Studio Profile

Mary Bustin Conservation is a freelance conservation practice based in Wandsworth, South West London, UK.

We conserve and restore paintings made of a wide range of materials, from the traditional natural materials such as oil paint and egg tempera to modern synthetic paints such as alkyds, acrylics, and mixed media on a wide range of painting supports including canvas and other fabrics, wood panels, plywood, fibreboard, card and metal.

We offer specialist expertise in the conservation treatment of modern and contemporary paintings.

With preservation in the future in mind, we include preventive conservation measures as a natural component of all treatments. These help to slow down the development of problems and so lessen the risk of costly treatment in the future. They are shaped by museum standards of care: one effective measure is to create a micro-environment within the original frames using museum quality low reflecting glass, backboards and scavengers.

The conservation of frames can be arranged to coincide with the treatment of the painting. For this the studio subcontracts experienced frame conservators to carry out a broad range of treatments from cleaning and reconstruction of missing elements to the manufacture of new frames and upgrades of existing frames to create micro-climate enclosures.

We provide recommendations and advice on a wide range of aspects of the care and preservation of paintings including display, storage, packing, and environmental parameters; taking into account the painting's normal environment whether it be museum, or ecclesiastical setting or private home.

Condition assessments are provided to inform acquisition decisions and to help monitor change in a painting when on loan to exhibitions.

The practice is run by Mary Bustin ACR. After post-graduate training in easel painting conservation at the Courtauld Institute of Art followed by internships in London and Brussels, she joined the conservation department of the Area Museums Service for South East England based at Kenwood House, London. Her interest in museum-based conservation deepened during a Culpeper Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, following which, in 1991, she joined Tate as paintings conservator for the newly-opened Tate Liverpool and then Tate St Ives, conserving modern and contemporary paintings in the collections of Tate. In 2009 she established Mary Bustin Conservation to make museum standard conservation services more accessible to collectors of fine art.

In addition to our core work for public collections conserving paintings for display, we advise international galleries on purchases, document and treat paintings for artists' estates, and restore family treasures.