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chester beatty
'If we've done our job well you shouldn't know we've done anything at all': Preserving books that are thousands of years old
We visited the labs of the Chester Beatty Library where they work on preparing items for display.
“THEY CAN BE thousands of years old,” says Kristine Rose-Beers, senior conservator at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.
She’s talking about the many historic manuscripts and artifacts that make up the collection at the Chester Beatty in Dublin.
Ranging from ancient Christian scrolls to Samurai body armour, the collection was donated to the Irish State by renowned American mining magnate Chester Beatty after his death in 1968.
In order to get the items ready for display, the conservators must painstakingly work on ensuring they are in the best condition they can be. Work that usually involves a very large magnifying glass and some special glue.
We visited the labs at the Chester Beatty where they work on preserving these ancient artifacts and ready them for display.
Watch the video above for our full report.
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