The Collections Care Team at Harewood House Trust is truly a behind the scenes team, ensuring that the museum-accredited collection is maintained to the highest quality of standards, with conservation and preservation at the top of the list.

In a series of blogs, we go behind the scenes with the Collections Care Team, this time looking at props and more.

The team of three includes Jayne, Collections Care Officer, who has worked with the historic collection for 30 years, Rachel and Amy, Collections Care Assistants, who have worked at Harewood for four and two years respectively, to understand more about this vital part of the charity’s work.

What equipment would people be most surprised to find in your workshop?

Perhaps our new microscope, which we plan to use to help us better identify any pests we find in our insect traps and when carrying out our pest checks. Or perhaps the women’s opaque denier tights that we use for straining lumps out of our rabbit skin glue?

What task would people be most surprised to find you carrying out?

People usually get the biggest shock when they enter a room and we’re all on our hands and knees with torches pest checking a carpet or under the Chippendale chairs! Every inch of all the carpets has to be examined for pests including carpet beetles, which love to live in dark undisturbed places and generally are only around 2-3mm in length. However, people would probably be shocked to hear how much involvement our team has in any filming that takes place within the House. As well as clearing any rooms being used of furniture that isn’t required during the filming, or isn’t accurate to the time period that the show or film is set in, we have to pest check every prop before it is brought into the House. Our role doesn’t end once the props are in and filming has begun. From there we have to oversee the filming and equipment that has been installed in the House, to make sure none of our collection is damaged by accident, because sometimes it’s hard to spot a prop from an authentic Chippendale, especially after a long day of filming.

You can keep up to date on the latest news and stories from Harewood on our social media channels @HarewoodHouse

The Collections Care Team at Harewood House Trust is truly a behind the scenes team, ensuring that the museum-accredited collection is maintained to the highest quality of standards, with conservation and preservation at the top of the list.

In a series of blogs, we go behind the scenes with the Collections Care Team, this time looking at training and the best parts of the job.

The team of three includes Jayne, Collections Care Officer, who has worked with the historic collection for 30 years, Rachel and Amy, Collections Care Assistants, who have worked at Harewood for four and two years respectively, to understand more about this vital part of the charity’s work.

What training have you had?

We are a small but very knowledgeable team. Jayne, who heads up our team, has recently celebrated her 30th year working with the collection here at Harewood. If Jayne doesn’t know the answer to a question it’s probably not worth knowing! All three of us, however, have been trained to care for a variety of materials including giltwood, book consolidation, integrated pest management, condition assessing, and the cleaning of paintings to name a few. Our interests range beyond collection care too, with degrees held in both history (Amy) and archaeology (Rachel).

What’s the worst part of the job?

Dealing with a moth infestation in part of our taxidermy collection stands out from this week. It’s currently sat in our conservation freezer at -18 degrees centigrade, to ensure the infestation is properly dealt with. Although polishing the brass entrance step in the winter when it’s raining, comes a close second.

Do you have a favourite item in the collection?

Unique items such as a mechanical bird currently in storage (which still works) and the rocking horse which was used during the 2018/19 1920’s Christmas display, are amongst our favourite items. The latter belonged to the 7th Earl, George and was used by him as a child. There’s always something new to marvel within our collection when we’re carrying out our rolling programme.

You can keep up to date with all our stories and news on social media @HarewoodHouse

Picture Credit Charlotte Graham for Harewood House Trust

The Collections Care Team at Harewood House Trust is truly a behind the scenes team, ensuring that the museum-accredited collection is maintained to the highest quality of standards, with conservation and preservation at the top of the list.

In a series of blogs, we go behind the scenes with the Collections Care Team, which comprises a team of three, including Jayne, Collections Care Officer, who has worked with the historic collection for 30 years, Rachel and Amy, Collections Care Assistants, who have worked at Harewood for four and two years respectively, to understand more about this vital part of the charity’s work.

What’s a typical day for you?

No two days are the same when caring for collections. Although we can often be seen checking around the House at the start of each day, making sure nothing has too much dust build-up (simple, but one of the most key elements of collection care and preventive conservation), our day does not end there. We then carry out a rolling programme of cleaning, maintenance, and monitoring across 31 storage areas and the 24 rooms open to the public. Our tasks range from carrying out light readings, checking insect traps, repairing library books, giltwood cleaning, winding clocks with our Conservation and Technical Officer, Roger, and auditing and updating records on our collections. Our collections range from the furniture, porcelain, and artwork that Harewood House is noted for, to textiles, taxidermy, archives, and the fixtures and fittings within these rooms, carpets, curtains, pelmets, windows, and floors. As you can see our small team of three has their work cut out!

