A pair of ‘man-sized’ 19th century copper alloy candlesticks have been returned to their original home, the Chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, after being treated by a team of conservators at West Dean College.

The work was carried out for Magdalen College by metalwork students from West Dean’s Centre for Conservation and Making at the request of the Oxford Conservation Consortium, a collaborative conservation centre which provides the library and archive collections of 12 colleges and the National Trust with specialist care to preserve materials for current and future use.

The ‘Gothic Revival’ candlesticks which are Puginesque in style, consist of a main shaft made up of ornate octagonal columns and knops topped with a highly decorated sconce. These sections are decorated with foliage, avian, Apostle and Gothic arch themes. Four decorative ‘Evangelist’ figures are screwed symmetrically onto the crossshaped base, which itself contains decorative floral and geometric features. The candlesticks had been painted black, possibly as a Victorian mourning tribute.

Although structurally sound, the candlesticks had suffered extensive damage leading to misallignment and corrosion resulting from an accumulation of dirt, inexpert application of cleaning products and deterioriation of the wax coating and paint over a long period of time. Treatment included ‘dry cleaning’, removal of candle wax and wax coating, wet cleaning metal areas, removing active corrosion products, coating with microcrystalline wax, re-soldering and coating the metal surfaces with a wax tinted with a black pigment.

West Dean student Natalie Hardiing (Postgraduate Diploma in Conservation of Metalwork) working on one of the candlesticks

Two pairs of students worked on the candlesticks as part of their Postgraduate Diploma in Conservation of Metalwork (Belinda Hager, John Sullivan, Natalie

Harding and Rachel Weatherall), under the direction of Metalwork Tutor Jon Privett. Jon comments, ‘this is the first metalwork project we have undertaken for the Oxford Conservation Consortium. Our next commission for the OCC is already underway and our students will be working on a six-branch gas chandelier made from brass/copper alloy, made by Hardman & Co, which will also be situated in Magdalen College Chapel once it is returned at the end of this academic year’.