The Great Store

Now that we have emptied the second half of the Showrooms we need to find somewhere to put it all. Considering Knole is one of the largest houses in England it should be simple to find somewhere to put all these things, right? The big surprise for many about this sprawling mansion is just how tight storage space can be! After centuries of being lived in and crammed full of wonderful objects there’s just not much usable space left.

The fragility and value of our collection means that it needs very specific conditions for its continued wellbeing. We have been working very hard to reorganise our current conservation store rooms to create space for as much as possible. Even this is not enough.

To make up for our lack of space we have been able to create a couple of ingenious extra storage spaces. These are the Old Kitchen and the ‘Great Store’ (formerly the Great Hall!).

In December a huge scaffold was erected in the Great Hall at Knole. It comprises two stories with plenty of storage space.

The empty top floor ready to receive.

The empty painting rack watched over by Thomas Sackville, the man who did so much to make Knole what it is today.

The first objects begin appearing from the Ballroom.

Ceramics from the Ballroom are safely nestled in their temporary home until they find their permanent place on the store.

The largest paintings will be stored in their own racking on the Hall dais.

Let there be light!

Special lighting appears to show off the glistening collection.

NT staff carefully lifting a bust of the Duke of Wellington into place.

With the help of volunteers and specialist art movers the store gradually fills up. The Great Hall is now full of items from the Showrooms ready for visitors to enjoy from a completely different perspective.

Now that everything is in we can add layers of protection such as these screen doors to protect against the dust.

And this blackout material to protect the vulnerable items from harmful light levels.

Blackout material protecting vulnerable items

The detail of the Russia chest now in the Great Store. This pattern will be making another appearance very soon!

There is one more finishing touch to be added just before we open to the public. Then the store is complete.

The finished Great Store provides a brand new perspective on fantastic objects. Letting them shine in new surroundings.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this sneak peak at the Great Store. Be sure to come and see it when we reopen again in March 2016!

Knole Conservation Team

Decanting the Collection

 

Welcome back to the Knole Conservation Blog. As followers of the blog may already be aware, we are in the midst of an ongoing conservation project here at Knole. This has kept us pretty busy over the past couple of months with no signs of slowing down.

The project itself combines the construction of a new Conservation Studio with extensive work in the Showrooms to improve heating, lighting and the general display of the collection. It’s the Showrooms work that we’re looking at today. In order to gain safe access to all the necessary spaces, everything that lives in what we call the second half of the house (the Ballroom, Reynolds Room, Cartoon Gallery and King’s Room) must be removed to temporary storage.

The Cartoon Gallery. Every piece of furniture and painting had to be removed from the gallery.

 

After a long period of preparation we began decanting the collection on 4th January. This has involved a gargantuan effort from everyone at Knole. This includes staff, volunteers, and contractors who came to help. We even had assistance from some of our neighbouring NT properties!

 

The Cartoon Gallery. We have even removed blinds from the windows and have had to erect temporary coverings to protect the vulnerable red textile on the walls.

 

The thing about National Trust houses (and all museums for that matter), is that we can’t just go around moving things on a whim. The value and fragility of the collection means that we need to keep a very careful track of where everything is going, what condition it was in when it moved, whether it was cleaned/needed cleaning etc. etc. As you can see there is a lot to do!

The Ballroom during the cleaning, covering and documentation process.

We inspected, cleaned, documented and labeled. When this was done we were finally able to get things moving. For four weeks we have steadily worked our way through each room. First removing furniture, then paintings, carpets, tapestries and eventually even the light fixtures. You won’t recognize the house now!

Unfortunately some things have to be left in the house while the work happens around them. This is very few items and is really only things too big or heave to be easily removed. The Kings Bed, some marble tables and table tops, a harpsichord and couple of large tables are all to be left where they are. Every other piece of our collection is all gone and has been placed either in temporary storage for the coming year.

Left: The Reynolds Room after emptying. You can see gaps in the caffoy wall covering where paintings have previously hung. Right: The Cartoon Gallery with  everything removed apart from the heaviest 3 items.

