Pippa Cruickshank

Conservator of Organic Artefacts

Conservation of organic artefacts

Department: Conservation and Scientific Research

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7323 8087
Email: conservation @ thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

Pippa Cruickshank is Studio Manager of the Textile and Fibres Studio. Her areas of expertise include the conservation of textiles, in particular archaeological, ethnographic and painted textiles, amber and Inuit gut artefacts.

Her special interests include the use of adhesives in textile conservation and textiles made from plant fibres.

She also carries out research into the technology, condition, deterioration and appropriate treatment of artefacts, in liaison with scientists, curators and other specialists, and advises on the condition, conservation, storage and display, of a wide range of organic artefacts. She acts as a lead liaison conservator for major galleries, exhibitions and loans.

Current British Museum projects

Conservation of a group of Hawaiian basketry, plant fibre and feather gods for storage and display

Research into textiles made from plant fibres in collaboration with scientists, including research into flax and linen in Croatia.

Re-evaluation of our range of textile dyes for repair and support materials in collaboration with conservation scientists

Conservation of nineteenth and twentieth-century Ethiopian paintings and painted textiles, a joint project between textile and paintings conservators in collaboration with British Museum scientists, including research into pigments and media by MoLAB, a European mobile analytical laboratory.

Conservation of an Inuit gut parka

Lead conservation liaison for the Shah Abbas exhibition, opening in 2009

Previous British Museum projects

Conservation of Egyptian painted linen shrouds

Conservation of amber, investigation into suitable adhesives and consolidants in collaboration with scientists

Conservation of Inuit gut parkas

Conservation of a badly degraded North American black-dyed skin bag

Re-storage project of fragmentary Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo textiles

Conservator on an archaeological excavation in Jordan, a first–third century AD cemetery site with fragmentary remains of textile and leather shrouds

British Museum co-ordinator for the international five-day Professional Development Workshop for textile conservators “Adhesives Today” held in 2002, organised jointly by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Canadian Conservation Institute and the British Museum.

External fellowships/ honorary positions/ membership of professional bodies

Churchill Fellow – awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to study the use of adhesives in textile conservation in Canada in 1996

Awarded Professional Accreditation from the Institute of Conservation, ICON, in 1999

Member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Centre for Textile Conservation and Textile Studies

Member of the London-based Textile Focus Group composed of members from principal textile collections-based museums in London.

Publications

P. Cruickshank, ‘Painted textiles and canvas paintings: a collaborative approach to lining and mounting’, with H. Delaunay, and L. Harrison, The Conservator, 30, (2007), 5-18.

P. Cruickshank, From Plant to Textile.  Nettle Fibre Textiles, HALI, 145, (2006), 64-67.

P. Cruickshank, ‘From excavation to display: the conservation of archaeological textiles from an AD first-third century cemetery site in Jordan’, with A. Harrison, and J. Fields, The Conservator, 26, (2002), 43-56.

P. Cruickshank, ‘Recent treatments of painted Egyptian shrouds: the influence of condition and intended role’, with  M. Pullan, and J. Potter, The Conservator, 23, (1999), 37-47.

P. Cruickshank, ‘The conservation of amber’, with D. Thickett, and C. Ward, Studies in Conservation, 40/4, (1995), 217-226.