Opening up the Soane: Restoring the Private Apartments

[Music] Sir John so ins Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields is a magical place filled with magnificent spaces and intricate architectural details it's home to an extraordinary collection of paintings sculptures and artifacts from all over the world Johnson was one of England's most visionary architects responsible for many of London's most prominent Regency era buildings before he died soin left the house to the nation and stipulated that it must be kept exactly as it was at the time of his death in 1837 but subsequent curators did make substantial changes whole areas of the house were remodeled works of art and artifacts moved or disposed of and soand private apartments were turned into offices in 2009 the museum started a massive restoration project dubbed opening up the soin aimed at putting the museum back to exactly the state it was in when Sohn died this series tells the story of that restoration filmed over a period of six years it traces the research the discoveries and the skills that made the transformation possible you [Music] halfway up the museum's main staircase sits the Tivoli recess originally a closet soin transformed it into an exquisite little space that he used as a showcase for contemporary sculpture and which boasts a beautiful and intricate plaster ceiling originally the ceiling of the Tivoli recess would have when it was a closet would have been quite plain it just would have been left in plaster and it would have been whitewashed but when the sun's sown fits out to be part of his Museum it's a very special ceiling in it which has a very shallow dome which he designs for the space and then he decorates it with ornaments and so there's a plaster cast of Apollo in the middle of the ceiling and then sunburst rays radiating from his face and then running the the edges of the shallow dome or a serpent attacking an eagle but this wonderful ceiling was a casualty of the many changes that propelled the museum since sones death and so as part of opening up the zone in 2012 work started on recreating the ceiling what we recreated really is a masterpiece I mean I'm so grateful that the sonar giving me the opportunity to do it it really is a masterpiece because it's got so many layers to it if you count the last you've got one two three four five six you've got seven layers so it gives you some idea I think working in the tiny cramped recess Neil England is part way through casting trimming and fitting the individual pieces of the multi-layered sunburst effect this is the first level of three layers of sunbursts okay because these are so thin the only thing you can actually use to make them with is cotton lint kind of stuff a bit like your grandmother's curtains each plaster ray has to be carefully shaved and trimmed to within a millimeter of the size specified in the architects drawings next Neil makes a final check that the Ray fits correctly now Neil is ready to stick the Ray in place the material we use is the same as they would have used in that time we don't use cove adhesive we use lime and out for plasters still the same stuff this is probably one of the most complex stickups I've ever done because you've got no margin for error you are 1 mil out and it shows on the on the next one in line ok I have to quickly I'm told by the time I have does that blow it up that's pretty good I'm happy with that let's just hope it stays there well we putting it up we put it up the same way the originals we're being put up so I'm pretty certain it'll stay there what we have here are the elements that live in each of the corners of this extremely domi ceiling this is the Eagle spreads its wings across each of the undersides of a sunburst in the corners underneath this Eagle grips in his claws are two snakes okay these were carved by sculptor Sarah Mayfield who I think is extremely talented the snake goes underneath there and then the wrathful leaf lives under there well the lovely isn't it and these exist as are saying each corner of the ceiling these are made from casting plaster which is where they would have been made originally high alpha plaster we've actually used a slightly tougher plaster these days we've actually cheated here a little bit just simply because being done just as straight plasters really isn't hard enough so we do use a slightly tougher plaster now but in principle it's exactly the same the methodology is no different to the way it would have been done in Sir John Soane style when we started on this project with the architects and the builders we suddenly found dimensions were wrong drawings suddenly didn't agree but it's been quite a journey I mean just trying to figure out how the ceiling worked with the Eagles and the pieces that fit in the corners was horrendous but I can happily stand here right now and say to you in all honesty with my hand on my heart everybody's done that very best they can to ensure that this recess goes back exactly as it was in size time with the ceiling finished restoration of the Tivoli recess could be completed and today the sculptures that so and had placed there are back and the painted glass window depicting charity is in place the lovingly recreated after it was destroyed by a bomb in 1940 opening up the soin now moved into its most ambitious phase restoring John soand private apartments on the second floor at the front was the model room filled with architectural models and dominated by a huge model stand in the center behind the model room was a complex series of carefully designed small spaces including the bedroom and the bathroom