 

 

Stay tuned to find out more about our big move!

Knole Conservation Team

 

 

Photographic materials cleaning and re-housing project

Our mini photographic materials conservation project is underway. I say mini, there is a lot of work to be done, but its not quite on the same scale as our Inspired by Knole project.  We don’t have a £18m budget for a start. We’re about two months in to the project now and we’ve made good progress.

The Knole photographic materials collection is in two parts:

Part A: a mixed collection of albums, loose prints, glass plate negatives and lantern slides which date from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Many photographs feature Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville, his wife Victoria and daughter Vita, as well interior and external views of Knole. Several of our photographs were taken by Sevenoaks photographer Essenhigh Corke. It also includes some lovely personal scrap books that include photographs, annotations and watercolor sketches. The collection is a mixture of ownership by the National Trust and on loan from the Sackville family.

Some of our glass plate negatives, probably in their original packaging.

Part B: a new element of the collection, all items have recently been taken on loan from the Sackville family along with other contents from the Outer Wicket Tower rooms (new spaces we will be opening to visitors as a part of Inspired by Knole). Again it is a mixed collection of loose and framed prints, albums, carte de visites and cabinet cards, and cellulose negatives. They date from the late nineteenth century and early to mid-twentieth century and feature Edward Charles Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville (Eddy), his friends, and his family members, in particular his step mother Anne.

Condition of the collection:

A brief condition survey of Part A of the collection was carried out by Anita Bools (NT photographic materials advisor) in February 2012. Most of the objects looked at have been rated as follows: Condition = Fair Stability = unstable Treatment priority = desirable. A couple of the objects seen were rated poor and highly unstable. The collection has been kept in an environmentally controlled store room since the 1990s. Although some of the current housing of certain items is inadequate. A more in-depth condition survey of each individual item is required.

A more extensive survey of Part B of the collection was surveyed in December 2013 by photographic materials conservator and acting NT advisor, Sarah Allen. Overall condition of the collection has been rated as poor, stable / highly unstable and requires urgent treatment. The collection has been housed in a very poor uncontrolled environment for several decades, exposed to light, dust and there has been an active pest insect infestation.

The latest photographic materials taken on loan, in their previous storage location.

So our mission is to condition asses every object in both parts of the collection.  Carry out basic cleaning and repairs, and identify those objects in need of more substantial conservation.  Then finally re-house the collection in the correct type of storage materials. We started off with sizing each object so we knew what type and size of storage housing to buy in for the collection. Now we have begun the condition assessments.

Every object is measured in mm and entered on the condition report spreadsheet.

It is quite time consuming assessing each object, especially trying to identify each photographic process that has been used.  The more you see the easier it becomes to recognise the process.  Although we do have a little help to.

Two very useful reference books.

Alex, Emily, Lucy, Melinda, Sarah and Zena

 

Progression in to the Print Room

 

The CMS Team has now been up and running for a year, and have progressed  in to the Print Room, our third room since beginning.  The Print Room is on the second floor of the Outer Wicket / Gatehouse Tower. It was another room that made up Eddy Sackville-West’s apartment. If you have been up to the Print Room you will appreciate the HUGE task we have in cataloguing all the documents, printed and photographic materials.

The task is particularly urgent because of the dilapidated state of the the room, and later this year the room contents will be carefully packed away for building work to commence in 2015.  The room environment at the moment is particularly unstable and incredibly harmful to the hundreds of photos and letters that have been stored here.

The print folios – of which there are many – are thankfully not on the CMS Team remit as they require specialist cataloguing and conservation. These beautifully bound collections of prints are probably the oldest objects in the room, and it is not clear exactly when they were placed here. The rest of the archive dates from around the turn of the last century and contains material from the late 1800’s right up to the 1950’s.

