Archive Post 2: The Ashmolean, Oxford.

In January, 2013 I was part of a small team from Cliveden Conservation who moved a large collection of Greek and Roman sculptures at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

The sculpture gallery before work began. 

The large gallery near the entrance to the museum needed to be emptied to prepare for a redecoration project. All of the statues, some weighing around 1.8 tons were moved into store or the centre of the room where they were wrapped for protection.

One of the larger statues removed from niche. 

The large statues were moved with a gantry and lowered onto specially made pallets for transportation. Smaller statues were slid onto scissor lifts and put into the stone store in the museum.

Dismantling an object prior to removal from gallery.

Some of the items were held together in sections by pins and had to be dismantled in situ to ensure safe handling.

Next Friday's archive post will be about a project at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

Archive Post 1: The University Church of St. Mary, Oxford.

So here's the first of the archive posts that'll be going live every Friday at 17.00 GMT for the next two months!

St. Mary's is Oxford University's church right in the centre of the historic city. In 2012 the church underwent a huge internal and external conservation project. The interior was conserved by a team from Cliveden Conservation of which I was a part for the last three months of the project running up to Christmas 2012.

The birdcage scaffold in the nave.

I worked in the stone section of the team in the nave of the church and the work was very diverse. I worked on cleaning stone, lime washing, plaster repairs, mortar repairs, steam cleaning of monuments, toning in on monuments, floor repairs and many other processes over the winter.

The Nicholas Stone porch after conservation.

I was also lucky enough to work with a colleague on the beautiful Baroque porch designed by Nicholas Stone, Charles I's Master Mason. Over a few weeks we cleaned the porch, re-pointed where necessary and used a pigmented lime wash to bring the entire porch together visually.  

The bell's being returned to the church near the end of the project. 

The project was a wonderful experience and gave me a great deal of practice in the field of stone conservation. 

In next Friday's blog post I'll share some photos of my work at the Ashmolean in January 2013.

Trusham Church Wall Paintings.

Well it's been a while! Since my last posts I've been very busy working for a few different conservation companies across the country and sadly the blog has stalled!

To rectify this I've scheduled a blog post for every Friday at 17.00 GMT over the next seven weeks covering most of the projects I've been involved with since September 2012. I've tried to keep them brief and colourful, but if you want any more information please do contact me.

I'm going to start with the most recent but from then on I'll pop them up from the oldest to the most recent. So without further a do here's what I've been up to this month:

The East Wall.

The Church of St. Michael The Archangel in Trusham is a small Medieval parish church in Devon. It is having a large refurbishment at the moment and as part of this project McNeilage Conservation have been working on the painted ceiling over the choir and the painted east wall.

One of the painted ceiling panels. 

As part of their team I undertook work cleaning, stripping and filling areas of the panels and the east wall to help improve the appearance and long term condition of the painted surfaces.

Part of the metal painted panel over the window during cleaning.

The scheme was a relatively simple floral pattern, Victorian or later, and incorporated a painted and gilded metal sheet panel with a motto over the East Window. The conservation was primarily conducted with swab cleaning under magnification and other controlled cleaning methods.

This Friday at 17.00 the first archive post will go live, some photos of a project at St. Mary's in Oxford.