but in the years since CERN's death all the partitions that divided these rooms had been removed most of the contents and objects either put elsewhere in the museum or lost altogether and the floor was now used as office space with no access for the public opening up the zone planned to restore all the partitions and windows and to put back the whole second floor exactly as it had been at the time of CERN's death one key resource was the watercolors that soin had commissioned of all the rooms these watercolors were really at the core of the research we did to prepare for opening up the zone and actually they were the inspiration for deciding that the most important thing to do was to remove our offices from the second floor of number 13 and clear that space so that we could recreate zones private apartments by 2013 restoration work was well underway the second-floor windows on the back of the museum had been significantly altered with the removal of some windows and the installation of a new large central window restoring these windows to their original configuration was a challenge so it was quite major structural work we basically had to reform that area of the wall around a former opening which was really quite large so it was done in the series of operations by propping that limb to remove the window propping that lintel building up through delegates of bits of brickwork in vertical columns and it was a very complex operation to do that while maintaining the stability of the structure above we were most worried about the third floor collapsing because while deduce timber timber was quite close to the external brick elevation there's always a risk that the Timbers become decayed or is weakened due to rot or defect and any defects in that timber wood would again lead to movement which could cause structural failure in locations so it was quite a nervy operation also the museum originally wanted to continue using the third floor for their offices while we carried out the work but luckily we made them see sense and vacated them during that process all the internal partitions that form the different spaces had to be manufactured and installed the next puzzle was what decorative finish to use on the woodwork the new panels and doors are made of either tulip wood or Hiroko that are painted to look like mahogany using a special technique that soin employed called graining the first stage of greening is called flogging where a thin solution of stain is worked into the pores of the timber for the next coat the decorators used traditional methods mixing powdered pigment with Newcastle Brown Ale or vinegar this coat is applied to the prepared surface and then comes the crucial stage of bickering which mimics the texture and pattern of actual mahogany by a stroke of good fortune the museum could provide the decorators with a precise template for the pattern of graining that sones own decorators had used even though all the grain timber doors and partitions had been ripped out or painted over after his death because miraculously one door had survived tucked away downstairs on a cupboard for nearly 200 years but first the museum had to confirm that it really did have the original graining this is quite a remarkable door and it provided important evidence for the imperium during song Johnson's occupancy of this floor so I was asked to take some samples just to establish that this was in fact the original graining so I took a small sample of the wood with some of the paint attached mounted and cross-section examined it under the microscope and I could see that there with cells of the wood and there was only one grain decoration on the surface of the wood so that just confirmed that this is a remarkable survival and what we're actually looking at is the graining of the wood that was commissioned by Johnson and if you look closely you can sort of see the quite lively swirling of the of the combing there and this very vibrant design so when Haren Humphreys were asked to recreate the graining on this floor they could use this door as a sort of source archive to be inspired to get the the vibrancy of the original graining so it's a very remarkable survival of the Johnson era and nearly 200 years old so we really should treasure [Music] a highlight of the restoration of the second floor was the discovery of house Owen had decorated the walls of the private apartments by the late 20th century all the walls had been redecorated several times and it seemed that no trace was left of sones original decoration however the watercolors of the private apartments clearly show a patterned wallpaper our archive described the wallpaper that Sohn had bought we found in the VNA archive the order books of the wallpaper company that soul ordered the wallpaper from with a tantalizing little strip of colored wallpaper but no representation of the whole pattern or anything in 2009 it occurred to us since we knew that there had been wallpaper in this room but it might be sensible to do some exploratory cleaning just to see if possibly there could be the remotest chance of us finding any or anything of it we asked mark Sandiford to come here and have a look each wall in the whole of the second floor and see if he could find anything and after two hours back came our historic wallpaper consultant to say it's all there I think you've got a whole wall of it this was perhaps the most remarkable discovery in the whole early part of the contract it's an extraordinary moment when somebody comes into your office and tells you that something you thought you could never see in reality is actually there by 2012 work