At first glance, this task was daunting, so breaking it down into chunks seemed like a good plan of attack.  An initial check through the boxes of papers revealed hundreds of photographs and documents belonging primarily to Eddy Sackville West and his father Charles (Charlie). Luckily, most are in pretty good condition and will be a valuable resource in the coming redevelopment of this space.

Our first job was to sort through the piles of documents and put them into categories, tagging any that were particularly badly damaged. It can be challenging to do this efficiently – it’s hard not to waste time poring over each photo trying to work out who’s who, or trying to decipher signatures on the letters.

Many of the photos depict Eddy Sackville West and his friends, some dating from his Eton days, and provide a fascinating glimpse into his life and social circle. Others relate to Charles Sackville West’s time as a military attaché in Paris and his life with his second wife, Anne.

Charles Sackville-West

Charles Sackville-West married Anne Meredith Bigelow, an American actress, in 1924 shortly before he retired from the military. For the next five years he served as Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey and many of the letters and photos we found relate to their time there as well as his subsequent retirement to Knole.

Anne Sackville-West, nee Meredith

Anne was an enthusiastic actress and her position as Lady Sackville enabled her to hold many theatrical soirees here. The photographs suggest that she was fond of using Stone Court to stage productions, and that she and Charlie frequently entertained the great and the good at Knole.

Theatricals in Stone Court

There are also several boxes of cartes des visites and cabinet portrait cards dating from the 1800’s. These cartes des visites were the precursor to the printed calling / business card and were usually presented to the host when visitor came to call. The sheer number of these cards indicates that the inhabitants of Knole at this time had an extremely busy social life!

Cabinet card portrait of Her Majesty Queen Alexandra

With the documents categorised, we record and describe each item and bundle them in small groups to be scanned. This is the most effective way of ‘photographing’ documents because it’s very quick and we can attach a scan to each record. If you’ve seen any of us hogging the photocopier – that’s what we were up to!

Next we enter each record onto CMS and assign a number, making sure to attach the scan file number to the CMS record for ID purposes. Lastly we mark the CMS number onto the object with a soft pencil. The whole process is extremely time consuming, but will hopefully enable future researchers to access this amazing resource.

In the meantime, we will keep plugging away at the piles of documents and hope to surface by the summer!

Annie, Conrad, Louise, Tony & Vicky – aka the volunteer CMS Team

 

 

Knole Unwrapped 2014…

…Book and Archive Conservation in the Gatehouse Tower

The Gatehouse Tower, viewed from within Green Court.

Today the Gatehouse Tower at Knole looks almost exactly as it would have done at the beginning of the seventeenth century. However this lack of significant change to the exterior is not reflected in the interiors which have been altered over the years to serve a number of different purposes ranging from accommodation to storage.

In the 20^th century the rooms in the Gatehouse Tower were used by Edward (Eddy) Sackville West, 5th Baron Sackville. During the period from 1926- 1940 Eddy occupied these rooms just as his rooms at Eton or Oxford, they were never used as his permanent home. After Eddy left they were used by Frank Mason, an Estate worker and finally went out of use in the 1960s.

Eddy’s room in the Gatehouse Tower.

The first floor rooms still remain the same painted decoration from Eddy’s time and the bookshelves still house a collection of his books and papers. The room above has not survived as well and at some point the ceiling was removed. In the 1960s a collection of large folios of prints and outsize volumes from the main library were moved here, presumably to make some space in the library.

Second Room of the Gatehouse Tower.

Some of the books currently stored in the tower.

The collections of books, prints and papers had never been closely looked at and only recently came on loan to the National Trust. The collection initially has been catalogued. A professional cataloguer and a team of volunteers from Knole have been steadily working through everything listing, photographing and recording on COPAC and National Trust Collection Management System.

Following on from the success of last year’s Knole Unwrapped Project, this interesting collection of books, prints and papers was felt to be the ideal subject for Knole Unwrapped 2014. The collection urgently required condition recording, conservation cleaning and safe rehousing to enable it to be moved into store prior to building repairs to the Tower.

