Conserving a Burmese offering vessel

The object's complex shape meant that dust had settled in hard-to-reach places and the aim of this treatment was to restore the object to its former glory by removing as much dust as possible and make sure the object was structurally stable before going on display in the exhibition. Often, the first instinct when seeing a dusty object is to assume it needs to be cleaned. With its slightly sticky surface, dust particles could be trapped while reaching into the tiny crevices found on the object. The finial depicts the hintha bird, a semi-divine creature associated with Buddhism and wisdom, which I felt was the crowning jewel of the object. Once the treatment had concluded, I placed the lid back onto the base to see the object in its full glory and finalise my recommendations for exhibition display and future storage. As a final-year conservation student at University College London, I had never previously worked with something of this scale or prepared an object for a major exhibition. You can see the hsun-ok Maxim conserved along with more than 100 objects that span 1,500 years of Burmese history in our latest exhibition, Burma to Myanmar, which opens 2 November.