Ghigo, Tea;
Bone, Daniel;
Howell, David;
Domoney, Kelly;
Gironda, Michele;
Beeby, Andy;
(2022)
Material Characterisation of William Burges’ Great Bookcase within the Disruption of a Global Pandemic.
Studies in Conservation
10.1080/00393630.2022.2153463.
(In press).
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Abstract
This contribution presents the results of a technical investigation on the pigments of William Burges’ Great Bookcase (1859–62), preserved at the Ashmolean Museum. It is the first thorough material investigation of a remarkable piece of Gothic Revival painted furniture, notably an artwork by Burges, whose work has so far received little attention from a technical point of view. This study was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, which significantly affected the planned research activities since the investigation relied extensively on collaborations with institutions within and beyond the University of Oxford. The disruption caused by the lockdown and other restrictions went far beyond any prediction and led us to redefine the project’s outcome and methodology ‘on the fly’ while maintaining its overall vision. However, thanks to the timeliness of a substantial research grant received from the Capability for Collection Fund (CapCo, Art and Humanities Research Council), we could ultimately turn this research into a unique opportunity to test the potential of recently acquired instruments, namely the Opus Apollo infrared camera and the Bruker CRONO XRF mapping spectrometer. Therefore, besides reporting on the findings, this contribution outlines the strategy adopted and assesses the new equipment’s capability for the non-invasive analysis of complex polychromies.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Material Characterisation of William Burges’ Great Bookcase within the Disruption of a Global Pandemic |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/00393630.2022.2153463 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2022.2153463 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
| Keywords: | Pigment analysis; Victorian painting; Gothic Revival style; William Burges; macro- XRF mapping; multianalytical approach; project management |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History of Art |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181362 |
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