Learning from last year’s programme it was felt, with this projects focus being purely on books and paper, volunteer supervisors could be trained to run the programme.

Caroline Bendix, National Trust Library Conservation Advisor, gave a one day training course on basic conservation and stabilisation techniques for books to the supervisor group. This was then rolled out to the participants.

 

Book conservator, Caroline Bendix, demonstrates how to hold book open, this is incorrect.

The correct position to hold open a book, no more than a 90 degree angle.

 

Knole Unwrapped 2014 will have three sessions each lasting ten weeks with a new group for each intake. The group signs up for one day per week for ten weeks, and as well as carrying out essential documentation and conservation work, will receive training and opportunities to learn more about Knole and its collections.

Brushes used for book cleaning. Pony hair brush on the right for the book exterior; hogs hair brush on the left for book interior / pages.

Book cleaning practice.

The first session is now half way through and so far has been a success with the participants thoroughly enjoying their work and making great progress. The group is a wonderful mix of people from different backgrounds with a wide range of skills and knowledge: from a retired librarian to a student studying Musical History; existing Knole volunteers and a student applying to Conservation courses. No prior knowledge or skills are asked for when applying to participate, just an interest in books and conservation and a desire to learn.

 

Wheat starch is used for basic remedial repairs to torn and damaged boards and the corners of book boards.

Practicing repairing a book cover with wheat starch.

Once building repairs to the Tower have been completed the collections will be reinstated and the Tower will open to visitors.

Siobhan

Caring for photographic materials – part 3!

All types of objects are affected by one or all of the agents of deterioration, and photgraphic materials are no different.  Photogrpahic matrerials are most sensitive to the incorrect tempertautre and relative humidity, light and air pollution.

Light causes the images to fade leading to eventual loss of the image.  Some photographic process will result in fading occurring more quickly as they are more light sensitive than others.  Ultraviolet light is the most dmagaing part of the light spectrum and so must be ellimated from the location a phptpgraph is to be displayed.  This can be done by applying a special film on to the window glass that anbsorbs the UV out of the natiral light coming in. While on display photographic materials should not illuminated above 50 lux and they should not be left on permanant display. 

Light damaged photo. Image copyright of Sarah Allen.

High and fluctuating temperatures exacerbates image fading and accelerates the rate of deterioration.  Similarly with relative humidity high and fluctuating levels cause the most damage.  Physical and chemical damage will occur if the environment is too humid, and if too dry physical damage such as cracking, fissuring, peeling will occur. Different types of photographic materials should be stored at different temperatures:

– Subzero (-20º – 0 ºC): Cellulose nitrate, cellulose acetate, early colour film & prints
– Cold (0º – 8º C): otherfilm based negatives
– Cool (8º – 16º C): glass/metal based photos
– Room (16º – 23º C): well processed black and white prints.

Pollutanats from both the environment, storage materials and the photographs themselves can cause deterioration. Pollutants can cause yellowing of prints and oxidisation of silver. Photographic processes that use cellulose acetate can give off acetic acid when they are degrading. The following methods can be employed to prevent damage by from pollutants:

– Reduce pollutants by using filters if possible
– Increase air movement to avoid microclimates
–  Use good quality housing to mitigate effect of poor air quality

As if all of the above wasn’t enough to cause deterioration there are biological and physical factors to add in to the mix too!  Mould and pest insects can cause damage:

Mould stained photograph.

Silverfish damage to a photograph.

Common furniture beetle (woodworm) damage.

And then there’s us of course!  Poor handling, storage and display can all lead to physical damage, inlcuding breakages and tears.  

