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Highlights in this issue

Chinese export paintings

Kate Bailey; Sonia Bellesia; Lucia Burgio; Charlotte Brooks; Andrei Lucian; Haida Liang

During the past year, the V&A Science Section has collaborated with Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in an AHRC/EPSRC funded project to identify pigments in the V&A Chinese export pictures and the RHS Reeves Chinese botanical watercolours.

Historic surface coatings on the V&A’s plaster cast collection

Sarah Healey-Dilkes, Senior Sculpture Conservator

The aim of this article is to bring together and share preliminary analytical results from the V&A Science and student research papers, working observations and studio tests carried out over the last four years on the V&A’s plaster cast collection.

Small Stories: Dolls’ Houses Exhibition

Karen Jensen, HLF ICON Preventive Conservation Intern

The V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green has a world-class and internationally significant collection of around one hundred dolls’ houses, models and shops. Key examples from this extensive collection will be shown in the upcoming ‘Small Stories: At Home in a Dolls’ House’ exhibition, opening at the V&A Museum of Childhood in December 2014, prior to several international venues thereafter.

The Meissen Fountain: re-presenting porcelain on a grand scale

Hanneke Ramakers, Senior Ceramics, Glass and Related Materials Conservator; Fi Jordan, Senior Ceramics and Glass Conservator

An impressive eighteenth-century porcelain fountain - the largest single Meissen porcelain figure group in existence - will take up a four-metre-wide space in the new Europe 1600-1800 Galleries.