It did not take long for Sherry Doyal to decide where she wanted her career to go. After working as a volunteer excavator at York during a cold snap where hot water was used to thaw the earth, she realised that route wasn't for her and conservation was a better choice. Anyway, Doyal says: 'When there is a really important find it's the conservators, not the archaeologists, who lift it out.'
Now, the head of organic artefacts at the British Museum (BM), she has had a long career in conservation that has been marked by an interest in ethics and ethnography. Doyal has worked in local authority and national museums as a conservator, as well as for the National Trust and small independents.
She moved around a bit - a conservators' lot - with appointments based on short-term contracts. But she says her various jobs were also to satisfy her curiosity, rather than just being about ambition.
'There was an element of following collections. I was interested in certain communities and I went to the museums that held those objects,' says Doyal.
Growing up in Idaho in the US, her first experience of seeing historic sites were the Native American campsites. She lived between three reservations. Her aunt worked at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and a lot of the work she heard about was done in the Arctic. 'I used to get slide shows on how to gut seals as a child,' she says.
Doyal's first main conservation job was at the Textile and Conservation Centre at Hampton Court Palace as an assistant conservator, later rising to deputy head of textiles. She has degrees in textiles and medieval history and conservation and restoration studies and is also trained in furniture and upholstery conservation.
Her extra training gave her greater sway in the National Trust world and she secured jobs at Ham House, Richmond-upon-Thames, and in Devon and Cornwall as a historic properties adviser. She was the resident collections manager at Ham House during building works, and was responsible for conserving objects in the spirit of the original setting.
At Devon she was conservation adviser to 12 registered museums which put her in good stead for her current role, where she and her team advise all types of museums on conservation.
'If someone approached us from a small museum we have the expertise here to know what is needed for a particular object. What we need at this end, are people who understand [the bigger picture], but are happy to think low-tech to get the job done.'
At the BM, Doyal manages and sets strategy. But she is determined to factor in one day a week on practical work and is currently conserving ivories from the prehistory and European collections.
When we meet in an off-site conservation lab she shows me around and introduces me to some of her 13-strong team who are working on paintings, textiles and bark material. Each person is painstakingly working on their own objects but takes the time to explain the significance of it all.
Doyal is committed to her team. This is exemplified by the fact that she is keen to share the limelight with them and she refers to them throughout the interview. This could be that just five months into the job when we meet, she is still trying to make an impression. But what appears more likely is that Doyal has the interests of the profession at heart. And the development of her staff and profession gives her satisfaction.
'You hope that the people you train will be better than you are.' She says it is important that trainees and graduates have the time to build their skills. She reckons a conservator's first job is often where they build their skills. But frequently, with the demands of the workload driven by exhibitions, loans and other essential work, there is less time to learn about the science of conservation than one would like.
A couple of the interns who are working with the organics team spend their days as volunteers and work in the evenings to earn a living.
Doyal believes one solution is for the conservators to be 'less backroom'. By bringing them to the forefront of visitors' knowledge it will open up the sector, increase diversity and state the conservation case more forcefully.
The BM will have more conservation activity for visitors to observe this year, but what about a dedicated conservation exhibition? In the past these types of exhibition have been successful in places such as York with Stop the Rot and at Exeter City Museums' World Cultures gallery.
But Doyal seems cautious about taking such a move at the BM. 'We have to look at our stakeholders and what other people are interested in. I think this institution is open to ideas. And employing someone like me proves it.'
The BM has been famous in the past for holding on to staff, partly because of a good civil service package where people were more inclined to stay and move up within the organisation. Times have changed, says Doyal, with a conservation department made up of people with both internal and external experience.
Doyal is always keen to work with people from different countries and with different approaches. 'The more exposure we have to conservators with other ideas, the tighter and better it makes us.'
Doyal says she particularly likes working with mixed materials such as furnishings and upholstery because there are many conflicting requirements before coming up with solutions. Add to that the cultural considerations when dealing with material from First Nations people, for example, and she is even more at home with the challenge.
At Exeter she revelled in the opportunity to work with the Maori community and she is interested in indigenous population's code of ethics and how respecting that can influence her work. She spent two separate years at the Horniman Museum in London - one on contract and the other in 2005 as deputy head of conservation and collections care.
At the Horniman she worked with secret and sacred items, where issues arose such as how to work with material that was only meant for male handling. Although it wasn't Doyal's direct work, the solution, she says is to 'know your ethnography, which usually means you have to know a good curator'.
