About Me

I've had a lifelong interest in art and trained formally as a ceramic artist at Kent State University. After graduating, I worked briefly as a studio potter before studying the conservation of ceramics and glass. During the first five years of my career, I worked on a sequence of projects related to the redevelopment of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. In 2011, I began to work commercially with Kenneth Watt running a small business in Oxford. We work with a wide range of clients including museums, collectors, and art dealers. We frequently work with individuals looking to care for family heirlooms, local galleries putting on exhibitions, and have close ties with University of Oxford Museums and Colleges. 

I gained experience in collections care while working at the Cleveland and Oxford museums. Initially, both posts were aimed at treating ceramic and glass objects for display in the new galleries and loans. After the Ashmolean reopened, I worked in a small team of collections care staff to move the Ashmolean's Eastern Art collections back to the museum from offsite storage, to unpack them, and recant the collection into the new stores. Following on from that, I led a team of ten who packed, barcoded, and moved the Egyptian collections so that the six associated galleries and stores could be renovated. My responsibilities during that project also included creating a storage plan for the Antiquities collection which would be housed in four stores recently fitted with roller racking. This plan took into account the environmental conditions of each space, the material nature of the collections, frequency of use, and weight requirements for floor and shelve loading. After the Egypt project, I worked on a maternity cover post managing the outgoing loans programme for three dimensional objects and facilitating an external project to image the cuneiform collection. The Ashmolean holds approximately 4,500 cuneiform tablets which were condition assessed before being imaged by the external team (CDLI). The most unstable tablets were treated so they could be handled safely, and the collection was rehoused.

My interest in the technology of art and archaeological objects has grown throughout my career. I've recently completed a research degree at Cranfield University. My PhD focused on the technology and conservation of Chinese painted enamels and related materials including other enamelled metals, porcelain, and glass using XRF and ESEM-EDX analytical techniques. I am currently a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield University.