Zenzie Tinker Conservation provides a complete range of conservation treatments for historic, modern and contemporary textiles. We also undertake bespoke display and storage solutions.
Established in 2003, our expert team of conservators work to the highest technical, ethical and aesthetic standards.
“What we conserve is a statement of what we respect, who we are and who we wish to be. Conservation not only sustains and refreshes the values of the past – giving us an understanding of where we have come from – but also reflects our values for the present and the future.”
– ‘It’s a Material World: Caring for the Public Realm’ by John Holder and Samuel Jones.
Our clients
Our studio
Our large studio is located in the heart of Brighton’s creative district. Newly fitted out with a wide range of specialist equipment, we provide a top quality service and skilled team of textile conservators for all your conservation and collections care needs.
Search here for your object type or conservation requirement
Latest studio news
Embroidered tiger by Mary Linwood (late 18th-early 19th C) undergoing conservation 
Assessing rag rugs made from scraps of WW1 uniforms for Prospect Cottage 
Conserving & mounting costumes for an upcoming Brighton Museum exhibition
Zenzie Tinker Conservation is more than just a conservation studio. We all came together through a love of textiles and craft and like nothing better than to share our expertise with the wider world.
So we’ve put together a small range of beautiful and useful products and workshops inspired by our work and lovingly made in our Brighton studio using the leftovers from our projects.
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Treasured Clothing – the Shelagh Lovett-Turner collection£8.00 – £10.00 -
Smocking sampler kit£25.00 -
Hidden Treasures – conserving Westminster Abbey’s funeral effigies£8.00 – £10.00
Textile conservation stories
- Crutchley Archive dye recipe books
We have recently completed a very exciting combined paper and textile conservation project: important dye recipe books dating from 1716-1744, part of the Crutchley Archive held by Southwark Council Archive. The set of 15 books has such significance as a dye record that it was put on the UK Memory of the World Register in … - Alphonse Mucha lithograph
We recently carried out a last minute tricky job for The Mucha Foundation supporting a badly damaged original poster prior to framing for exhibition. These posters seem to be characterised by poor quality paper, touchy gold ink and fugitive colours, combined with gorgeous art nouveau Alphonse Mucha designs too, of course, and really complex printing … - 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 …