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Choosing the materials Back to top
The new panels were painted on P1 restoration glass, chosen because its colour and soft distortion matched that of the original glass. Pigments were selected from Chapel studio own large and rare collection, assembled over 40 years, and mixed to match the original sepia colours. Rachel produced numerous samples – each of which had to be carefully prepared, applied to glass and kiln fired - before selecting the exact colours to be used in the creation of the new panels.
Recreating the stained glass panels Back to top
The film highlights the skill involved in this work, beginning with the application of the first colour ‘matt’ (of three) to the glass. Rachel first carefully grinds the pigment on a palette to a very smooth powder before mixing it to a smooth consistency with vinegar (ascetic acid) and applying it evenly to the glass panel using a badger-hair brush.
Once the matt has dried, the glass is placed over the design drawing (which serves a template) and Rachel begins etching away the matt colour to begin the process of re-creating the figure. Once the first elements of the design are completed a second colour matt is applied – this time mixed with water so that it can be worked without softening or destroying the first one beneath. Once this is dry, further details of the design are added. A third layer of colour, this time mixed in oil, is applied to highlight the darker areas – without affecting the two earlier layers.
Finally, the panel is fired at high temperature in the kiln. Once she completes the work and all four panels are glazed into the window it is hard to distinguish without looking closely which two saints are new and which are the 17th century originals.
3. The Orgy Back to top
It’s three o'clock in the morning and Tom, drunk, enjoys the attentions of prostitutes at the Rose Tavern in Covent Garden. A night watchman's staff and lantern lie beside him – souvenirs of a rowdy night in the streets. Two ladies relieve Tom of his watch.
In the foreground, a woman undresses, getting ready to perform naked “postures” on a pewter dish, being carried into the chamber behind her.
Missing panels Back to top
Rachel also recreated two further panels, for which there were no originals to work from, by copying the watercolour record drawing of them in Soane’s inventory diagram – which is the only detailed evidence of their appearance that survives. The film shows her work on the figure thought to be St Clare. The finished effect is of a kind of ‘ghost’ panel – a shadow of its original self but the most honest way of including what we know of it in the recreated window.
Restoring existing panels Back to top
Chapel studio also restored the surviving panels of 16th and 17th century glass for this window and the film shows the painstaking work required where a distinctive green colour has been lost from the lower edge of a panel of the Raising of Lazarus painted in enamel colours over yellow stain. The enamel paint has gone but the yellow stain is still present.
In order to avoid adding modern paint to the original panel a glass backplate is placed behind it, on which a small patch of blue enamel has been painted in the correct consistency in precisely the right position. When the two panes are sandwiched together, the lost colour is restored as blue and yellow combine to reproduce the missing green.
Rachel and her colleagues at Chapel studio are among a small number of specialists in Britain capable of reproducing and restoring historic stained and painted glass so beautifully. Find out more about Chapel Studio at www.chapelstudio.co.uk.
4. The Arrest Back to top
Tom has squandered his fortune. On the way to the Queen’s birthday reception at St James’ Palace, he narrowly escapes arrest for debt. He is saved by the loyal Sarah Young, now a milliner, who pays his bail money with her meagre earnings.
It is Queen Caroline's birthday – also St David's Day (1st March) – the two bailiffs wear leeks in their hats to mark the occasion.
A street urchin steals Tom's gold-topped cane, while a lamplighter, distracted by the commotion, accidentally pours oil on Tom's wig.
Researching the original wallpaper Back to top
A number of bills in the Soane Museum’s rich archive prove that the second floor of 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Soane had his bedroom, bathroom and Model Room, was wallpapered throughout in the same paper, made by Cowtan.
At the start of the Opening up the Soane project we had just one tiny piece of physical evidence – a small sample of Soane’s wallpaper pasted into the Cowtan Order Book in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Whilst this provided precise evidence of the original bright colours it didn't show enough of the pattern to reproduce the paper.
The first priority on site, as soon as the area was vacant, had to be to search for any surviving fragments of Soane’s wallpaper beneath many layers of later paint and paper on the second floor itself.
Choosing where to search Back to top
To do this Julian Harrap Architects turned to Mark Sandiford, a leading specialist in the conservation of historic wallpaper, well-versed in this kind of search. He began in the recently vacated back office, around the chimneybreast in what was originally Soane’s Bath Room.
In Mark’s experience, decorators often don’t fully strip fireplace walls because it’s more complicated to do, and so fragments of older wallpapers can commonly be found to survive in those areas. Initially, the walls looked extremely unpromising, covered in a modern anaglypta paper and painted yellow, the most recent of many re-decorations since Soane’s time. However, after a few hours work Mark was able to report that there was at least one large surviving area of paper.
5. The Marriage Back to top
Impoverished, but accustomed to a life of luxury and excess, Tom marries an old woman for her fortune. The shabby setting is Marylebone church, then a well-known venue for clandestine weddings on the northern fringes of London.
Tom is clearly more interested in the pretty young maid than in his one-eyed bride. Two dogs (one of which has also lost an eye) present a grotesque parody of the marriage.
Behind them, Sarah Young and her mother are being held back at the church door.
Chapter 1 Back to top
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