Archive Post 9: 17th century painted shields, St. Saviours, Dartmouth.

Towards the end of the project at St Saviours for McNeilage Conservation we conserved a series of painted shields. These shields are along the front of an ornate 17th century carved gallery at the west end of the church.

Some of the shield following conservation.

The shields had been varnished and the varnish had turned brown over time. The paint had also began to come away in some areas. It was important for the preservation of these painted panels that the varnish was carefully removed.

One of the shields prior to varnish removal.

Using gentle swab cleaning with mild solvents the varnish was removed from the painted surface. The paints revealed were bright and rich, in some cases revealing details not visible before the varnish was removed.

Varnish removal using swab cleaning.

Due to the delicate nature of the paint in some areas cleaning was undertaken using a magnification head lens. This allows for much more delicate and precise cleaning whilst still providing the flexibility required for working on a small platform at height.

The above shield after varnish removal.

Once the varnish was removed from all of the shields a conservation grade varnish was applied to protect and consolidate the historic paint layer. The next post will discuss a short course I took in stone masonry.

Archive Post 8: The Chancel Ceiling, St. Saviours Dartmouth.

In an earlier post I discussed the conservation of the painted ceilings as St. Saviours in Dartmouth.
The project was run by McNeilage Conservation. Since then the project has finished and I'll conclude what we did in this post and one scheduled for Friday. They're a bit longer with a few more photos than usual as I'm trying to squeeze a lot in!

Varnished ceiling in north transept.

The ceilings in the transepts and aisles had the old brown varnish removed as shown in the last post and a high quality, reversible, clear, low shine varnish applied. After this we moved into the  beautiful barrel vaulted chancel.

A section of the chancel ceiling before conservation.

    The chancel ceiling has a similar design to the aisles and transept though the ribs within the panels are painted on, as are the "bosses". The central star "bosses" are gilded and a red glaze has been applied to create shadows and provide a three dimensional effect. As with the other ceilings they had a thick varnish on the surface which has severely darkened over time obscuring the design underneath.

Part of the ceiling during varnish removal.

 In the non-gilded areas the varnish was removed in a similar way to the lower ceilings, with careful swab cleaning using specialist solvents. The gilded stars required a much lighter clean using weak solvents to remove the varnish safely without affecting the gilding or the red shading on the gold.

Removal of varnish from one of the star "bosses".

The cleaning process took almost a month as the area was large and the paint was more sensitive on this ceiling. All of the painted ceilings are in a renaissance style but at some point (most likely in the 19th century) the boards have been refitted and some replaced. After this the scheme was repainted over the top, though in some areas the paint surface of the original scheme is visible in raking light.

The final stages in the clean.

After removing the old varnish a conservation grade varnish was applied to protect the painted surface of the ceiling. This also returned the slight sheen the ceiling would have originally had when completed.

The ceiling after varnishing.

The ceiling looked superb on completion with its bright blue and striking gilded stars. The next post will discuss another job in the same church, the conservation of the 17th century shields on the carved gallery.