The Worksite
For details of all the other conservation work carried out on the East Church take a look at the past newsletters below, or at the news section of the website.
Featured conservation work - Wall paintings conservation
Fiona Allardyce and Karen Dundas are Scottish Wall Paintings Conservators, and they have been using their skills on the fragments of the 1702 painted wooden armorial panels for Sir Kenneth Mackenzie and his wife, Anne Campbell. They have also been carrying out conservation work on the painted pew panels in the north loft that are thought to be from the 1600s.
In both cases the transformation of the paintwork through their careful work is quite remarkable.
Many years of varnish layers and dirt on the pew panels meant that the design had become obscured, with it all descending to a brownish smudge. On the photographs you can see how cleaning has revealed the original colours of white, red, black and green. The photos show part of the panel before any cleaning (left) and after some cleaning (right). On the news page there are other photographs of the newly cleaned panels.
Karen and Fiona have completed work on the 1702 armorial panel fragments. To anyone seeing these fragments today it seems incredible that they were once re-used as the backs to pews in the east (laird's) loft. They've been stored off-site since the Scottish Redundant Churches Trust took over the care of the church, but the hope is that now conditions will be right for their return to the church. The photo to the left shows part of Sir Kenneth's panel before conservation work was carried out.
The panels will be displayed in their orginal alignment, with gaps where pieces are missing, so that visitors will be able to see the scale of the full panels. You can find out more about the work undertaken by Fiona and Karen by downloading the report on their work - including the new paintwork details that were revealed.
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Newsletter 11 Spring 2011 - Church reopening
Latest News Stories
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