Conserving and remounting Chinese paintings | The Carpenter Foundation Chinese Paintings Project

Since 2019, the British Museum’s Chinese Paintings Conservation Team have been busy at work on a project generously supported by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. For this project, three paintings were selected to be worked on: two large-scale hanging scroll silk paintings, which were completely remounted using highly traditional Chinese scroll mounting techniques; and a handscroll, historically mounted as a panel painting, which was conserved using a slightly more modern approach. This project allowed Master Scroll Mounter and Senior Conservator Qiu Jin Xian (or Qiu Laoshi as we call her) the opportunity to exercise her long-held traditional Chinese scroll mounting techniques, and in doing so, to continue the training of her two long-term assistants, Valentina Marabini and Carol Weiss. The entire project has taken over three years, not only due to interruptions caused by the global pandemic, but because each of these paintings required a huge amount of in-depth work to prepare them for display. The generous funding from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation has made it possible for us to conserve three important Chinese paintings from the British Museum collection. As a result, we can now safely display these paintings in their best possible condition, ensuring that they can be appreciated, studied, and preserved for future generations.