News, loans and acquisitions

Acquisitions and displays | Current loans to exhibitions | Conservation and restoration

Two Boulle marquetry cabinets in the Great Dining Room have been restored this winter. Boulle marquetry is named after André-Charles Boulle, cabinetmaker to King Louis XIV of France. His name became synonymous with the technique of covering a plain wooden carcase with decorative slivers of brass and turtleshell. Other materials such as horn and pewter were sometimes used and would be cut out using a saw to make the intricate shapes that were then glued onto the surface of the piece of furniture. The brass and turtleshell veneers decorating the surface of the cabinets in the Great Dining Room were coming away in many places. When they were originally made, the turtleshell would have been heated and hammered flat. As time passes, the shell naturally wants to revert to its original shape and starts to curl up. The brass also lifts over time. These veneers therefore have to be removed and re-glued. The cabinets also have bronze mounts that were originally gold plated. However, much of the gilding had worn away from years of use and cleaning. Where the gilding had survived, the mounts were simply cleaned; the remainder were re-gilded to match.

There are 11 Delft flower vases in the Devonshire Collection, dating from the 1690s when the 1st Duke of Devonshire probably acquired them. Made of earthenware, they are particularly prone to chipping and breakages. There is an ongoing programme of repairing these vases at Chatsworth. This winter two pyramid flower vases from the South Sketch Gallery and one smaller pyramid from the West Sketch Gallery were conserved. The aim of the conservation is to make them structurally sound and to reconstruct the profile of the vases where breakages detract from the overall appearance.

In the Painted Hall the Roman marble heads and bust by the window wall have been cleaned and conserved in the winter. The head of Caracalla has been left uncleaned to show how dirty and darkened in appearance the heads and busts had become, and the adjacent bust of Homer was not properly cleaned, due to an earlier surface discolouration. This completes the cleaning and repair to all the heads and busts in the Painted Hall.

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