Personal advice with a conservator at an hourly rate to triage and assess the needs of your family collection. Retail supplies so you can do much of the leg work yourself and then technically advanced support to treat the more complicated items in your care. 


Conservation is the science of slowing the ravages of time on items of cultural and personal significance.
Over time all things alter. It is the age and the appearance of age that imbues an object with special qualities and significance. Conservation does not attempt to make things appear brand new. Conservation stabilises items, removes agents of deterioration and supports damaged areas with repairs. By doing this, the appearance is often greatly enhanced and the life of the item extended. Conservation can remove problems which are causing damage; provide safe storage and display; improve the appearance of an item enabling greater appreciation.  Conservation preserves, protecting items from extinction, so they are survive for future generations.

 

Endangered Heritage has a fully equipped laboratory and provides conservation treatment services for the public and to galleries, libraries, museums and archives.  Each of our conservators has extensive experience and training in a particular field of specialisation.  Some conservators will tell you that they are "generalists" and able to work on anything.  While a broad skills base is important, we believe that it is equally important that conservators know their limitations and work within their areas of expertise and training.  Endangered Heritage do not outsource work without the knowledge of the client.  The owner is always in direct contact with the conservator undertaking the work.

Textiles

Conservation of garments, embroidery, lace, tapestry, carpets, furs and leather.  All textile treatments always include insect pest eradication as part of our incoming work quarantine processes.  

Shown is a carpet repair.  The pattern repeat was copied from further along the border and losses were replaced with custom dyed wool. 

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Objects

Conservation of glass( yes even glass), ceramics, timber, metals, ethnographic objects, plastics and rubber.  

Note:  Ceramics repairs where we need to undo previous adhesive repairs can be very time consuming.  It is preferable that people don't "have a go" before coming to us.

Shown is a carved timber buddha statue which had broken feet and fingers and was missing much of one hand.  Broken sections were adhered, a fill sculpted to replace the loss and the new section inpainted.

Paintings and frames

Paintings can be on canvas, baird paper in oil acrylic watercolour or even mixed media. Our team combined can offer stabalisation and cleaning to conserve your painting assets. We have an in house gilder and frame specialist able to make sure the entire project is done in one place. 

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Paper

Conservation of paper, books and photographs. Robin Tait is an award winning bookbinder and paper conservator making her them ost acomplished book conservator available. Robin has undertaken specialist training in the conservation of Islamic bindings and wooden bindings.

Karen Holloway is an exceptional Paper conservator with advanced training in photographic conservation. 

Shown is a flood damaged watercolour.  Tide lines were removed and the surface ripples significantly reduced.

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Archival Materials 

These are often very hard to source in small quantities.  Endangered Heritage can supply Mylar film, Tyvek sheeting and Softlon foam by the metre.  We sell acid free archival boxes as single units and we import non-acidic and buffered tissue paper which is sold by the single sheet.  

Note: The label "acid free" in Australia means that acid was not used in the production of the paper. It does not mean that the paper is pH7 or non-acidic.  There are no manufacturers of non-acidic tissue paper in Australia.  We source our supplies from America and all shipments are pH tested upon arrival.


Tools and Supplies

The conservation industry has some quite specialist tool and materials requirements.  Endangered Heritage stock a range of conservation and art manufacture tools including bone folders, septum elevators, spatulas, pigments, animal skin and parchment glues, stainless steel entymology pins, curved microsurgery needles, gold leaf, squissors, tweezers, inks, dispersions, gums and resins, cotton tape and more.  


Collection Management

The staff at Endangered Heritage all have over 15 years of experience in the Art and Museum sector.  We are able to assist with collection surveys, treatment prioritisation and triaging, disaster response and recovery, collection handling training, support design and mannequin manufacture.  If you have a collection and you need advice and support, we are here to help.



Phone; (02) 62828386

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