Conservation of a Tudor ceiling at Hampton Court

So the Wolsey Closet is part of a series of rooms which are known to have been built and inhabited by Cardinal Wolsey. Our conservation team at the moment are looking at the ceiling to investigate it. We don't really understand the significance fully of this ceiling. We think it is very important but we're not entirely sure when it came into this room, if it's original to the room, if it was original to Cardinal Wolsey's time or if it's a later edition. The ceiling has a very interesting construction and it was thought to be a substance called leather mache. Now we've done some material analysis and we find that it isn't leather mache at all, there's no leather in it. It's actually made up of sawdust, of different types of wood we think, animal glue or at least a protein glue which we assume to be an animal glue and little bits of brick dust or chalk dust depending on where you take the sample from. Another bit of information that we're looking at is how the panels in the ceiling are actually attached within the room. So on one wall of the room you can see that there's a proper edge to the pattern, however on the other side of the room the ceiling just disappears into a wall and that confirms that that wall is, we know that that wall is from a later date. So that could indicate that the ceiling was there before the wall was put in. One of the things we know to be replacements are the Prince of Wales feathers that you can see in the bosses in the centre of these leather mache panels. We found that all of those are made out of plaster of Paris and that's not a contemporary Tudor substance so we know that those are later editions. We can tell that there's been a lot of manipulation with the frieze where Wolsey's motto that runs along the bottom isn't complete, doesn't match and has obviously been moved around. Not only that but most of the letters are made of lead but some of them are made of card so we know that there have definitely been quite a few changes there. So we're now looking at pieces that we're lucky enough to have in the stores here at Hampton Court and looking at these pieces it helps us get a much better idea of the structure and the making process of this amazing ceiling and this unusual material that it's made of as well. This one we believe is from the Wolsey closet itself and you can see this amazing antique work as it was called all the way around. Our analysis shows this is the original gilding and also this blue is the original blue which is an azurite and on this one which is from a different scheme, this isn't the Wolsey closet but this little cherub you can see that the gold is very slightly different and has a different colour under the gold so again this all appears to be Tudor but not from the closet. So it's building up clues that all of these different things were created in roughly the same way. This was something that happened presumably quite a lot at Hampton Court and they really were very skilled at it. One of the really exciting things about working close up with these objects is how close it brings you to the craftspeople that made this and those are generally people that history doesn't describe. We know a lot about Henry VIII but this one really brings us close to the people that made it and they don't they are the unsung heroes of the building of the palaces so when you look at here and you can see all the fingerprints from where they've been pushed into the mould you feel as if that person is you know you could almost see that person you can picture them doing it and it brings all of this to life. So rather tantalisingly we haven't had the paint analysis completed yet and we are awaiting the report but so far the clues seem to be that it is largely a Tudor ceiling and that we are finding some additions but essentially excitingly it does look Tudor. We can't tell if it's Wolsey, we can't tell if it's Henry VIII. In addition to that we're hoping to do some dendrochronology which is the study of tree rings which may help us date some of the oak and we're also hoping to check out some of the some of the oak boards which have which make which have got funny marks on them and it looks as if those may be shipping marks and it might help date when those wooden panels were brought over as well so we've got lots to find out and hopefully our work will solve some of the mysteries that have been hanging over us for a very long time.