Peter van Geersdaele

Peter van Geersdaele
Colour photograph of Peter van Geersdaele
Peter van Geersdaele
Born Peter Charles van Geersdaele
1933 (1933)
Died (2018-07-20)20 July 2018
Nationality British
Occupation Conservator
Known for Work on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial

Peter Charles van Geersdaele OBE (born 1933, died 20 July 2018)[1] was a British conservator best known for his work on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. Among other work he oversaw the creation of a plaster cast of the ship impression, from which was then formed a fiberglass replica of the ship.

Van Geersdaele studied at Hammersmith Technical College from 1946 to 1949, after which he engaged in moulding and casting at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 1951. From 1954 to around 1976 he was a conservator at the British Museum, rising to the position of senior conservation officer in the British and Medieval department. Following that he became an assistant chief of archaeology in the conservation division of the National Historic Sites of Canada for Parks Canada.[2] and then the deputy head of the conservation department at the National Maritime Museum in London.[3]

In 1993 van Geersdaele was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire as part of the 1993 Birthday Honours,[4] in recognition of his services to museums.[5]

At the British Museum

From 1954 until around 1976 Peter van Geersdaele worked at the British Museum, where he became a senior conservation officer in the British and Medieval department.[6] There he notably led the team tasked with making a mould, and later a fiberglass replica, of the Sutton Hoo ship,[7][8] a process he replicated in October 1970 with the Graveney boat.[9] Other work at the museum included the 1964 removal of a thirteenth century tile kiln from Clarendon Palace,[10][11] a project in which, as with the Sutton Hoo ship,[12] he was assisted by Nigel Williams,[13][14] and the 1973 restoration of fourteenth century wallpaintings from St Stephen's Chapel in Westminster Palace.[15]

Sutton Hoo ship-burial

Black and white photograph showing two excavators working in the ship impression at Sutton Hoo
The ship impression during the 1939 excavation

In 1967,[16] during the re-excavation of the Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo ship-burial, van Geersdaele was tasked with moulding the impression of the ship.[7] Initially excavated in 1939,[17] the burial is widely thought to be the grave of King Rædwald of East Anglia. After the 1939 dig the ship impression was filled in with bracken, which had gradually decayed and mixed in with the sandy soil to preserve the traces of the ship.[17][18] When the site was again excavated in 1965, the impression, which excavation leader Rupert Bruce-Mitford termed "the ghost of the ship", was shown to have largely survived the preceding two and a half decades with minimal damage.[19] The need to excavate beneath the ship, and to remove the ship's rivets for study, necessitated the destruction of the impression; to ameliorate the damage, it was decided to make a plaster cast first, and to use this to make a fiberglass replica.[19][20]

The making of the plaster cast took three weeks.[19] Van Geersdaele led the operation,[7] with help from J. Langhorn, Senior Technician at the British Museum's plasterers' shop, A. Prescott, Nigel Williams, G. Adamsom, Y. Crossman, and G. Joysmith.[12][21] Plaster of Paris was used for its fast setting time and cost efficiency, and five experiments were conducted to find an appropriate method.[22] In the first experiment, using soil dumps from the excavation, plaster was applied directly to earth, but when removed pulled the earth away with it.[17] Two attempts to chemically consolidate the surface were then unsuccessfully tried, before an attempt was made to lay polyethylene directly over the impression to act as a barrier.[23] This produced too many wrinkles, and so in a final, successful, experiment, wet paper towels were instead used as barriers.[24] The method was therefore repeated across the entire ship.[25] The ship was moulded in 85 sections,[12] and weighed an estimated 6,100 kg (13,400 lb).[26]

Following the moulding of the ship impression, a fiberglass cast was made in twenty-five sections.[27] The mould was first assembled upside down; the joins were then filled in with plaster, and a light coat was applied to the rest of the mould to remove any wrinkles caused by the paper towel barrier.[26] The plaster was then sealed and coated with wax before casting.[28] The casting process itself took three weeks, with two sections cast each day.[29] The cast was removed and reassembled, supported on a wooden frame with eighty legs.[30]

Graveney boat

Van Geersdaele was again tasked with taking an impression of a boat in 1970, when the widening of a watercourse near the village of Graveney in Kent unearthed a ninth century clinker-built wooden boat.[31] The ribs of the boat were lifted so that a plaster mould of the hull could be taken, in a similar method to that employed on the Sutton Hoo ship; here however the ship was removed and conserved after the mould was taken, the mould serving to help with the ship's reassembly.[32] Nineteen plaster sections were laid over three and a half days, and then lifted in less than an hour.[33]

