Sir John Soane Museum ‘Illuminations’

Over the summer we worked to conserve two extraordinarily rare and ephemeral textiles known as Illuminations or Transparencies. Privately owned, they were conserved for the exhibition ‘Georgian Illuminations’, currently showing at the Sir John Soane’s Museum until 7th January 2024. Dating from the early 19th C these hand painted cloths were temporarily tacked inside the …

‘Double Weave’: a celebration of Hilary Bourne & Barbara Allen

  Double Weave – Bourne and Allen’s Modernist Textiles opened at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft last Friday evening (15th September) and we were thrilled and proud to do much of the conservation and mounting for this fabulous exhibition! Hilary Bourne and Barbara Allen were an extraordinary powerhouse of a couple, quietly designing and …

From the ZTC collection: early Victorian bodice & jacket

Introducing our most recent placement student from the Curating Collections & Heritage MA at Brighton Humanities – lovely Lilia Federico. Lilia read anthropology and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at College of Wooster, Ohio prior to her current MA and comes with a keen interest in historical dress research. Lilia is heading in the curatorial …

Chichester Cathedral’s Benker-Schirmer tapestries

It was a pleasure to return the beautiful Anglo-German tapestries designed by weaver Ursula Benker Schirmer to Chichester Cathedral this week after new linings and a thorough surface clean. The tapestries have a vertical warp so after freezing for a slight moth infestation, a deep clean and new linings, we rolled them bottom to top …