by Frances Lennard, Programme Convenor, MPhil Textile Conservation.
Welcome to our new blog about the activities of Textile Conservation, part of the Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History at the University of Glasgow. We’re excited that we’ll have the chance to tell you more about the work that goes on here over the course of the year, and we intend to post a new entry every couple of weeks. Our students and staff will all be taking part; many thanks to Sarah Foskett who is going to coordinate the contributions.
The new academic year is now well under way, and we are delighted to welcome our new first year students, our fourth Glasgow cohort – they come from the UK, Greece, the USA, and Singapore.
We’re also very happy to see our second year students again – they have been working in museums around the country and overseas during the summer for their work placements. Moe Sato spent some time at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and other students were hosted by the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. We’re very grateful to the institutions that hosted both formal and informal placements as they provide extremely valuable experience that helps the students to put the learning on the programme in context. The second year students are giving presentations on their placements to the first years in October and it’s always one of the year’s highlights to hear about their experiences. We’re really pleased that the Trustees of the Textile Conservation Foundation are also coming to hear the presentations; we are indebted to the Trustees for their continued support of the programme, and it’s wonderful to have such a close relationship with them.
The completing students, last year’s second years, have also been busy and handed in their dissertations at the end of August. They worked on some really interesting projects, and we hope that some of them will be published. Two of the students, Jenny Beasley and Stella Gardner, were fortunate to have the chance to work at the Palace of Westminster during the summer on the large textile hangings in Portcullis House, alongside students from Lincoln University. Five of the hangings were surface-cleaned and their stretcher mounts were converted to covered boards; the project was led by freelance textile conservator, Zenzie Tinker. Jenny and Stella took part in an open day at Portcullis House during the London Open House weekend on September 21-22.
