A TAPESTRY CONSERVATOR IN THE MAKING Kim Tourret, Intern at Historic Royal Palaces
The following was originally published by the Institute of Conservation on 21 October 2019. It has been edited, and some parts of the original article have been cut. For Kim’s full blog post, please visit: www.icon.org.uk
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resh from graduating in 2018 from the Centre for Textile Conservation at the University of Glasgow, I was lucky enough to be awarded the last of three one-year tapestry conservation internships at Historic Royal Palaces (HRP). These are funded jointly by HRP and The Clothworkers’ Foundation, and based at Hampton Court Palace. I had little practical experience of tapestry conservation prior to the internship, but I was fascinated by their structure and weaving and wanted experience working on large objects and dealing with the challenges of historic sites... As all new staff members to the conservation studio do when beginning
a conservation project at HRP, I started my training with a small sampler completed on a piece of replica fabric, no larger than a square metre. You create the damage yourself, making areas of complete loss and fraying away wefts to leave bare warps, and then try to replicate the appropriate stitching techniques used in tapestry conservation to support and strengthen the weak areas. Once my sampler was approved by my supervisor, I was allowed to work on my first real historic tapestry. Going from practicing on a small piece of replica fabric to conserving an approximately 4m x 3.5m 17thcentury Mortlake tapestry (‘Fireships at Dawn’ from The Battle of Solebay series) seems like quite a jump, but it provided me with a valuable opportunity to sit side by side with my conservator colleagues and learn from their work. Unsurprisingly, I was not put to work on the inner field where the majority of the silk wefts had been lost, requiring intensive conservation
stitching. Instead, I started helping with the borders, where the loss was less severe and I could apply and practice the techniques I learned in smaller areas. Whilst intimidating, this training on an actual historic tapestry prepared me well for the loom work of my individual internship project: a 17thcentury Flemish tapestry, ‘Marcus Aurelius Reproving his Wife’, kindly lent by the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust from Boughton House. I was able to consider all of the techniques I had been taught to develop a detailed methodology and confidently execute the stitching treatment I planned for the areas of loss and weakness. One aspect of the stitching treatment that can only be appreciated on the actual object is the way support needs to be balanced with aesthetics. HRP adopts methods that aim to fully support the tapestry for the purposes of long-term stability on open display, so conservation stitching can be very extensive after considering how heavy the tapestries are and the stress they are under. Areas that have been totally re-warped (where new warps are inserted to create structure in places that the original warps have been lost) and secured with close
This page: Kim Tourret working in the tapestry studio. Facing page: On the left, the conservation team is wet cleaning. On the right, we see the front of a tapestry after some stitching treatment. © Historic Royal Palaces, 2019
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THE CLOTHWORKER | SPRING 2020