What’s your favourite part of the job?

We are all interested in preventive conservation, so being able to work with such a varied collection and all the different materials that come with it is an amazing opportunity. We love the variety that comes with the job, and that one minute we can be on our hands and knees checking for pests on an Axminster carpet and the next helping re-hang a painting or move a Chippendale sofa, our role rarely gets stale.

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The excitement and countdown to the Downton Abbey film has begun, with new trailers appearing regularly online ahead of the 13 September release date. This is a much-anticipated event on the film calendar and especially so for Harewood House, which was used as one of the filming locations and settings.

Filming took place in October 2018, when over 100 cast and crew set up in the House and grounds for just under a week. Whilst working on major film projects such as this is extremely exciting, this is also a big undertaking for somewhere like Harewood, a visitor attraction open daily to the public and also a national charity and museum, with a commitment to making its collection accessible and available to the general public.

To give an idea of what it’s like when filming is ongoing, for the few days that it took place, the car park was taken over by a Unit Base, which included trailers for hair and make-up, additional toilets and vans with props and equipment. Cranes and lighting rigs were established on the Terrace to beam large areas of light into the room and to make day into night and night into day. Inside the House, the Tech Village was mainly the Gallery and the directors’ area and screens were located here, in addition to kit, sound technicians, props managers, hair and make-up artists and a general area in which the cast could relax. One of the challenges with working on this scale is to ensure the protection of the artwork and furniture. The Gallery in particular has some of Harewood’s most treasured and valuable pieces, including the Renaissance art collection and some of Chippendale’s finest chairs, pier tables and mirrors. A member of the Collections team was on hand at all times, and there are additional considerations, such as ensuring mats protect equipment from the floor and retaining clear space around the collection pieces. But then add over 100 people into the equation…

One of the most interesting moments came when the Gallery was transformed into the scene of a Ball at Harewood. This necessitated soft lighting and also lighting that was higher within the room. Helium based lights were brought in, under the watchful eye of the Collections Care team. This was a striking image to see giant space-age-looking rectangular helium balloons floating within the classical context of the space.

Harewood House is no stranger to filming and has been used extensively and successfully over the years for many different filming projects, including for two seasons, ITV’s Victoria. Additional work to accommodate filming includes changing picture lights, removing paintings, winding down any clocks to avoid chiming (there are over 30 clocks in the House), removing carpets and porcelain to be stored safely and replaced with replicas and cataloguing the location of every single object which is moved to ensure its safety.

But the magic of TV and film can not be paralleled. Rooms and spaces are transformed, modern features disguised to create an even truer reflection of the period. Furniture is brought in and the ingenious work of the set designers alter the rooms with which we are all so familiar.
Harewood staff had the great fortune to meet members of the cast, including Maggie Smith, Phyllis Logan and Hugh Bonneville, who all showed appreciation for the stories of Harewood and made positive comments about the House and its setting.

We have been more than excited to see the current trailer, where the Gallery, Cinnamon Drawing Room and Terrace are featured. To coincide with the release of the film on 13 September, there will be a display of a selection of Princess Mary’s papers and a display of her wedding veil, slippers and tiara. We’re hoping Downton lovers will want to explore Harewood for themselves.

This week Bird Garden and Farm Manager Nick Dowling and his team created some special ice lollies…

As the nation is enjoying/managing unprecedented temperatures and with the heat as high as 34 degrees in Yorkshire this week, we’ve been taking measures to ensure the wellbeing of the animals in the Harewood Farm Experience.

Whilst the penguins at Harewood are not unaccustomed to warm temperatures, this is a Humboldt penguin colony, from the Atacama Desert in South America. The bird though did appreciate giant ice blocks of frozen sprats thrown into their pool, which cooled the pool down too.
Over to the pot-bellied pigs and the goats, a mixture of fruit and vegetables were frozen into ice blocks and then hung for the animals to approach and lick to cool down.

The blocks included grapes, corn, carrots and other fruit. The goats in particular approached these with great interest.

Nick said; “There’s plenty of shade here for the animals to rest and relax in, whilst the temperatures rise, but we wanted to give them an extra treat and an opportunity to try something new, hence the ice blocks. Whilst Trotters and Pudding (the pigs) were not initially sure about it, the goats seemed delighted, and we’ll just keep adding new blocks as the ice melts over the warm weather.”

Visitors can book onto a Keeper Experience at Harewood, feed the penguins and walk the alpacas…find out more online.