Preventive conservation housekeeping plays a key part in looking after photographic materials, as it does with any collection.  Here are some of the basic steps that should be taken:
 – Keep research and storage areas clean. Use a vacuum fitted with a HEPA filter
 – Regularly check for mould, insect or rodent activity
 – Avoid using household cleaners
 – Place away from heat/water sources (e.g. radiators)
 – Do not store photographs near photocopiers
 – Avoid using carpets in storage areas if possible
 – Do not store photographs in freshly painted rooms

So in summary, some key points to remember for the care of photographic materials:
  – Get to know your collection;
  Identify the different photographic processes in your collection, particularly those susceptible to degradation.
  – Handle items correctly;
  This is one of the main causes of damage to photographs but one of the easiest to mitigate.
 – Monitor the environment – and improve where needed; 
  Be aware of poor quality primary enclosures and containers, other possible contaminants and biological activity. Monitor environmental conditions to ensure they’re suitable.
– Carry out regular condition checks;
  Monitor the condition of the collection regularly, consulting a specialist conservator if there is cause for concern.

Alex, Emily, Lucy, Melinda, Sarah and Zena

Our favourite objects – part 7!

Knole is an ancient place. Layers of history are contained within its walls. As a curator, I am fascinated by the material evidence of the past and the lives that shaped the place we experience today. My favourite object at Knole is always what ever I happen to be standing next to when I am asked.

At the moment I am trying to understand how some of the spaces that have been open to visitors for many years have changes and why. On my desk is a copy of the 1906 Knole guide book written by Lionel Sackville-West. It is a lovely book, bound in red with heraldic symbols embossed in gold on the front and it is heavy too. Inside is a history of the Sackville family and a guide to the house and park.

1906 Knole guide book

1906 guide book title page

It is full of illustrations and photographs by Charles Essenhigh Corke (1852-1922).  He was a painter and photographer who was effectively artist-in-residence at Knole during the first decade of the twentieth century. His paintings have a romantic quality in their colour and tone and when he paints a room, light is always cast through it as if it is perhaps a late summer afternoon. This amuses me as Knole is actually quite a cold draughty place most of the time.

The Brown Gallery c.1906

We also have a box of Charles Essenhigh Corke’s lantern slides in the collection at Knole. I like them because we can look through his eyes to the house and park as it was over 100 years ago. They are interesting because they represent such old photographic technology and they are so fragile; images printed on glass which could easily be broken and lost.

Lantern slide of the west front of Knole

The photographs contain all kinds of useful information. If you compare a picture of the Reynolds Room at Knole today with Essenhigh Corke’s photograph you can see from the label that the name of the room has changed, that furniture has moved or disappeared and that some of the paintings are different too. It is a piece of detective work to understand where things have gone. The portrait of Giovanna Baccelli by Thomas Gainsborough next to the fireplace is now in the collections at the Tate.  The guide book and photographs are as close as I can get to a time machine!

The Reynolds Room c. early 20th century.

The interior of the Reynolds Room at Knole today. It is also known as the Crimson Drawing Room due to the fact that its walls are hung with a rare early 18th Century crimson stamped woollen velvet.

Emma

The King’s Closet – now you see it, now you don’t!

The King’s Closet.

Over the winter as a part of the last phase of our external building works, roof repairs were carried out to the flat lead roof above the Kings Closet. We were concerned about plaster and dust possibly falling into the room and damaging the fragile textiles that hang on the walls and ceiling.  So the decision was made to remove the textile on the ceiling and walls.  However before the textile conservators could come in to take down the textiles we had to clear and pack all the other contents of the room. Most of the object have gone up to our store room, but there were a couple that we could not have removed to the store room, such as the very heavy cassone and the day bed.

Removal of the textiles safely and in such a confined space was a complex operation requiring the conservators to create ingenious solutions!

Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

A ants eye view of the ceiling textile. Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

The image above shows a purpose-built frame for the space so the ceiling textile could be detached and have a surface to rest on. Zenzie Tinker, textile conservator, and her colleagues spent several days planning and then taking down the textiles.

The removal of the tassel fringing begins. Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

Zenzie gets up close and personal with the fringing! Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

The red ceiling fabric is a silk taffeta, probably late 18^th century and was found to be an old window blind that has been reused. Not an unusual

Zenzie begins to remove the tacks holding up the ceiling textile.  Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

One end of the ceiling textile is unattached and resting on the specially built support frame. One half to go! Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

Once the ceiling textile was fully detached it was carried out on a supporting dust sheet in to the Cartoon Gallery ready to be packed. Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

Now to start removing the wall textile.

Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

As the wall textile is detached it is carefully rolled on to a supportive tube to prevent as much physical stress to the textile from occurring. Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

An unknown door was revealed as the textile came off. Another mystery to solve! Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

Once on the supportive tube the textile can be safely transported out of the room. Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

Just the textile attached to the door to go! Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

The textiles were extremely dusty and fragile, with holes and areas of insect damage.

The textiles were all taken up to our conservation store where they were surface cleaned and condition checked before being carefully packed for long term storage.

Where the textile has been protected from light and dust the original vivid green colour can be seen.

Image copyright of Zenzie Tinker Conservation Ltd.

Three different green wall textiles have been used in the room, one is late 17^th century, another is coarser and c 1720-30 and there is a fragment that is c 1740-60.  Two different braids were found. The earliest is a flat braid, probably contemporary with the 17^th century textile; the later is a woollen bobble braid which is probably 19^th century.
All the textiles are now safely in store and will be reinstated once they have been conserved as part of the Inspired by Knole project.

Siobhan and Emily

Caring for photographic materials – part 2

Once you know how to handle photographs the next key step is being able to identify them.  To preserve an object you need to know what it is!  Although this isn’t necessarily easy when there are over 1500 types of photographic processes.  It sounds obvious but you must look a the object, not the image. Sarah advised us to go through a process of elimination to help us identify the process that happened to produce the photograph or negative:

• Is it a true photograph or photomechanical?
• Is it a positive or negative?
• Is it paper-based or otherwise?

Slide copyright of Sarah Allen

Are you now wondering what photomechanical means?  It isn’t a photograph but can look like one.  The best way to identify that isn’t is using a magnifying glass.

It is ink on paper, made up of either a series of dots (letterpress halftone), gridlines (collotype) or squiggles (photo gravure).

So what are some of the photographic processes…?

> Negatives:

– Paper negatives: were in use from 1840 to 1865, though can be dated to later.  The glue is in the title, they will unmistakably be on paper.  Sometimes they are waxed for to make the details of the image clearer, this can make the negative more translucent.  They were often used by armature photographs and pioneers of photography like William Fox-Talbot.

– Glass plate negatives:
Wet collodion glass plate negatives: used between 1850 and 1900. There appearance would be a creamy brown colour and not uniformly coated with emulsion. They provided high quality prints as collodion emulsion has very small silver salts in it allowing prints to be blown up without losing definition. They could only be processed by professionals with a dark room on site. You can very often see a corner thumb mark showing previous handling.

Wet Collodian Negative

Wet Collodian negative and print. Images copyright of Sarah Allen

– Gelatine dry plate negatives (1870-1920) look very black and white and the emulsion is applied by machine.  This had been developed by George Eastman of Kodak.  His work led to a rise in amateur  photography as ready made negatives could be bought in advance. Gelatine dry plate negatives are still sometimes used in astronomical photography today.

– Film negatives:
Cellulose nitrate negatives (1885 -1950s). Cine film was also made using the same process.  These negatives / or cine film can be highly unstable if allowed to deteriorate or are in poor storage.  Signs of deterioration include an acrid smell, a sticky orange/brown substrate and powder being formed. Deteriorated cellulose negatives can self ignite or explode. Eventually because of the risks that nitrate posed cellulose negatives were banned.

Deteriorated cellulose nitrate negative.   Image copyright of Sarah Allen.

– Cellulose acetates in use from 1920 to the present day. A more stable negative in that it is not a fire risk.  Signs of deterioration include a strong vinegar smell, wrinkling and channelling of the different layers. It is considered a health and safety risk however if in poor condition as they can give off acetic acid.

– Polyester negative films are the most recent negatives to have been developed.  PET from 1955 and from 1996 PEN.  Both still in use today and extremely stable meaning that it does not deteriorate, as far as we know!

