MA Conservation of Fine Art (Works of Art on Paper)
Northumbria University

It was an honour to have received the Anna Plowden Trust Scholarship to help fund my studies on the MA Conservation of Fine Art. Without the Trust’s support, I would not have been able to dedicate as much time to researching my dissertation on pastel papers and artists’ fixatives from the mid-1800s to the 1920s. During the process, I was able to further develop my research and writing skills and, for this, I am immensely grateful.  I was awarded a Distinction and the Prize for the highest dissertation mark in the Department of Arts.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 2-year MA course where I attended workshops on paper conservation theory and practice, technical examination techniques, preventive conservation, art history, fibre and pigment analysis, accelerated ageing and deterioration mechanisms affecting artists’ materials, and the chemistry of paper. I was also able to work on two paper-based research objects from external collections, namely an early 19th-century hand-coloured lithograph, and a late 19th-century framed watercolour. Additionally, I undertook two internships, the first at the British Museum and the second at the Rijksmuseum.