Balancing the Reailities of Small Museums with Best Practice

I’m now a month and a half into my placement year of my object conservation master’s degree, and one of the first projects I’ve been tasked with is advising a local historic house on the preventive care of two objects in their collection. However, after being sent the photographs and questions from the curator, I realised that there needs to be some management of my own expectations and knowledge of “best practice” and the realities of working with institutions that have limited funds and resources. 

The object I struggled with most was a Cromwellian (17th century) leather chair. Whilst the seat of the chair and the wooden structure appeared to be stable based on the pictures sent by the curator, the leather backrest of the chair appears seriously degraded; with areas of the leather photodegraded and flaking considerably. 

The curator had asked if there were any dressings that they could apply to the leather to limit further deterioration. However, after some research, I determined that it would not be effective to dress or coat the leather. It may even exacerbate the flaking of the surface. So, what could I recommend instead? 

My first suggestion involved preventive conservation. I know how hard it can be to do absolutely nothing as an object is degrading, however, I felt like this was the best way to give them peace of mind about the object. It will likely continue to flake, but deterioration would at least be limited in a stable environment. Unfortunately, my supervisor informed me that the historic house has very limited environmental controls. There is no heating or cooling system in the building, and there are large gaps around the windows as well as limited insulation in the ceiling, which allows for the ingress of temperature, relative humidity, and volatile organic compounds from the outside environment. This would most definitely cause further deterioration of the chair in the future. Furthermore, there is also extremely little environmental monitoring in the building, which is an ongoing discussion that the museum advisory service is having with the institution. However, it does mean that there is little knowledge of where the most environmentally stable areas might be for the chair to be stored. 

So, the best solution would then be to treat the object. Currently, based on the photos sent, the back of the chair is the only area that needs conservation, in the form of consolidating the flaking layers and perhaps supporting the back to limit further deterioration. However, based on the limited environmental controls, there is no certainty that the object will remain stable after treatment. Thus, is it even worth considering conservation at all? 

I am finding it difficult to balance notions of “best practice” as I’ve been taught with some of the realities of small, volunteer-run institutions, which are trying to do their best, but may still be struggling to provide for their collections properly. Finding the middle ground is difficult, particularly as an external advisor, but entirely necessary to preserve objects for the future.