> Positives

– Non- paper based positives are unique and no copies could be made.

– .Daguerreotypes 1840-1860.  Named after its inventor Louis Daguerre.  They are made from silver plated copper sheet, which is highly polished. They look distinctively mirror like. They can be both positive and negative depending on the angle it is viewed from. It was a high end product most popular in USA but not England or elsewhere. The patent for the use of the Dauerrotype was free for the entire world except England, making them costly to use for British photographers and a rare object today.

– Wet collodion positive (UK) or ambrotype (USA, named after American inventor and photographer, James Ambrose) 1852-1865.   One side of a very clean glass plate is covered with a thin layer of collodion, then dipped in a silver nitrate solution. The plate is exposed to the subject while still wet. (Exposure times vary from five to sixty seconds or more depending on the amount of available light.) The plate is then developed and fixed. The resulting negative, when viewed by reflected light against a black background, appears to be a positive image: the clear areas look black, and the exposed, opaque areas appear light.  There is often 3D effect from different layers.

Image side of wet collodion positive.

Reverse, blacked out.

– Tintype (or ferrotype).   Made on sheet of blackened iron which is then varnished, but often has an uneven coating.  They were cheap and cheerful.  Using a magnet is the easy way to identify if it is a tintype.  An obvous clue to look out for signs of decay is iron oxide (rust).  The dates at which tintypes were used can be a bit ambiguous. They were used initially during the 1860s and 1870s, but lesser use of the medium persisted into the early 20th century.

A magnifying glass with a light is a very useful tool when trying to identify photographic processes.

> Paper based positives:

> One layer positives = one layer of paper with photographic emulsion sat in paper fibres. The fibres can be clearly seen and it will have a very matt surface.

– Salted paper prints: 1840-1865. Warm brown colour in appearance, with a matt surface.  They did not produce crisp images.

– Platinum prints: 1880-1930
Platinum salts was used instead of silver salts as they were more stable. The image would have a cool slate grey colour with a matt surface.  This processed produced very stable prints with little or no image degradation.

Platinum print. Image copyright of Sarah Allen.

– Cyanotype prints: 1880-1920.  As the name suggests these prints have a distinctive blue colour, again with a matt surface.  They were easy to produce and therefore used by amateurs quite often.  They are sensitive to alkaline environments.

> Two layer positives = the paper fibres are only partially visible. The surface has some gloss and a surface coating is discernible.

– Albumen prints: 1855 -1920s The binder used is egg white from hens eggs instead gelatine. The prints will  have a semi-gloss surface and tend to fade to a warm colour. Very often there will be cracking across the surface.

Albumen print. Image copyright of Sarah Allen.

– Carbon prints: 1860 -1940s. A pigmented process with gelatine instead of silver salts. The print will have a semi gloss surface with a relief visible.  This is caused where the darker colours in the print have more pigment than in the lighter areas.  The use of raking light will show this. No image degradation occurs.

> Three layer positives = the paper fibres are completely obscured. Print surface can be anywhere from very matte to very glossy and more than one layer is discernible.

– Gelatine P.O.P (printing out paper):  1880s-1920s.  Prints would have warm tones, monochrome not cool black and white. Usually a glossy finish and they come in many different formats.  They are very sensitive and cannot be put on permanent display, best stored at cold temperatures.

Gelatine P.O.P. Image copyright of Sarah Allen.

– Collodion P.O.P: 1880s -1920s. The prints produced had warm tones, possibly with a purple tinge, and a glossy surface.  They can look like the gelatine P.O.P prints, the use of raking light to show ‘Rainbow’ interference colours helps to distinguish them from Gelatine P.O.Ps.  The prints can become brittle and scratched.

– Gelatine D.O.P (developed out prints): 1880s – present.  They come in many different surface finishes and are very stable. It is the most common black and white processed used in the 20thC. Produced in a developing bath and resulting in very crisp images.

In part 3 we’ll explore remedial and preventive conservation practices for caring for photographic materials.