She says she would be interested in exploring the possibility of staging an exhibition where objects on one side of the gallery are for male eyes only and the other side for females.
The topical world of human remains is another area that interests Doyal. She was involved in the return of the Aboriginal Truganini's remains to Tasmania when she was conserving ethnography at Exeter City Museums.
When asked about her overall attitude towards return she says that respecting the sensitivities of the issues and the age of the material is important. But she adds: '[Imagine that] the remains could be my grandmother or yours.'
I ask Doyal how important her international career is to her. She is well-known nationally and has built up a reputation in ethnography but isn't particularly active outside the UK.
Doyal's response is that when she was at Exeter and the National Trust, it was important for her to give papers at international conferences and she says she was given many opportunities to do so. But now her focus is on nurturing her staff and enabling the younger members to develop the international networks.
Doyal's other reason for job-hopping was so she could work with some of the curators and conservators who she admired. She names Len Pole formerly at Exeter; furniture conservators at the V&A and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US; and Jeremy Farrell, the keeper of costume and textiles at Nottingham City Museums, who she says was particularly supportive.
For her they were 'people who were generous with their scholarship - really knowledgeable people who were not afraid to communicate and could admit to frailties'.
She remembers a furniture conservator telling her, 'I always see things with wooden eyes'. Which is why she says: 'If you do a survey [of material] with a conservator and curator together you will always get more out of it.'
She says there are still people and collections such as the Pitt Rivers she would like to work with. But she believes her BM post will be her last conservation job. The job became vacant when her predecessor, Allyson Rae, retired early. It was colleagues at the Horniman where she was working at the time who encouraged her to apply.
Doyal says she lived a charmed life with her husband - who is an art handler and artist - in the south west, working part-time and roaming the Downs. She recalls hearing that 'the west country is a death trap of ambition'. And she has to agree.
But she had always said if a job came up at the Horniman she would move back to London. Fortunately, her husband works as an art handler at Dulwich Picture Gallery and they both now live in a tied cottage on site. So she can still enjoy glorious grounds in the centre of the city.
Although from an early age Doyal knew what direction she wanted her career to take, it took her a while to head a section of a museum. Not because she was responsibility-shy but because she felt she would miss the practical aspects of the job. 'I've made a long career of being deputy of departments because I like benchwork.'
With more than 20 years of practice, she is in the best position to pass on the skills to those who will eventually take up where she has left off.
Now, the head of organic artefacts at the British Museum (BM), she has had a long career in conservation that has been marked by an interest in ethics and ethnography. Doyal has worked in local authority and national museums as a conservator, as well as for the National Trust and small independents.
She moved around a bit - a conservators' lot - with appointments based on short-term contracts. But she says her various jobs were also to satisfy her curiosity, rather than just being about ambition.
'There was an element of following collections. I was interested in certain communities and I went to the museums that held those objects,' says Doyal.
Growing up in Idaho in the US, her first experience of seeing historic sites were the Native American campsites. She lived between three reservations. Her aunt worked at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and a lot of the work she heard about was done in the Arctic. 'I used to get slide shows on how to gut seals as a child,' she says.
Doyal's first main conservation job was at the Textile and Conservation Centre at Hampton Court Palace as an assistant conservator, later rising to deputy head of textiles. She has degrees in textiles and medieval history and conservation and restoration studies and is also trained in furniture and upholstery conservation.
Her extra training gave her greater sway in the National Trust world and she secured jobs at Ham House, Richmond-upon-Thames, and in Devon and Cornwall as a historic properties adviser. She was the resident collections manager at Ham House during building works, and was responsible for conserving objects in the spirit of the original setting.
At Devon she was conservation adviser to 12 registered museums which put her in good stead for her current role, where she and her team advise all types of museums on conservation.
'If someone approached us from a small museum we have the expertise here to know what is needed for a particular object. What we need at this end, are people who understand [the bigger picture], but are happy to think low-tech to get the job done.'
At the BM, Doyal manages and sets strategy. But she is determined to factor in one day a week on practical work and is currently conserving ivories from the prehistory and European collections.
When we meet in an off-site conservation lab she shows me around and introduces me to some of her 13-strong team who are working on paintings, textiles and bark material. Each person is painstakingly working on their own objects but takes the time to explain the significance of it all.
Doyal is committed to her team. This is exemplified by the fact that she is keen to share the limelight with them and she refers to them throughout the interview. This could be that just five months into the job when we meet, she is still trying to make an impression. But what appears more likely is that Doyal has the interests of the profession at heart. And the development of her staff and profession gives her satisfaction.
