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.