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We are very excited to welcome our very 1st presenter for our very 1st Icon Book & Paper Social Media Exhibition! #IconEx2021
She is one of our committee members, presenting her most recent work:
"Rolling in the Deep: Conserving the V&A Collections at Blythe House for Decant"
She is one of our committee members, presenting her most recent work:
"Rolling in the Deep: Conserving the V&A Collections at Blythe House for Decant"
Hello! I’m Victoria @TorHaddock, I have been working on a two year project for the V&A @V_and_A as their decant paper conservator. I’m also on the Icon Book and Paper committee as Special Projects Officer.
Since February 2019 I have been working here at Blythe House, London, which holds the collections of the V&A, but also Science Museum and British Museum. You may have seen the building and its famous tiled corridors in many films and tv series!
This iconic building has held collections here for over 30 years but the government who owns it is selling it (to be converted into very fancy flats of course) and each museum has to get everything packed and out safely.
My project here has been to prepare anything paper based so it is safe to be decanted out of this building. The collections are going into a new Centre for Research Collections here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/va-east-project
I’ve had to do the minimal amount of work to as many objects as possible, just so they are stable enough to be decanted. Here are a few examples! From decapitated puppets
To conserving and rehousing these 550 wallpapers
To framed works of art on paper that needed remounting to prevent
them getting damaged during transport
them getting damaged during transport
To 4 huge panels of Chinese wallpaper (approx 2.5m x 4m) - we had no problem social distancing when relining the backs of these!
But mainly I have been rolling in the deep! The archives here are full of rolled up architectural plans, designs, posters and sketches - like this collection of stained glass designs - rolled, stored vertically for decades, filthy, brittle and drawn with charcoal
Or these lovely compacted rolls of hundreds of architectural plans, the gift that kept on giving!
You can read more stories from the decant project here on the V&A @V_and_A blog: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/
I hope you enjoyed looking into some of the things I’ve been working on – let me know if you have any questions or fancy chatting more – get in touch! @TorHaddock