'You hope that the people you train will be better than you are.' She says it is important that trainees and graduates have the time to build their skills. She reckons a conservator's first job is often where they build their skills. But frequently, with the demands of the workload driven by exhibitions, loans and other essential work, there is less time to learn about the science of conservation than one would like.
A couple of the interns who are working with the organics team spend their days as volunteers and work in the evenings to earn a living.
Doyal believes one solution is for the conservators to be 'less backroom'. By bringing them to the forefront of visitors' knowledge it will open up the sector, increase diversity and state the conservation case more forcefully.
The BM will have more conservation activity for visitors to observe this year, but what about a dedicated conservation exhibition? In the past these types of exhibition have been successful in places such as York with Stop the Rot and at Exeter City Museums' World Cultures gallery.
But Doyal seems cautious about taking such a move at the BM. 'We have to look at our stakeholders and what other people are interested in. I think this institution is open to ideas. And employing someone like me proves it.'
The BM has been famous in the past for holding on to staff, partly because of a good civil service package where people were more inclined to stay and move up within the organisation. Times have changed, says Doyal, with a conservation department made up of people with both internal and external experience.
Doyal is always keen to work with people from different countries and with different approaches. 'The more exposure we have to conservators with other ideas, the tighter and better it makes us.'
Doyal says she particularly likes working with mixed materials such as furnishings and upholstery because there are many conflicting requirements before coming up with solutions. Add to that the cultural considerations when dealing with material from First Nations people, for example, and she is even more at home with the challenge.
At Exeter she revelled in the opportunity to work with the Maori community and she is interested in indigenous population's code of ethics and how respecting that can influence her work. She spent two separate years at the Horniman Museum in London - one on contract and the other in 2005 as deputy head of conservation and collections care.
At the Horniman she worked with secret and sacred items, where issues arose such as how to work with material that was only meant for male handling. Although it wasn't Doyal's direct work, the solution, she says is to 'know your ethnography, which usually means you have to know a good curator'.
She says she would be interested in exploring the possibility of staging an exhibition where objects on one side of the gallery are for male eyes only and the other side for females.
The topical world of human remains is another area that interests Doyal. She was involved in the return of the Aboriginal Truganini's remains to Tasmania when she was conserving ethnography at Exeter City Museums.
When asked about her overall attitude towards return she says that respecting the sensitivities of the issues and the age of the material is important. But she adds: '[Imagine that] the remains could be my grandmother or yours.'
I ask Doyal how important her international career is to her. She is well-known nationally and has built up a reputation in ethnography but isn't particularly active outside the UK.
Doyal's response is that when she was at Exeter and the National Trust, it was important for her to give papers at international conferences and she says she was given many opportunities to do so. But now her focus is on nurturing her staff and enabling the younger members to develop the international networks.
Doyal's other reason for job-hopping was so she could work with some of the curators and conservators who she admired. She names Len Pole formerly at Exeter; furniture conservators at the V&A and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US; and Jeremy Farrell, the keeper of costume and textiles at Nottingham City Museums, who she says was particularly supportive.
For her they were 'people who were generous with their scholarship - really knowledgeable people who were not afraid to communicate and could admit to frailties'.
She remembers a furniture conservator telling her, 'I always see things with wooden eyes'. Which is why she says: 'If you do a survey [of material] with a conservator and curator together you will always get more out of it.'
She says there are still people and collections such as the Pitt Rivers she would like to work with. But she believes her BM post will be her last conservation job. The job became vacant when her predecessor, Allyson Rae, retired early. It was colleagues at the Horniman where she was working at the time who encouraged her to apply.
Doyal says she lived a charmed life with her husband - who is an art handler and artist - in the south west, working part-time and roaming the Downs. She recalls hearing that 'the west country is a death trap of ambition'. And she has to agree.
But she had always said if a job came up at the Horniman she would move back to London. Fortunately, her husband works as an art handler at Dulwich Picture Gallery and they both now live in a tied cottage on site. So she can still enjoy glorious grounds in the centre of the city.
Although from an early age Doyal knew what direction she wanted her career to take, it took her a while to head a section of a museum. Not because she was responsibility-shy but because she felt she would miss the practical aspects of the job. 'I've made a long career of being deputy of departments because I like benchwork.'
With more than 20 years of practice, she is in the best position to pass on the skills to those who will eventually take up where she has left off.
