ABSTRACT
Petrie retained for his own collection only broken and damaged portraits in need of future conservation. In 1963, when the author took over as honorary curator of Petrie Collection, these still lay in drawers in an upper cupboard between the grimy tissue paper in which Petrie had originally packed them and had suffered further damage from unsuitable wartime storage and excessive heat in the museum. In the 1970s Barbara made friends with Richard and Helena Jaeschke, who were then studying archaeological conservation at the Institute of Archaeology. When they set up their own professional service, she enlisted them as official conservators to the Petrie Museum. Barbara immediately proved herself an ideal curatorial assistant for the Petrie Museum. Barbara’s final project, in collaboration with her friend Professor Peter Ucko, director of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, was an exciting and successful search to track down unpublished Predynastic Egyptian figurines, which has led to many new discoveries and advances in knowledge.
