Celia Bockmuehl

Role:

I am the interim Head of Conservation and Preservation at the Oxford Conservation Consortium, a small charity that cares for the library, archive, and picture collections of 17 Oxford colleges, including Magdalen. I manage a team of six book and paper conservators who deliver a broad programme of collection care which includes interventive conservation treatments and preservation activities in the historic library, archive, and chattels collections.

Qualifications/Professional Experience:

I graduated from Durham University in 1988 with a BA in Chinese Studies and gained the MA in conservation at Northumbria University with a specialisation in works of art on paper in 1991. I worked initially in conservation of Eastern Art at the British Museum in London before moving to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1993 for 14 years. I moved to Oxford and became senior conservator at the Oxford Conservation Consortium in 2007. I was accredited by the Institute of Conservation (Icon) in 2000.

Recent projects include the conservation of a number of watercolours for Magdalen that are now hanging in the Wolsey Room, the conservation of the 1957 ‘toilet paper map’ for the archive (details here) and for OCC a research project on fabrics used in book conservation, the results of which were published.

2020 Celia R. Bockmuehl with N. Tomkins, J. Keiding, D. J. Carr, R. Critchley and A. Peare, Woven Fabrics in Book Conservation: An Investigation into the Properties of Aerolinen and Aerocotton.’ Studies in Conservation 65:7 (2020) 375-87