Hello! Sophie and I joined the Polar Museum about six months ago, replacing Fiona as the conservator after she had moved to New Zealand. We will be updating the SPRI conservation blog soon with more news about what we've been doing here. In the meantime, here's a bit about our backgrounds and a picture of us getting stuck into a fun cleaning project in our first couple of weeks.
Merry Christmas!
Sophie (left) and Christina (right) cleaning a very dusty muskox head: more about this later…
Sophie Rowe
I joined the Polar Museum as conservator in April 2012, and since then have been responsible, with Christina, for caring for the object collection. My conservation specialism is treatment of organic artefacts – that is, objects made from anything that was ever a plant or animal. This covers a wide range of materials from wood to plastic, and includes fur, food, teeth and textiles, all of which we have in this museum. I have a special interest in conservation treatment of Ancient Egyptian artefacts but admittedly these are not well represented in the Polar Museum! For me the great pleasure in working here is that we have such an extraordinarily mixed collection, and in a small team like ours I get to be involved in everything, from mounting exhibitions to improving the storage of the objects. I am also very interested in pest management in museums, and I monitor the insect population in the building regularly, prepared to intervene quickly if any pests threaten the collection.
Christina Rozeik
I came here in May 2012 as the 'other half' of Sophie – we're doing a job share. Fortunately, Sophie and I have known each other for a long time and know that we work well together! Like Sophie, I have a particular interest in the conservation of antiquities, having worked on the redisplay of the Fitzwilliam Museum's Ancient Egyptian and Greek & Roman galleries. However, I am also very interested in the history of science, something that comes from my time at the Royal Institution's Faraday Museum. While at the RI, I worked on objects as diverse as a Wimshurst machine, Michael Faraday's experimental induction coils, and a boomerang used in one of the Institution's Christmas lectures. I have a particular interest in conservation outreach and publication, and hope to be involved with both while at the Polar Museum. I also monitor the environment in the building – the temperature, humidity and light – to make sure that the conditions are suitable for storing and displaying our historic collections.
