Blog

If you are not yet familiar with Excel pivot tables, you are seriously missing out on some amazing capabilities to make your life easier.

You may have heard there are IIC council elections coming up. What does this mean for you? Goofy comparisons ahead.

We are well aware of the 10 agents of deterioration by now, but let me add an unofficial one.

Conservation has a number of barriers for entry. Based on our personal experiences and current capabilities, what can we do to improve this? Musings on training accessibility. Read more here.

I have noticed many people own silk items of clothing or bedding and they are looking for information on how to care for it. There are plenty of sites telling you what to do. However, this article is written by a conservator! Read more here if you want a non-commercial viewpoint.

I joined Reddit to see if I can be a spokesperson for conservation there. I found a lot of frustration (not mine) and interest (possibly the wrong kind) in conservation. Reflections on the conservation response and what I can do to improve.

I recently became the co-founder of Altminster. What is that? Well, have you ever felt you'd like to learn the humanities at a higher level but can't find how or where? This why Altminster was born. Read more here.

I couldn't help myself. What if a fictional conservator visited different characters and stories and interacted by giving preventive conservation advice? Well... find out what Cinderella's stepmother would get in a letter from a conservator.

You understand temperature and relative humidity, but you're just not sure what you're supposed to do with that dew point. What does that tell you? Find out here and get an extra explanation of psychrometric charts too!

Dust and dirt can be a real bother on bookshelves. They can lead to spotting and foxing. Here are some instructions with photos and a video so that you can protect your favourite books with a stable plastic sleeve.

You want to check your insect traps, but you don't have a nice microscope. Guess what you can do with a phone these days!

You'd like to know how your spaces behave, but you have no dataloggers or special software or budget. Read this article and find out how to make your own Excel model of the humidity in your spaces.

You send off your environmental monitoring sensors to be calibrated, then you get them back and store away the certificates. Did you know might be doing this completely wrong? Find out what you're supposed to do with those reports!

You want to run your own Integrated Pest Management Programme, but you're short on cash for sticky traps. Make your own!

A compilation of the various charters, documents and international agreements on conservation of cultural heritage.

It is an excellent skill to have to be able to make your own bespoke boxes. Here are some instructions with photos so that you can always have your objects stored in the best possible manner.

A short study on an Egyptian faience object.

Beyond the actual intervention and the look of the object, how do minimum intervention and restoration affect material culture?

Do you remember the Cheers song? "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name..." If your name was "Conservator" there'd be very few places you could go and "everybody" would not be a lot of people. Read on if you want to know what happens when your job title explains nothing.

If you are interested in learning more about conservation but have absolutely no background or even know where to start, this course is for you!

Short essay exploring the ways in which conservation can be defined.

What do you do when you just don't know where an object came from? Is it legitimately owned by the person or institution who currently has it? Should such objects be conserved? This brief article presents some thoughts on the debate regarding the conservation of stolen material culture.

I have been very fortunate to be able to work as a conservator in the field in Israel. Would you also like to come?

It's a fact. We're not all conservators. We can't all sit down and fix objects just like that. So what **can** we do? Let's start with basic preventive conservation concepts.

Why is it important to talk about insects and old fumigations in collections? It all comes down to Health and Safety.

Short essay exploring the conservation issues with outdoor marble sculptures and objects.

A short essay on the debate between the true nature of objects and the conservation principle of reversibility.

Doll conservation is one of the most interesting topics I have ever researched. Dolls are not just any object. They were once children's toys. These direct emotional relations make them fascinating objects.