was well underway to strip off the later layers of paint and paper what we're doing here is uncovering a very rare find in the museum a piece of original decoration and currently we are taking off all the later layers which have built up since CERN's death in 1837 and getting back to the wallpaper which then we will repair conserve and will form part of the new interior removing the later layers of paint and wallpaper whilst not damaging CERN's original paper is a delicate task chemistry is doing its work this is quite a sharpened what's called a continental filling knife and I'm putting no pressure at all so I'm just sliding it underneath the the paint that has now become a gel I'm putting no pressure at all it's just the weight of the scraper it's so delicate and the paper is so finely printed I don't lose any details and as gentle as I can be it's potentially a very boring job you know like a lot of things like this but if you don't keep your concentration level pretty high at all times something will happen and you'll have a mistake and and you can't to go back that's that's the the main thing with this you know this is the original wallpaper if you damage it you can't go back so one has to have concentration and care at all times you can't take it for granted this is a a medium to fine wire wall I'm just a jeté ting these last remnants of paint from within the recesses of the printing the lower areas of the printing it sounds extreme using wire wall but I have tried every other possible and it's a case of the balance of the cut of the wire wall that cuts through the paint means you don't have to work it very hard if I use cotton wool I have to work it and work it and work it and the more work you put into the surface the more damage you will do it's an extreme sport really it has danger at every corner but if you can bounce the technique and the dangerous chemicals then you get a good result it wasn't just the bathroom that featured this wallpaper detailed research in the archive revealed that it was used throughout the second floor so with the specification and quantity now clear the soin could go ahead and commissioned the new wallpaper they turn to the once fashionable Spartan of Sharon Springs 3,000 miles away in New York State here Adelphi paper hangings specialize in recreating historic wallpaper traditionally wallpaper rolls were made of individual sheets of paper that were glued together at that point they didn't have continuous paper although the technology for continuous paper was being developed a bit about this time but manufacturers wallpaper manufacturers were rather reluctant to use use continuous paper so they glued sheets together [Applause] you can't move while I'm drying so we tape it the Sun provided a photograph of the original wallpaper from which Michelle Atta Delfy had to copy each element of the patent she could have done much of this by computer a lot of people would think that we might use a computer and just draw one and then cut and paste but we feel like in order to get it exactly like the originals which were hand hand-carved that we if we draw each one by hand they'll be the tiniest amount of variation which will be in keeping with with the original more than than by cutting and pasting the sone wallpaper pattern has three different colors so michelle has to draw a different design for each color so once we have all the patterns drawn we do a little test to see make sure that they all line up with each other and this is this to be the second block which is the dark orange color with the third one on which is the light yellowish cream color and that's at the three transparencies will be used as templates to carve the printing blocks from hardwood a subcontractor uses a laser to ensure that every detail is clearly cut Adele fees basement stores a collection of hundreds of books however careful the laser cutting has been blocks can need cleaning and repairing before they can be used for printing the really small elements of the blocks are quite fragile and it's really easy to break them off when you're cleaning the block so especially these little pin dots but they're quite easy to repair usually just use a nail and then flatten it to the surface so it's all in the next stage is to mix the paint I'm going to make a small batch of the ground paint for the sown diaper pattern it uses three pigments three pigments that we use most here iron red is the first one and we'll take measure out 56 grams of that okay 56 it's a little bit too much so take a little bit out take a little more out there we go the next pigment is yellow ochre yellow iron oxide this is the one that we use it's not in almost all of our paints and it'll take 46 grams of this one and the last one is carbon black the recipe calls for point 7 grams I'm going to use point 6 because it's always too easy to put too much black into something you can always add more if you need to and it seems as though once you get too much black in there you might as well just start over again and now we'll mix just a small amount of the paint base into the pigments and get those stirred in well and then test and see if it matches your standard now these paints always dry either lighter or darker than when they're wet but this is the this is the color here that I'm going for so at the moment it looks rather looks rather different but let's see what happens it's much closer now that it's dry I think it still needs them that black the final base color is applied to the glued paper strips the paper is hung up to dry and then it'll be ready for the first block printing now I'm just gonna brush