Behind-The-Scenes in the Conservation Studio

Historic Royal Palaces Podcast

Historic Royal Palaces

London, Palace, Tower, Historic, Conservation, Royal, Lecture, Learning, Kensington, Hampton, Kew, Banqueting, History, Court, Of, House, Palaces

4.6 • 635 Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For today’s episode, we’re at Hampton Court Palace and we’re going behind the scenes into a very special place; the Textile Conservation Studio.

We’ll speak to our specialist conservators to hear about the care and craftsmanship that goes into looking after historic dress, as well as the challenges around preparing for a blockbuster exhibition.

This is the final episode in a series where we’re celebrating fashion, identity and the opening of our new exhibition at Kensington Palace called Crown to Couture.

To find out more about conserving historic dress go to:

Conserving a Rare 360-Year-Old Dress | Behind the Scenes at Hampton Court Palace

For tickets to Crown to Couture at Kensington Palace go to:

https://www.hrp.org.uk/kensington-palace/whats-on/crown-to-couture/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to the historic Royal Palaces podcast.
0:06.0	Today we're at Hampton Court Palace and we're actually in the wilderness at the moment,
0:10.0	but we're headed to the textile conservation studio which sits in the Tudor part of the palace.
0:16.0	The conservation studio is a very special place here at Hampton Court. It's always a hive of activity with lots of people coming and going,
0:24.6	and it's a really exciting space to be in.
0:27.6	This is where our textile conservators work to look after and maintain
0:31.6	all the historic textiles from within our palaces.
0:34.6	So that could be historic dress, as well as fabrics and of course tapestries.
0:39.3	The studio is probably the oldest continuous conservation studio in the world, having existed
0:45.3	at Hampton Court since 1912 when it was initially set up by William Morris & Coe to care for the tapestry
0:52.3	collection on display in the palace.
0:55.0	Nowadays the team of 11 textile conservators continue this tradition of caring for historic objects within the six palaces managed by our charity.
1:04.0	So we're currently in the wilderness but let's head over to the studio now.
1:46.7	So we are now in the textile conservation studio and in the space itself there are, there are loads of large tables for laying things out on. And of course there are mannequins for working on. But I think the most exciting things are the large boxes that they keep historic dress in,
1:52.8	because it's just so exciting to see something coming out of the layers of tissue and being revealed, a bit like a Christmas present. But today we're here to meet some members of the team,
2:00.0	so we're here with Beatrice, Charlotte and Kirsten,
2:03.6	who were part of the team of conservators
2:05.6	who worked on the historic and contemporary dresses
2:08.6	that are currently on display in the Crown to Couture exhibition
2:12.6	at Kensington Palace.
2:14.6	Thanks for letting me invade the studio today. It's lovely to have you here. So when I first
2:20.0	came in here into the studio, the radio was playing and it was buzzing with anticipation because you'd just
	...

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