Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> GRIGSBY: The reason we've got you in today is to have a look at how much new wood goes
in roughly per panel, you can see here you've got new oak styles and rails with new sections
of mouldings put in. As much as possible we've kept all the original artwork. Fundamentally
the ends and edges of these panels were completely eaten away and we've had to carefully build
those bits back up as well before we can put them in, otherwise they're sitting in thin
air.
>> GRIGSBY: Right, this particular panel shows a typical example in one corner alone, of
the problems we are now facing. We've got new pieces of oak style set in, they don't
relate or match, they don't line up, and as we work through these panels we're having
to try and reallign components and where necessary replace them.
>> GRIGSBY: This panel here, as you can see, has been canvas backed and we will carefully
remove that from the little packing blocks that it's now sitting on, most of the panels
have been nailed down into this plywood through the artwork. I've got some panels here, as
you can see the canvas backing on, with repairwork around them and I'm very much sure that when
we take this off, we find exactly the same as this one. Now a lot of these are worm holes
but others are actually nail holes, and you'll find that literally the wood just falls to
pieces as we try to pry them apart. To get around that, we've been building up the backs
of the panels, by setting them on to a birch based ply, which is that lower core there,
and building up the edges with oak again so that we've got the same ground to do the artwork
on.
>> GRIGSBY: The panel that we've got here lies here in this photograph, by the doorway,
easily recognisable by the all seeing eye, and it also again is the same set of problems,
worm, canvas backing, and also we have some repairs that show up quite well when we turn
it over. This is not us, this is another repair, fairly modern adhesives and you can see by
here just how paper thin the surface is.
>> GRIGSBY: Interestingly on the back of this panel we've found some clues to the last people
that actually worked in the library, and I would assume these were the chaps who put
all the panelling on to this backing. We've got a young chap here aged eighteen, possibly
D.Overmouse, but this one is much clearer, it's D Maughan, aged 17 and a half, but it's
quite interesting to have an idea of the age group that were in there working on it, it
does explain the quality of some of the repair work. They've done incredibly well, but at
the same time some of it is lacking, and that probably explains why.