the print paint out and trying to get it evenly coated it takes a fair amount of paint to charge the felt and then once it's once it's loaded with paint then you only need to add a little bit each time even it out and tamp the block rocking it back and forth left to right front to back laying it flat and bringing it over the bridge looks okay so I'm getting set up to print the second color in the second block move the block around a little bit to try to get all the corners I'm going to lined it up with the pins from the first block lift it up and everything look good on that I just in my registration a little bit the the second and particularly the third block were very fine detail and so to get those so that they again match the original when having the the blocks made and then in printing and we had to be extra careful change to get the the detail crisp and and verifying the project was it was good it was fun we learned we learned a lot which is something that always keeps this rather interesting once the completed paper was delivered it could be hung throughout the second floor [Music] it's a triumph for the museum a rare example of original early 19th century wallpaper uncovered through a hunch and sitting alongside new wallpaper recreated using traditional techniques [Music] with the wallpaper and wood graining resolved the next challenge was to uncover the other original colors when I was asked to establish what the original decoration was I made a sampling plan and I took paint samples for most of the elements the original walls the lining of the alcoves little bits of the wood on the architraves and the paneling's below and I do that by taking a small section of the plaster with paint layers attached the wood where the paint lay it's attached and then I meant those in cross-section and that enabled me to look at them quite carefully under a microscope at very high magnifications of up to 52 times 500 and this allows me to see all the different layers that have been applied not not only by Johnson but by the people who came after him and we were surprised to find that when the lodger had been enclosed and Johnson had applied this very vivid red color and this is composed of a thick red opaque layer covered with a translucent varnish that was tinted with a red pigment and is this subtle combination that gives us this lustrous paint effect and of course with hindsight now we can stand back and we can see the red stained glass and we now know that John Stone was creating a very integrated very vibrant scheme so now we've recreated the Reds game installed the paintings we can sort of see that this is how the lodger would appeared in 1837 when Johnson died one of the most remarkable aspects of restoring the second floor is the bathroom in 1820 John Soane installed a plumbed in bath in the dressing room next to his bedroom it can be seen under the window in this water color in 1820 it would have been incredibly rare to have a plumbed in warm bath of this kind in a domestic dwelling house it was unusual to have a bathroom outside royal palaces we know that you have Wellington had one at Apsley house but that's about the only other example from this time that we've been able to identify it was quite extraordinary and so not only had a bath for himself but supplied a bath for his servants in the basement perhaps as a totally self-made man the son of a bricklayer he was very conscious of how much that kind of facility could transform people's lives by the 1920s the baths had been completely removed but today the original lid covers a precise replica of that bath inevitably there were many clues about the bath in the archive such as in Johnson's own leather-bound measuring book you come to a page on which the title bath appears about halfway down and then you come to a detailed list of measurements for all the different timber elements used in the making of the framing to sones bath and the first item for example just says one and a half deal framing in one panel turned and flush front some detailed builders rekkles from 1918 revealed when the bath was removed here in the day work records for the period February the second to February the 8th is a little entry repairing floor and making good after removal of bath when we started to do the research for the second floor we discovered all sorts of clues and what was particularly exciting clues to physical survivals here on this Northside of what was then my office the deputy director's office and it was a most unpromising corner there was a bookcase covered in all my books and papers and the walls were covered with yellow anaglypta type wallpaper it was in the curators diary that Helen struck gold when she turned to the same date that the builders had removed the bath on this particular page I found something absolutely crucial Wednesday February 6 1918 old Bath front re fixed as dado on north wall how extraordinary that Arthur Bolton should have thought to report what's such a small and perhaps mundane seeming piece of work but thank goodness he did because when I read this entry I thought right well that's behind the bookcase in my office so I got help and we pulled out the bookcase dust flying everywhere and Eureka there on the wall was clearly the front of sones bath but once our architects had rushed in in great excitement and started to look at it we discovered that the woodwork fixed to the wall wasn't just the front of the bath but also the end of the bath that is this end here and that was a really really vital discovery because the top of the end of the bath was scribed so that the curve of the end of the original