Frances Lennard, Senior Lecturer in Textile Conservation.
We recently gained three new members of staff who are all working on the AHRC-funded project, Situating Pacific Barkcloth Production in Time and Place. This three-year project has just started – you can find more information about it on the project website: www.tapa.gla.ac.uk
Misa Tamura is our Research Conservator; she graduated from University College London with an MSc in Conservation for Archaeology and Museums. In the last few years, since graduating, she has worked at the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum. Her interests include conservation of organic artefacts, especially those from anthropological and ethnographic contexts, and the use and application of Japanese paper in conservation practice.
Dr Andy Mills, Historical Researcher, comes to the University of Glasgow from the Norfolk Museums Service, where he has been curating a social history exhibition for the last year. Andy was previously postdoctoral researcher on the Fijian Art project at the University of East Anglia (2012-2014), and Assistant Curator of Oceania Collections at the Horniman Museum (2011-12), amongst other positions in Universities and Museums. Andy’s main research interests are the 18th and 19th Century art history of Polynesia, with a particular focus on iconography and stylistic chronology, regional stylistic variation and identity, the cultural contextualisation of material style, and the history of collecting and museums in Europe.
Dr Margaret Smith, Scientific Researcher, has been a university teacher and research scientist at the Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History at the University of Glasgow for the last three years. Here her research has focused on painted textiles and the physical and chemical aspects of tapestry deterioration. Previously she was a research chemist for 21 years in both academia and industry where she gained extensive experience in analytical techniques, materials science and coordinating field trials in multidisciplinary projects. Her main research expertise lies in the study of degradation rates of materials, the effects of environmental conditions on these rates and the interactions of materials at surfaces and interfaces.
Feature image – Barkcloth (tapa), patterned (115cm x 71cm), Fiji, Melanesia. The Hunterian (GLAHM E.537) © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2016.