Folding Screen Restoration by Restorient

Egrets in flight

Watch the skilful restoration of a pair of seventeenth century Japanese screens in the collection of The Royal Art Society in the Netherlands (KVVAK), recently on loan to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Seriously damaged and faded, the pair of 6-panelled Japanese screens was professionally stripped of the materials from various previous restorations and transformed into the lively version it was before by Studio Restorient in Leiden. The Restorient studio is specialized in the conservation and restoration of Japanese hanging scrolls (kakemono), folding screens (byōbu) and hand scrolls (e-makimono). Highly skilled, with over twenty years of experience, ex-British Museum conservators Sydney Caroline Thomson and Andrew Thompson use traditional materials and restoration techniques and have as such made their mark on the preservation of numerous objects in various European oriental collections. Among their clients are the Chester Beatty Library, The Asian Art Museum, Cologne, the National Museum of Scotland and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

For ‘Egrets in flight’, The Restorient collaborated with Japanese workshops that focused on the cedar core, hand printed traditional decorative papers and replicated metal fittings.