Suzanne Press is a private art & paper conservator, dedicated to conserving works of art, on paper.
February 2017: Celebrated twenty years as a private Conservator of Works of Art on Paper (paper conservation)
February 1997: Launched Suzanne Press & Associates, Conservator of Works of Art on Paper.
1991 – 1996: Worked as an assistant to Jane McAusland IIC.
1989 – 1991: MA of Fine Art: Conservation of Works of Art on Paper, Gateshead Technical College, Northumbria.
1987 – 1989: Intern at Victoria & Albert Museum’s Prints and Drawings Department.
1986 - 1987: Diploma from Christie’s Fine Arts Course, London.
1983 - 1985: Bachelor of Fine Art Degree Hons, Printmaking, Kingston Polytechnic, Kingston upon Thames.
Quotes from an interview during a working afternoon…
Who is Suzanne and how did you get into conservation?
One of my a-levels was art, my father encouraged for me to include this subject. I did draw as a child and I use to love using this old fashioned board called a Scraper Board and because I used Scraper Board it meant when we went away on a weekend I did not need to pack water colours, a sponge, brushes I just took a Scraper Board and a few metal points to scratch away on it. So I became a type of artist that was happy to do drawings on the scraper boards.
During 6th Form I thought Art was being an ‘opt out’ subject. Even though it was an A-level, I heard you were given many days to prepare for exam and a whole day where you painted. I am thankful to my Art teacher who was being a typical art teacher wearing her leather sandals in winter and summer, who persuaded her class to submit for a Foundation Year. It was during that year I became captivated by printmaking particularly etching and dry points. I began to use more colours because the silk screen studio had pots of colours. It was from my Foundation Year, I really got the drive to think I would like to do my Fine Art Degree at an art school that had the option to specialize in print making. I Kingston Upon Thames art college was one of the few reamining BA courses with most of the print making facilites in their studios.
After I finished art school I was beginning to think about becoming a print maker. You have to decide how big your edditions will be. For example am I going to print 50 or 75 of the same image? Will I be fortunate to find a publisher who will pay for a master printer the edition? I also wanted to get an office job because that is what other friends were doing.
To improve my skills for a job in the art world I turned to a year’s course at Christie’s Education. I used the V&A print room to research my dissertation. After graduating I wrote to the Keeper of Prints & Drawings and got an internship. I was in my next stage of being fully absorbed as the internship was open ended. Under the direction of the curator called Gil Saunders I was cataloguing prints and having to write down something about their condition and that is when I met the museum’s paper conservators. For some reason I never went to find the furniture conservators or the glass conservators. It just befriended the paper and painting conservators. They told me which MA conservation courses they went on and that was my next bridge to cross.
What did you do once you qualified?
I was lucky in that an established private conservator had a Graduate postion available as an assistant. Jane McAusland had won a tender for drawing that belonged to the Royal College of Surgeons. It took two years to finished that project and then I continued to work with her for another three years. Then I decided to return to London and launch my own private conservation practice. I had been away from London for seven years.
What is it about the work you do that you really enjoy?
By being a conservator of works of art on paper you get prints that have colours on them, drawings that are signed and maybe the signature is a fugitive ink. You need to examine each art work and each art work has an individual story throught time. During de-mounting this is when I am reading clues to what has claused the figurative blemishes. As the treatment commences I am observing the artwork even more because I am looking at the recto as well as the verso. The final stage arrive and there is the second thrill that what I have done is not apparent and the work is looking as it should look.
Is it hard to part with works once you have been working with them for a long time?
Once of twice there are art works that are hard to part with. I once had a group of watercolours that belonged to a family. The husband and wife went on a very long honeymoon. These water colours were her diary of the places they saw when they travelled through Egypt, then travelling to India. I think they were pretty adventurous, considering this was in the 1920’s.
They went to parts of Afghanistan and she always would title each water colour and this project took a year and a half. I took each piece out of their mounts. By taking each piece off their backing card we saw that she had written on the verso of each water colour, something about what she had just painted. In Egypt it was the measurements of the columns, or the colours or the ambience or whether it was a festival in India they were watching, and they all went into solider boxes of different sizes of different sizes. That was a hard project to give back and you hope they remember to look at them.
Another drawing was a rather nice drawing by Francois Bushey that also took a year. The client was great to take the risk with a chalk drawing, turning it over and allowing me to remove the back board. That meant that the paper could breathe.
I have just completed some tinkering with some early Bridget Riley drawings that she has kept in her own archive. In 2019 and 2020 she has had a retrospective that was first in Edinburgh and then in the Haywood Gallery and its very nice to see these things on the wall making a story for her retrospective. That’s the kudos. Also, I had a watercolour of someone’s granny and her father fought in the first world war as a pilot and then she told me his love of flying meant he began the Australian airlines. He realised that people could travel in the air- which was a daring thought at the time. It is nice to see a story pass on from one family member to another.
You get to see quiet a lot of different pieces of art work in their own right and hear the stories around that piece and the impact it has on individuals.
Yes, you also get works from Galleries and that’s for either a client of theirs or that they are planning an exhibition. Time is always important, so when there is a story it is more fascinating and if not, it is a completed project.
Tell me about the art that inspires you
All art on paper, you learn as a conservator that if something looks strange, sometimes it cannot be remedied. Other times it is rather nice to work with the conservation community and you pass work on to other people. A framer gave my name to someone and this individual thought this pair of paintings he bought from a Peruvian artist were oil paintings, but they turned out to be acrylic on very fine leather. The leather had split. With this case I knew of a leather conservator so delegated the work on. Like the owner I am looking forward to how the leather conservator will have rectified the paintings. We will also correct the framing. Hopefully the owner will be thrilled.