SHELL OF A RIDE
Emma Schmuecker, a senior objects conservator at the National Trust, who also manages the conservation studio at Knole in Kent, talks us through her day
This cherub on a tortoise is just one of the pieces that Emma Schmuecker has restored to glory.
My day starts with my two children pestering me to get out of bed.
A er breakfast, I leave our home in Crystal Palace and catch a train to Sevenoaks in Kent. The journey is about an hour – I switch o and look out of the window as city gives way to countryside. It takes half an hour to walk from the station at Sevenoaks to Knole. I love walking into the park, through the trees, admiring the dewdrops on the long grasses, and the deer, as I come up to the house.
I arrive at the conservation studio at 9am. It’s in an enormous medieval barn.
The doors are huge – two storeys high. Every time I pull these doors open, I think, ‘Wow, this whole barn is our responsibility’. It’s a wonderful feeling to enter the building and look at what we’re working on. The pieces are incredibly signi cant, whether in monetary value or the memories, history and people they represent. The barn itself is an amazingly designed architectural space.
By 9.30am the other conservators have arrived (there are ve of us) and we chat about the day ahead. I then
‘I arrive at the conservation studio at 9am. It’s a wonderful feeling to enter the building and look at what we’re working on.’
resume my work on an Imari vase from Knole. I specialise in metals conservation and, at the moment, I’m working on ormolu mounts ( re gilded brass or bronze) on several decorative objects from Hinton Ampner in Hampshire and this Imari vase from Knole house. The team from Hinton Ampner requested their pieces to be cleaned to quite a high level, while the Knole team don’t want the Imari vase to be too shiny, as it would clash with the faded grandeur of the property.
The mounts on the 18th-century Japanese export Imari vase are quite grubby with ingrained dirt and copper corrosion si ing over the gold.
Under a microscope I can see there is quite a lot of gold le beneath the dirt, so I start to remove the grime. I’m careful not to remove too much. Over my shoulder in the studio there’s a Chinese screen from nearby Ightham Mote, a huge picture frame from Petworth, some tiny cockerel ornaments from Nu eld Place in Oxfordshire and a set of furniture from Monk’s House in Sussex, Virginia Woolf’s country retreat.
Shortly before 11am the volunteers come in to open the studio for the public.
At lunch I take a walk through the deer park. I pause to look at the giant oaks; a deer trots out and gives me a fright. I return to the studio and sit down to write some progress reports and arrange trips to other properties to advise on what needs conserving. It’s not all about conservation, it’s also about how best to tell the story of an object.
I nish my day standing with colleagues around a tiny alabaster tea set
from the doll’s house at Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire, discussing treatment options before donning a head torch, locking up and tramping to the train station as the light falls.