Conservation Career Talk

2018-05-08

As part of the Post 11+ programme of events, Year 6 are having careers talks and on the 8th May Mrs Callanan visited us to talk about the conservation of objects. It was extremely intriguing to learn about different means of conservation and the materials that are best to use in different situations. Mrs Callanan told us about four objects that she was asked to conserve: a French frame, a funeral statue, a Japanese cupboard and an ivory bowl. It was amazing to see how the items looked before and after she had worked on them. I found the methods used to clean and fix the items really interesting. The funeral statue was apparently the hardest to conserve, seeing as it was covered in a thick, rock-hard layer of dirt. She used a laser to remove the dirt and then had touse substitute materials to replace the damaged parts. We learnt that her work requires lots of skill, dedication and patience! It was great to learn about this specific type of job and many of us were interested in working with artefacts when we are older. Many thanks to Mrs Callanan for taking the time to come and tell us all about her work.

Melissa