Week One

Let's start out by pointing out the obvious; I work at a palace and that is awesome. Hampton Court Palace looks something like this.

Although, if you’re being specific I’m located to the left of the main entrance way, right in here.

The conservation department is located in one of the old Grace and Favour apartments. Until the fire in 1986, individuals who the Royal Family felt were very important were provided free living quarters at the palace. After the fire, which started in a fireplace in one of the apartments, Grace and Favour was no more at Hampton Court.

I spent this week with the furnishings team, who are responsible for the conservation of any upholstered furniture. Their current project is stabilizing all the textile components of an elaborate velvet-upholstered bed, which is going to take about four years to complete.

My goal for this week was to make a few stitching samples. I was sewing with hair silk, which is basically like sewing with cobwebs. The thread is so fine that it took some time before I could actually see what I’m doing. I was stitching into difficult fabrics such as satin (which shows every imperfection), velvet (which forces the thread to the top of the pile if it isn’t stitched in exactly the right place), and damask (which is very hard to identify the direction of the fabric).

When I left Tuesday night I was feeling like I couldn’t do anything right. But slowly I got use to the materials and by the end of the week I was ready for my final test. I got to secure a little fragment of the velvet bed textile that the team is currently working on to a piece of backing fabric. The fragment is about ½” square (although the edges are very uneven) and is almost 300 years old. My sample was deemed a good job and I was ecstatic. Of course, I do my best work on the only sample that I can’t take with me. But that’s just my luck, isn’t it?

So in summary, this week was a learning experience. It almost painfully showed the difference between my North American education and the two or three year textile specialist courses that exist in Britain. That being said the two main training facilities in the UK, the Textile Conservation Centre and the conservation program at the Royal College of Art, have both ended their programs in the last year. What a waste of good programs.