Workshop following the British Museum's 'Symposium on the care and conservation of human remains with a focus on natural mummies'

The British Museum's 'Symposium on the care and conservation of human remains with a focus on natural mummies' (organized by Barbara Wills and Daniel Antoine) took place on 20 April.

It was excellent to discuss the subject from such diverse angles. And it was wonderful to have a second day totally dedicated to exploring the techniques Barbara and her colleagues developed during her two-year Clothworkers Conservation Fellowship. It was a privilege to be there and learn from her experience.

Here you can see  pics of some of the activities carried out during the workshop - and learn some of the very simple and extremely effective techniques.

Please note that the 'human bones' depicted here are made of plastic and used for training purposes. 

Our mission was to stabilize this without implementing any kind of interventive treatments. Look out for the 'tendons' and 'skin'. A work of art in itself!

Barbara Wills demonstrating how to create a pillow with polyester wadding, teflon and plastazote.

See what the pillow was for?

Wonderful things can be done with pins.

Cutting plastazote has never been so simple.

Creating the perfect support for a skull.

Workshop on Conservation of Basketry at Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia of Universidade de São Paulo (MAE/USP) (Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo)

From 6 to 9 April 2015 a group of 20 conservators and other conservation-related professionals got together at MAE/USP to work on techniques of conservation of basketry. The workshop was generously sponsored and organised by MAE/USP, through Ana Carolina Delgado Vieira (MAE/USP) - and led by Renata Peters (Institute of Archaeology, University College London).

It covered tangible and intangible aspects of basketry such as manufacturing techniques, modifications of raw materials, use in original contexts and assessments of significance. The last two days were fully dedicated to conservation techniques.
Besides great knowledge exchange, it was great fun! Here you can see images of some of the activities.

All images by Ana Carolina Delgado Vieira

ICOM-CC's Objects from Indigenous and World Cultures Working Group!

The name change request of the former ICOM-CC Working Group on Ethnographic Collections  was voted on  17 March in Paris during the Directory Board and Coordinators meetings. It was approved with unanimous support from both from the new Directory Board members and Working Group coordinators. 

The working group is now called Objects from Indigenous and World Cultures Working Group! It will take a short while for the website to be changed but we will get there! I will send more details soon. 

Check out the associated FB page here, and Linkedin group here.