Conservation and Restoration Work in Queen Victoria’s Apartment
This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.
Before the lockdown we were keeping very busy in the Royal Pavilion.
In January the Conservation department shut off Queen Victoria’s Apartment and its ante-room to carry out some long-awaited conservation and restoration work involving some rather special Chinese wallpaper.
This early 19th Century wallpaper was hand-painted in China and exported for the European market. It was purchased and hung in the Pavilion in the early 1830s and since then has had quite a journey.
When Queen Victoria sold the Pavilion to the town in 1850 it was removed from the walls, along with most of the interior decorations and taken to Buckingham Palace, where much of it was used to decorate the Yellow Drawing Room. Unused sections of the set were returned to Brighton and installed in the Saloon in the 1930s in the mistaken belief that it had originally hung there.
Towards the end of the restoration of the Saloon in 2014, with permission from English Heritage (now called Historic England) the wallpaper was once again removed with the condition that it would eventually be reinstated in the Pavilion.
Recent research had shown that this yellow Chinese wallpaper originally hung in the room now known as Queen Victoria’s Bedroom – confirmed by the discovery of a fragment of the paper below the cornice during a previous restoration of the room. Finally, timing and funding came together in January this year and we were able to proceed with the plan to reinstate the wallpaper, in what we hope will be the end of its travels!
The bedroom had been decorated for many years with a wonderful modern hand–painted reproduction of the paper. This was made by a former member of the conservation team and fortunately he was on hand to carry out the removal of this paper. The reproduction paper will be safely stored for now, but there are plans to re–hang it in another location in the Pavilion at a future date.
Reproduction wallpaper being removed in Queen Victoria’s Apartment
Meanwhile our wonderful original wallpaper had been removed from the Saloon back in 2014 and taken away for conservation treatment by Allyson McDermott. Although we were aware that there was not enough original wallpaper to fill this room we were fortunate that Allyson could offer other skills. In her studio, she was able to make wonderful matching digitally printed reproduction drops of paper to fill in the gaps. It really does look amazing and we challenge you when you visit to work out which is original and which is reproduction!
Original and reproduction wallpaper being rehung. Can you tell which is which?
So Queen Victoria’s Bedroom now stands ready for us to re-introduce furniture and fittings (the conservation team managed to fit in a spring clean too!) when we return to the building.
The ante-room next door has also had a make–over. Records show that all the rooms along this front on the upper floor were decorated with Chinese wallpapers but as no further fragments have been discovered we have chosen to display a framed panel of wonderful grey-ground Chinese wallpaper (birds and flowers) and one of our team has been using traditional techniques to restore all the woodwork, with painted wood graining as used throughout the building.
Large framed Chinese wallpaper undergoing conservation treatment (tear repair and hinging). Just a little more to do when I get back to work!
While we are closed a few other things are awaiting completion, but we hope it won’t be long before you can come in and enjoy these newly restored rooms.
Amy Junker Heslip, Paper Conservator