Emily

The CMS Team enter ‘Eddy’s’ Room!

Having completed the accessioning of objects in the Estate Office, the next room on our hit list was “Eddy’s Room” in the Outer Wicket Tower.  Edward Charles Sackville West, 5^th Baron Sackville (Eddy for short) was given apartments at Knole in 1925 when he left Oxford University. His suite comprised two rooms in the tower plus a kitchen in what is now the shop.

Edward Charles Sackville West, 5th Baron Sackville.

An aesthete, music critic and writer, he was never as famous as his cousin Vita, but his social circle was full of literary celebs, politicians, movers and shakers and members of the Bloomsbury set; many of whom visited Knole.  We entered his flat hoping that it may have retained some Bloomsbury type glamour… sadly not! It does however house a number of his gramophone records along with a fascinating collection of photos of his social circle, and quite a few of his books. At first glance the rooms are a bit uninspiring, so we began by cataloguing the larger pieces of furniture before we delved into the boxes.

Tony, Louise and Clare adding furniture in Eddy’s room to the inventory.

This proved to be rather eventful!  On moving an armchair to measure it, the seat cushion promptly exhaled a noxious cloud of green powder – probably disintegrating foam. Siobhan (project conservator) was duly called for and the offending piece removed.  Next we tackled the bed and all the layers of bedding, pillows and coverlets; most of which had seen better days and had probably been undisturbed since the 1960’s.

Lucy wraps the offending foam cushion in polythene to make it safe to handle.

This time we were prepared. Clad in Tyvek coveralls that made us look like extras from CSI Miami , we stripped the bed of each layer, measuring and recording as we went. The more we uncovered the less appealing the bedclothes became until we reached the mattress and could see that much of it looked alive!

Dressed to impress!

Once again the cavalry were called.  Emily, thrilled, appeared with her moth spray and proceeded to take samples. It turned out that the mattress was a breeding ground for moths.  Needless to say, the CMS team were slightly less thrilled!

Moth larvae living in the folds of a bed spread.

Our most exciting discovery that day came when Claire recognised the painting above the bed as a copy of “The Venus of Urbino” by Titian. On inspection we found that it was indeed painted on canvas and was dated 1778. It seems that this work was painted by Ozias Humphrey, a noted copyist and painter in his own right who visited Knole in the late 1770’s to receive commissions.

The team admire and discuss the copy of “The Venus of Urbino” by Titian.

The problem with the Outer Wicket Tower rooms is that nobody is quite sure when the objects were put in the room and by whom. This means that writing a provenance for each item is tricky. Luckily, in the case of the Venus of Urbino (or vomiting Venus as we have affectionately named her – look it up to see why!),  Emma  remembered that the painting used to be displayed in the house and located the entry in the 1891 house guide. For many of the other objects, we are working on a best guess.

Did Eddy really bring that soap dish back from the South of France as a souvenir?  Is the gramophone the one mentioned in his biography?

One of Eddy’s pocket diaries.

Many of the photos are dated to the period of Eddy’s occupation of the rooms, but it is always dangerous to make assumptions. For example, on the bookcase there is a framed photograph of a gentleman. The photo is signed “to Eddy from Paul”. Intrigued, Tony did a bit of digging and identified the gentleman in the photo as Paul Latham, a dashing naval officer with whom Eddy had a scandalous and ill-fated affair. It doesn’t seem likely that the photo was left there by Eddy, or that it stayed in pride of place throughout the room’s occupation by land agent Frank Mason after Eddy moved out.  But there it is, in his flat, on the bookcase.  Did someone move it back there? If so, when?

Discrepancies like this make it impossible to be as accurate as we would like about each object’s history, but with each object we catalogue, we can build a better picture of this part of Knole’s ‘life’. Luckily, researching this kind of thing makes us all tick so we will continue looking in boxes and searching for treasure!

Vicky, Tony, Clare, Louise, Conrad and Annie, aka the CMS Team.