The first of this year’s scholars’ presentations took place in the Sackler Research Forum Seminar Room, The Courtauld Institute of Art on Tuesday 14th November 2017. An audience of over thirty people, which included conservation professionals, supporters of the Fellowship and students from The Courtauld Institute of Art, were treated to a selection of interesting presentations. Four students presented reports of their internships abroad, Kathryn Cook, Cécilia Duminuco, Jorden Megyery and Kimberly Roche all gave interesting and enlightening presentations.

Two of the presentations were archaeology based, but in many ways totally different, Kathryn’s internship was at the Athenian Agora excavation in Greece, where she conserved a range of Greek artefacts in stone, metal, bone and ceramics. Kimberly’s artefacts were more marine based as she went to the Mariner’s Museum in Newport, Virginia, USA, conserving objects from the ship, USS Monitor, which were made from various metals.

Cécilia and Jordan’s internships were both paper/book related, Cécilia attended a course on Ethiopic book binding and Jordan spent her time at the Amsterdam City Archives. Cécilia produced two small books in parchment using traditional Ethiopian techniques, while Jordan conserved a range of paper related objects. The presentations illustrated a wide and varied range of conservation techniques, some traditional, such as using a scalpel to remove corrosion products from a Greek coin, to some more innovative methods using Dry-Ice blasting to remove corrosion products from iron components that have been in the sea for many years.

The scholars are all to be congratulated on both their internships and presentations, it was evident that they had expanded their experience and learnt a number of new techniques at their respective institutions. The Fellowship would like to express their thanks to The Courtauld Institute of Art for hosting the presentations, with special thanks to Dr Aviva Burnstock and Ingrid Guiot for the help with this event.

The next round of scholars’ presentations will be at the Wallace Collection on Monday 19th February 2018.

Paul Tear MBE

Trustee