Later life

Van Geersdaele is married to wife Maura,[34] and has two daughters as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.[35] During the 1993 Birthday Honours he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire,[4] in recognition of his services to museums.[5]

In 2003 van Geersdaele was part of a group of pensioners who protested against an 18% raise in council tax by Suffolk County Council.[36] The following year, then living in Woodbridge, he was summoned to court for having insisted on paying his tax in twelve monthly installments in order to spread out the tax increase, rather than the required ten.[5][35]

Publications

  • van Geersdaele, Peter C. (November 1969). "Moulding the Impression of the Sutton Hoo Ship". Studies in Conservation. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. 14 (4): 177–182. doi:10.2307/1505343. JSTOR 1505343.
  • van Geersdaele, Peter C. (August 1970). "Making the Fibre Glass Replica of the Sutton Hoo Ship Impression". Studies in Conservation. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. 15 (3): 215–220. doi:10.2307/1505584. JSTOR 1505584.
  • Oddy, William Andrew & van Geersdaele, Peter C. (February 1972). "The Recovery of the Graveney Boat". Studies in Conservation. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. 17 (1): 30–38. doi:10.1179/sic.1972.003. JSTOR 1505559.
  • Eames, Elizabeth S.; van Geersdaele, Peter C. (1972). "Further Notes on a Thirteenth-Century Tiled Pavement From the King's Chapel, Clarendon Palace". Journal of the British Archaeological Association. British Archaeological Association. 35 (1): 71–76. doi:10.1080/00681288.1972.11894924.
  • van Geersdaele, Peter C. (February 1975). "Note on the Direct Application of Plaster of Paris to Waterlogged Wood". Studies in Conservation. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. 20 (1): 35. doi:10.1179/sic.1975.20.1.005. JSTOR 1505598.
  • van Geersdaele, Peter C. & Davison, Sandra (August 1975). "The Thirteenth-Century Tile-Kiln from Clarendon Place: Its Removal and Reconstruction for Exhibition". Studies in Conservation. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. 20 (3): 158–168. doi:10.1179/sic.1975.20.3.014. JSTOR 1505681.
  • van Geersdaele, Peter C. (November 1976). "A Design for Large Plaster Piece-Moulds Made in the Field". Studies in Conservation. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. 21 (4): 198–201. doi:10.1179/sic.1976.031. JSTOR 1505644.
  • van Geersdaele, Peter C. & Goldsworthy, Lesley J. (1978). "The Restoration of Wallpainting Fragments from St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster". The Conservator. Institute of Conservation. 2 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1080/01400096.1978.9635646.
  • Oddy, William Andrew; van Geersdaele, Peter C. (1978). "Lifting and Removal". In Fenwick, Valerie. The Graveney Boat: A Tenth Century Find from Kent. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. pp. 17–21. ISBN 978-0-86054-030-4.
  • van Geersdaele, Peter C. (1987). "Molding in the Field Using Plaster of Paris". In Hodges, Henry W. M. In Situ Archaeological Conservation: Proceedings of Meetings April 6–13, 1986, Mexico. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. pp. 114–121. ISBN 0-941103-03-X.

References

Bibliography

  • Bruce-Mitford, Rupert (1974). Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology: Sutton Hoo and Other Discoveries. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-01704-X.
  • Bruce-Mitford, Rupert (1975). The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, Volume 1: Excavations, Background, the Ship, Dating and Inventory. London: British Museum Publications. ISBN 0-7141-1334-4.
  • "The Clarendon Palace Tile Kiln". The British Museum Collection Online. The British Museum. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  • Gooderham, Dave (4 September 2003). "Angry scenes at Counil Tax protest". East Anglian Daily Times. Ipswich. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  • Maslin, Nigel (July 2011). "Benjamin Britten and other visitors" (PDF). Saxon (53): 6–7. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  • Maslin, Nigel (July 2014). "Two Anniversaries and a Centenary" (PDF). Saxon (59): 6–7.
  • "Retired museum expert prepares for court". Ipswich Star. Ipswich. 11 February 2004. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
  • Painter, Kenneth (1993). "Nigel Williams (1944–1992)". Journal of Glass Studies. Corning Museum of Glass. 35: 158–159. JSTOR 24191075.
  • "Supplement" (PDF). The London Gazette (53332). 12 June 1993. p. B13. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
  • "Tax Fight Pensioner Battles On". Ipswich Star. Ipswich. 17 February 2004. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
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