The Scenario

Allyson McDermott and her team devised and undertook a comprehensive treatment programme for the conservation and preservation of The Print Room at Woodhall Park, a late 18th Century Palladian style country house in Hertfordshire.

Print Rooms were fashionable during the later 18th and into the 19th Century but few now survive intact. The Woodhall Park room comprises around 350 engraved prints on a painted paper background, linked with paper bows, festoons, swags and borders.

The Issue

The effects of over 200 years of light, heat, smoke and inappropriate, and damaging, attempts at restoration had taken their toll. Large sections were missing, others cracked and bubbled. Backing papers were torn and peeling from the walls and subjected to repeated repainting with oil, varnish and unsuitable modern materials.

The Scope of the Project

• Removal of engravings and lining paper.
• Treatment of engravings and lining paper in the studio.
• Lining of the walls with original and hand-made replica papers.
• Re-installation of engravings.
• Replacement of missing borders, printed and/or hand-coloured to match originals.
• Architectural paint research to determine and reproduce original colour.
• Repairs to plaster, painted mouldings, plaster, etc.
• Redecoration.
• Environmental monitoring and control.

The Outcome

Woodhall Park's Print Room is now a visually-stunning reinstatement of the original 1782 scheme, using a complementary range of techniques.