Posted by:
Richard Mulholland

Painting by Numbers?: An 18th Century Flower Show

As the Chelsea Flower Show draws to a conclusion tomorrow, and the masses return to their own gardens inspired, it’s worth looking back to the 18th century, to the golden age of...

Conservation

Constable’s Quill

Did Constable use a steel nibbed pen? a reed, or a quill for his ink drawings? Sometimes, preparing the prints, drawings and paintings for an exhibition gives us a...

Conservation

Constable sketches up close and personal

Our dynamic Paintings Conservation interns, Arabella and Morgan have been lucky enough to work on some of our Constable oil sketches this week for the upcoming Constable:...

Conservation

A Spring Cleaning in Paintings Conservation

This week’s guest post, written by Arabella Peaver and Morgan Wylder, describes the conservation of a painting by John Frederick Herring. With only a few weeks until the...

Conservation

Analysing Chinese Export Paintings

The V&A’s Conservation Science department has been working on a collection of Chinese export paintings, looking closely at the materials that the artists used and...

Conservation

Bad Karma? Looking at Jain Paintings

I’m fascinated by the V&A’s collection of Jain paintings. Examining them closely, understanding how they were created is fascinating. The manuscripts were...

Caring for our collections

Playing with dolls?

Conservation

Spicing things up!

One of the more unusual activities for us in the conservation department this week was to restore damage to Laurent Mareschal’s Jameel Prize installation ‘Beiti’....

Conservation

Definitely not ‘Point-and-Click’: Photographing the Raphael Cartoons in 1858.

In one of the V&A’s stores, kept particularly cold to preserve them, are a collection of rather unusual photographic works that I have been intrigued by for some years. They...

Conservation

‘for I have too much preferred the picturesque to the beautifull…’: Looking at Constable’s watercolour sketches

Whenever I’ve thought of John Constable, I’ve always thought of a long tradition, starting with Dutch landscape painters, a painter, where you could walk straight into the...

Conservation

An Unknown Sketch by Constable

V&A Paintings Conservators Nicola Costaras and Clare Richardson have discovered a previously unknown oil sketch by John Constable in the V&A’s collection. The...

Conservation

Play it Again SAM: Replicating Cybernetic Sculpture using 3D Printing

There are a number of examples of sculptures created in the 20th century using synthetic materials that have already degraded to a point where conservation is unfeasible (and...

Conservation

Just in time for Halloween: A disembodied skull comes to the studio

The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art and design, and as such, one might surmise that its conservation department would not have to deal with the issues surrounding...

Conservation

Auspicious Visitors:Working with Chinese paintings (with a little help from the British Museum)

Destined to be an iconic exhibition, Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings 700-1900 will open this week to a public eager to see some of the most remarkable examples of Chinese...

Conservation

This Week’s Post: Free From Arsenic

It seems that V&A Conservation are in favour at the BBC at the moment. This week, V&A Senior Paper Conservator Susan Catcher is featured on the BBC Four documentary,...

Conservation

Rubies and Weasel’s Teeth: Reconstructing Nicholas Hilliard

A few weeks ago, the art historian and presenter James Fox (A History of Art in Three Colours, British Masters) came by the conservation department to film a segment for ‘A...

Conservation

David Bowie Is… Moving on.

David Bowie Is… finally closed its doors on Sunday 11 August. By the day of opening back in March, pre-booked tickets had reached over 67,000, and when the doors closed for the...

Conservation

Conservation and Mounting of a Chinese Export Wallpaper Panel

Paper Conservators at the V&A are responsible for everything from minute portrait miniature paintings to enormous printed posters. Historic wallpapers also come under their...

Conservation

The V&A Beehives

Typically conservators regard insects as troublesome pests that represent a very real danger to the safety of our collections. No-one who has witnessed the havoc that can be...

Conservation

Changing Displays at the Nehru Gallery: Conservation of Company Paintings at the V&A

This September, the V&A’s Nehru gallery of South Asian art will be transformed when the current display in the gallery is changed and around 85 new paintings and 20...

Conservation

Introduction to the V&A Conservation Department

Welcome to the V&A Conservation Blog. One of the largest in the country, the V&A’s Conservation Department comprises of more than forty Conservators and Conservation...