bath itself could rest properly on that piece of wood and that gave us the exact shape and front-to-back with depth dimension for the bath itself to make a new bath the sone reached deep into the Brecon Beacons in Wales it's been to hear that palaces cathedrals and many other magnificent institutions have turned to have ambitious and beautiful wrought iron gates doors towers and other designs made Paul Dennis's family have worked metal for generations [Music] you know as always very good as my hands that was a one skill I had and metal work have been in our family for hundreds of years it went back to my grandfather great-grandfather father [Music] my father taught me he'd been originally started off as a farrier my grandfather had built the big wire works they concentrated on all sorts of things in metal they made everything right down to mousetraps funnily enough I love the physicalness of it I love the creation of it it's it's actually creating something as solid lump of metal and you can turn into anything you want you put it in the fire and it becomes malleable like plasticine and you can make into anything and then suddenly this thing starts growing which is really because you make an individual it's the only thing in the world like it it might look like other things pretty totally different each your own and he's got your own touch on and whoops a bit like handwriting two people never make the same thing exactly and and that's what it is and and I've never lost that passion for it in all the years I've been doing it and I've been doing it over 50 years now sounds original bath was made of wrought iron but this material is no longer available in the right quality so the new path was made of modern steel but where possible using traditional techniques the bath was quite thick and it was very difficult to work well like that that's quite good and well I did try it as much as I could to keep his traditional as I could on it although we couldn't absolutely often we would solve it together and things like that and I just had to make it something looked exactly a very made in I think it made in what he appeared was 1810 1820 and that was it one of the most comfortable baths mind you wouldn't want to sit in it you have a flat bottom and sort of rigid sides but there's but it would work it would certainly better not take in about at all and I was very pleased with it and and it went away I thought oh that looks all right we knew from the bill again that the bath was japanned white inside and we commissioned Titian studios in West London to receive the stainless steel bath and Japan it in an entirely traditional way and again we have very interesting discussions with them and in the end concluded that we should simply use linseed linseed oil and earth pigments and that provided a very natural white without any need to antique it or make it look old in any way at all now complete work started on restoring the original front and side panels I've been using a weak ammonia based chemical in a gel form to clear the dirt out of the varnish we apply the gel to the surface that needs cleaning and leave it for a minute or so we then remove it with cotton swabs and saliva and that might sound quite disgusting but actually saliva is very useful in cleaning because it's much more controllable with water it can become too wet and it also helps the added benefit of having enzymes in it which continue the cleaning process and the archive provided a clue about another original piece of the bath I also found a reference to the lid of the bath being kept and used as a table and I thought well where could that be I wonder if it's amongst all the miscellaneous bits of mahogany in the front sellers and sure enough when we went through everything we found the lid and it still bears the scars of its use as a table because the underside is covered with cut marks which we very carefully kept during the restoration the original bill for sones bath gave gave us definite evidence that it had been plumbed in and that the hot water for the both came from a copper which was upstairs on the floor above once we'd uncovered all the remnants of sones original wallpaper we discovered that in this corner there was a very pronounced vertical line where there was no paper and we came to the conclusion that that was where the lead pipe must have run down from the copper into the wash stand here and then from there somehow fed the hot water into the bath and what we did find was the cutout in the floorboards where the pipe work had a Dee trap in it and in the back wall evidence that the bath just discharged through a pipe down over the rear roofs of the museum which is quite an extraordinary thought when you think of modern plumbing regulations I think for us recreating sones baths was one of the most special and exciting elements of the whole project because we started with nothing just a bill and a space in the corner of a room and we ended up with something that I think is is incredibly convincing it's a wonderful mixture of brilliant new cabinet making with the surviving lid and front and end and the new bath so beautifully made by Paul Dennis and I think it's a triumph we've got the base job in the next episode we'll see the restoration of a priceless 200 year old plaster model 200 years the first time this has been seen amazing a complex process of recreating one of CERN's picture frames and the delicate work of gilding it [Music]

Channel: SoaneMuseum

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Id: -gB2RjuS7tk

Length: 43min 34sec (2614 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020