Week thirteen was spent removing tapestries from the Great Watching Chamber from the Tudor route. They are being removed because the exterior of the building is having extensive works for the rest of the year. Building works create dust and that makes conservators worry, since they are really old and fragile. Tapestries look more robust than they actually are- the number one lesson I learned about tapestry conservation is your stitches have to be *really* tight to withstand the stress of hanging on a wall.
Tapestry removal has been perfected at Hampton Court because they have a lot of large, old tapestries. I won't give you all the details but I will say that removal involves three scaffolds and a lot of people. I can also say that standing on the top of a scaffold when a a warder decides to open a door into it is not a lot of fun. Thankfully we weren't moving anything at the time, or it would have gone crashing to the floor.
Weeks fourteen and fifteen were split between a tapestry sampler (practicing stitching techniques used in tapestry conservation) and prepping a tapestry for wash. This tapestry is from a series of seven depicting stories of Alexander. These tapestries were bought by the Royal Family sometime in the early 1700's and have always hung in the Queen's Gallery in Queen Mary II's wing of the palace. This is very unusual because Kings and Queens often redecorated by moving tapestries between rooms and between palaces.
This particular tapestry has never been fully conserved and it will probably take two or three years to complete the work. The wash itself happens in May- it will remove hundred of years of dirt from the surface and rehydrate the fibres (right now it feels very crispy). My job involved removing old patches from the reverse side and here's a photo of it (and that's Christine- we love her).
And here is a photo of my tapestry sampler, worked on a conservation loom.
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