The badly deteriorated chair used by Adm. Horatio Nelson on board HMS Victory has now been preserved for the nation.
The black leather daybed has undergone an extensive conservation treatment at the Leather Conservation Centre in Northampton and will be on display at the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
The daybed is a remarkably modern-looking piece of furniture composed of high sides and a stool that pulls out from underneath where the admiral could rest his legs.
Yvette Fletcher, Senior Conservator and Head of the L.C.C., had to deal with dry, brittle fragments of leather that had fallen off the chair and devise a treatment that would return all these fragments to the right location over the carcass of the chair.
The goal of conservation is to maintain the integrity of an object and to do that a conservator will retain as much as possible of the original material.
The treatment took over 65 hours.
“It was an exciting project to work on,” said Yvette. “I wonder what historic events this chair has witnessed.”
Photos courtesy of the Leather Conservation Centre - www.leatherconservation.org
