses Soane’s ‘Triumphal Bridge’ drawings at the heart of the arrangement. The work was carried out by frame conservator Clare Kooy-Lister, with the help of the museum’s conservator Jane Wilkinson. The frame was discovered empty, in store, with no glass and only its inscription to identify it. It was black with filth and much of its decorative moulding had come away from the main body of the frame and was lost.
The entire frame was painstakingly cleaned, revealing relatively intact gold leaf below the thick, black layer of dirt. Luckily, the missing inner corner ornaments were discovered unmarked amongst frame fragments in a drawer and have been replaced. New outer corners of an appropriate design were supplied by Joseph McCarthy of McCarthy frames, Tunbridge Wells, who made them using historic boxwood moulds from the Binnings Collection.
Gary Lyons, of Wiggins Limited, created moulds to replace missing elements – a specialist job requiring a great deal of freehand carving. The replacement sections were then pressed from composition (a mixture of linseed oil, rosin, hide glue and whiting). Once the entire frame had been cleaned and repaired, sections of the frame which were missing their gold-leaf were re-gilded and toned to match the original gilding.
The collage of drawings originally in this frame was removed from it many years ago, probably in 1918-19 when George Jones’ ‘Opening of London Bridge’ displaced this work from the staircase. The drawings were removed from the backing paper and added to the drawings collection. The originals were found to be in a very poor a condition, having had too much exposure the light, air born pollution and acid from the wooden backboard, giving them a burnt, orange appearance. They were too fragile to be put back in the frame, so a facsimile was made and put into the newly restored frame in January 2012. Creating the facsimiles involved many processes.
The original drawings were photographed digitally, at very high resolution by a specialist photographer. Since the background to the original drawings and the surviving fragments of the backing sheet were so discoloured, it was decided after much discussion that in making a facsimile the background would be adjusted in colour/tone to its probable original appearance. Small areas of the surviving backing paper, which had been protected from light in the back of the frame, seemed to retain their original light off-white colour and could be used as a guide: these areas match very closely the colour of the paper in Soane’s surviving sketchbooks which have never been exposed to the light.
The digital print of the drawings was carefully cut up in the same way as the originals had been, so that the original ‘collage’ could be reproduced. Even the slight irregularities in the cutting out were replicated. The drawings were then mounted on the print of the backing sheet and then placed in the restored frame. The original glass was lost, so a new piece of picture glass was commissioned from the London Crown Glass company. Although this piece of glass is modern, it has been manufactured in a traditional way to replicate the slight imperfections and characteristic irregularities of an original piece of 19th century cylinder blown glass, as used by Soane’s framers.
The five engravings depicting Shakespearean characters by John Mortimer were in much better condition than the Triumphal Bridge drawings. However, they were quite dirty and required attention from the museum’s paper conservator, Margret Schuelein. The engravings were unframed, and the paper was dusted and carefully washed in a water bath containing detergents and other additives to draw out the dirt: this treatment has resulted in a much cleaner, fresher appearance.
The last stage of the process before the rehang could take place was the cleaning of the marbled walls of the recess – the yellow ochre marbling dates from the 1920s and has never been restored. Specialist scaffolding was erected on the staircase so the entire wall could be reached. A team of conservators from Taylor Pearce Restoration carefully cleaned the surface with white spirit and an extremely fine abrasive cream to remove the majority of the staining and dark discolouration, leaving a much fresher, cleaner surface.
All this work came to fruition on 20th January when a specialist team of art handlers, JPW, assisted the curatorial and conservation teams, re-hung all the restored works of art. For the first time since 1918, Soane’s original arrangement can now be seen by visitors.
This arrangement places Soane’s own architecture in a position of honour on the stairs, with his architectural drawings for the design which won him his Gold Medal framed in the manner of the grandest oil painting and surrounded by a beautifully orchestrated arrangement of portraits. These are arranged in alternating pairs looking inwards and outwards and their subjects link Soane not just with royalty but with leading artists of his day who were close friends as well as with one of the greatest of all Englishmen, Shakespeare.
As with so many of his arrangements the bringing together of this wide-ranging cast of characters links Architecture with painting, sculpture and poetry, to represent the ‘Union of the Arts’ which Soane wished his Museum to embody.
November 2011
Dust is one of the conservation team’s greatest enemies. It is all around us in the atmosphere and settles on every surface. If left for long periods, dust bonds to the surface of objects and becomes considerably harder to remove. The amount of the dust in the museum is currently significantly higher than normal due to the extensive building work for the Opening Up the Soane project. Dust levels are also increased by the fact the museum is located in the centre of London; added to this, one of the other components of dust is actually dead skin cells which constantly fall from our bodies, so the more visitors the more dust!
In addition to careful routine cleaning, the conservation team carry out a rolling programme of ‘deep cleans’ on individual areas of the Museum. A ‘deep clean’ is a more thorough and lengthy process in which we clean not only the objects within a room but also the fabric of the room itself; the skylights, windows, ceiling, walls, skirting and the floor.
We recently carried out a deep clean in the Sepulchral Chamber in the heart of the Museum. This area is particularly awkward as the famous sarcophagus of King Seti I and its case take up the majority of the floor space. Therefore we needed to very carefully use an A-frame ladder to access the high objects in niches and hanging on the walls around the Sepulchral Chamber. As the space is very cramped, warders John Caroll and Jeff Banwell assisted by securing the hoover whilst the conservator carried out the work in order to ensure no works of art were damaged. They also helped carry out some of the lower level cleaning and are specially trained to do so. Specially selected soft brushes were used on any vulnerable surfaces. The immediate difference this cleaning made was very evident since visitors are able to look down into the Sepulchral Chamber from the Dome area above and see the tops of all the objects which hang on the four walls or sit on high level shelves.
