As a continuation in
making the former administrative wing of the house more open to
visitors, and to tie in with the conservation theme that we have been
demonstrating over the past year or two, we have this year begun
working on making the 1st floor storage room more
accessible. Previously the room had rarely been worked in, it was
closed-off to protect the items kept inside, and on occasion briefly opened
up when something on display needed exchanging.
As of this year an
effort has been made to reorganise and tidy up the room to make it
both a more suitable working space, and also to allow for visitors to
have a look around when possible (however it is still not regularly open at the
moment), and this entry will provide a look at a couple of the
changes that we have made, and also to show what the room is like.
The room is the only
large room of the house dedicated exclusively to storing items not currently on
display. These may be items on rotation with ones in other areas -
such as carpets, samplers, and cushions, which may become
light-damaged or worn if on permanent display – or simply things
which the house has come into ownership of over the years and do not
yet have a suitable place to put them.
The opening half of the room is the where most work takes place. The table is where any minor
conservation or cleaning work is currently done (anything major that
does not have to be done in-situ – for example wallpaper repairs –
will be taken off-site to a specialist). The paintings currently on
it are from the mantelpiece of the fireplace, and were removed due to
concerns about shoulders brushing them as people walked past.
The black-curtained unit against the left wall of of the area is the
racks where we keep our samplers. Many of our samplers were donated
to the house by one private individual,
Douglas Goodhart, who had built up over their life through single purchases. Nowadays these items are more cherished than they were back then, which means
that many of them have become quite valuable. A large bulk of them originate from the 17th century, and can be very easy to date because the sewers tended to incorporate years – or even dates – as well as their names into the design. The blackout curtains
are to minimise light damage, and we also have the same type of
curtains on the main windows, and are closed when the room is not in use.
The pile of rolls are
mostly rugs, many of which are on rotation with similar ones
currently out in other areas of the house. We rotate which carpets
are out or in storage to minimise wear when possible, and also we try
to occasionally turn them 180 degrees if, for example, one had an end next to a
doorway with heavy footfall, so that the wear does not occur all on
one side. The majority of our rugs are from the Caucuses and near-east
and dated around the late 19th-/early 20th-century. There are also some large
wall tapestries, silk quilts, and a banner or two, which are mostly
in storage due to their fragile condition.
The wooden item next to
the sampler storage unit is a hammered keyboard (fortepiano?) which is in need of repair. We would like to
move it from the corner to a more suitable location to free up access
to the secondary door to the room, but at the moment the legs are too
fragile to do so. Unfortunately the inside is a pile of
broken/removed hammers, so the instrument is unlikely to receive the
investment able to render it in a playable condition. The white marks on the casing that look like paint flecks are the remnants of repairwork in which a solution is poured into woodworm holes to prevent further damage.
The room is divided
into two by a large shelving unit built across the middle, which
contains a variety of items such as cushions (which we keep in
separate boxes), pots, and spare bits of glass and stonework, etc. It has three layers with some space beneath for flat items and each layer can have the covering material pulled aside, as in the adjacent image. It was purpose-built for the room, and the house has access to a work team for producing such items. Currently in planning is a rack for the carpets, so that hopefully they will occupy less floor space, and be more accessible with perhaps a couple of different levels of cradle seperating different types.
The rear half of the
room is where the larger items of furniture are stored, as well as
our framed pictures, which are lent against the back of the central
unit. The house does not have many paintings in storage, and the ones
on display in areas other than the Long Gallery (which has more of a
regular turn-over due to special exhibitions and loans) are permanent
fixtures. What we do have in the store room are a lot of are framed prints, cartoons,
photographs, etc., many of which originate from the 18-19
th
century and also Lord Curzon's residence of the house.
It was also under
Curzon's instigation that a lot of renovations were done to the house,
including the wallpaper in this room, along with the house's
central heating system, which we still use. There are some Chinese
tiles which were probably removed during this time, and we have
tucked them behind the two dressers so that they remain visible if you peek over the back of the chairs. The wooden carving on the far bench is an
up-turned wall table which is too decayed to display, but is a
pleasant sculptural piece (it also helpfully occupies a bench which
is currently a little too fragile for people to sit on).
The iron fireplace is
in the Gothic Revival style and the hearth guard kept under the bench
to its left (as seen in the earlier photograph of the work table) is not originally a part of it, but may have been used in
one of the fireplaces in the house at some point. The panelling above
it is where we keep our thermometer and electronic temperature gauge.
Monitoring the temperature of the various rooms in the house (you
will see similar gauges placed high up in some of the other rooms)
help us to make decisions as to which need heating, or perhaps
de-humidifying. The paneling above the fireplace is in very good condition, but as with the woodwork all over the house, it has a couple of loose sections that will need re-fixing at some point (this is a periodical occurance and is routine to remedy).
Additionally, on some of the window sills you will
notice insect monitors, which have adhesive strips that allow us to
trap and examine which types of insects are currently travelling
through each room. The majority of insects that we do catch are
perfectly okay to be there, and in some cases predate on more harmful
ones, but for example, if we were to discover that cloth-eating
insects had taken residence in this storage room, we would be very
swift to bring in a specialist to remove them.
The wallpaper is rough around the edges, but aside from one area of deterioration (see the far wall in the first image of this entry), is in good condition, with great spans of un-blemished patterns across several full walls. The reason why we have not had professionals repair the corners is partly due to the expense of doing so, but also because this will never be a display room, and as a working room we will be keeping an eye on any areas of concern to ensure that its condition is not getting any worse. Nowadays we are very careful not to touch anything to the wallpaper, for example leaning objects, but previous occupants of the house have unfortunately added nails, screws and the like for hanging pictures from, whose rusty presence will add further cost to any repairs if they were to be carried out. The cupboard at the end of the room doesn't have any special purpose, it just has a few miscellaneous items - the tall thing in the centre of the photograph is a chinese vase with trees, figures and a grotto.
As a closer, a picture of a window still before I began hoovering and dusting...
