Sticking Point: Adhesion in Craft and Conservation

Adhesives are essential within many fields of craft and conservation across the heritage sector. From traditional materials, such as lime mortar and isinglass, to modern epoxies and resins, adhesives can provide elegant solutions or pose tricky (and sticky!) challenges. The intended effect of adhesives can vary significantly in different contexts, and, perhaps surprisingly, some adhesives are used across very different fields.

In the first of our Winter Series of Second Tuesday Talks, introduced and chaired by Prof Tom McLeish, we bring together craftspeople and conservators from the fields of stonemasonry, stained glass, paper and manuscript conservation to delve into this fascinating topic. They will explain how and why adhesives are used in their different fields, before exploring the technical challenges, practicalities of application and ethical considerations they encounter, in a 40-minute discussion session.

This event will be of particular interest to practicing professionals, but will also appeal to non-specialists.

About the Speakers

Andrew Honey is a book conservator at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford with a teaching and research role. He recently completed the conservation and rebinding of the illuminated manuscript Winchester Bible, the largest surviving 12th-century English Bible, and is the conservation advisor to The Mappa Mundi Trust, Hereford Cathedral.

Nigel Copsey is a stonemason and building conservator. Starting out as a dry-stone waller in Cornwall, Nigel trained after 1989 as stonemason and carver at Weymouth College, thereafter working largely in the conservation industry across the south and south-west of England, and regularly after 1999 in Vermont, USA, as well as in Granada, Andalusia. Since 2001, Nigel has worked extensively as consultant and practitioner in the field of building conservation and repair in North Yorkshire. He has worked upon a wide range of vernacular and high status buildings, designing, specifying and executing major repair projects for a wide range of historic buildings, as well as researching, designing and specifying a number of building repair and conservation projects on behalf of Natural England. Nigel has contributed to several volumes of the recently published Historic England Practical Conservation series. A committed SPAB-member, Nigel is also a Professionally Accredited Conservator-Restorer and determined advocate for the thoroughgoing use of traditional materials in the care and repair of old buildings. He is a leading advocate for the routine use of hot mixed lime and traditional earth-lime mortars for most applications. He works extensively with Historic England and international partners in the delivery of practical training and education in the informed use of traditional quicklime mortars for the like-for-like and compatible repair of historic buildings. A Research Associate of the Archaeology Department at the University of York, Nigel regularly delivers hot mixed earth and lime mortars and traditional skills training. His book, Hot Mixed Lime and Traditional Mortars was published in 2019, as well as his HES Technical Paper 30, a review of historic literature concerning lime. He has just been awarded an MA by Research on the same.

Sarah Brown is course director of the University of York’s MA in Stained Glass Conservation and Heritage Management and Director of the York Glaziers Trust.

Richard Hawkes has worked as a paper conservator for over twenty-five years, although his earliest work experience was in wall painting conservation.  After completing the MA Conservation of Fine Art course at Northumbria University, he spent two years at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, before joining Museum Conservation Services Ltd in Cambridge in 1995. In 2004, he established his own studio Artworks Conservation Ltd, in Harrogate, working with many museums and galleries in the north of England, including The Hepworth Wakefield, Mima and Museums Sheffield. He taught paper conservation for several years at Camberwell College of Art and is currently filming tutorials in his studio for the MA Conservation course at Northumbria. After presenting a poster on the uses of Lascaux acrylic dispersions in paper conservation at the 2011 CCI Symposium in Ottawa, Adhesives and Consolidants for Conservation, he took part in an adhesives training event at Norfolk Record Office for ARA members.