The Carpet and the Woolly Bears

Pest checking equipment – gloves, tweezers, magnifying glass and plastic bags to stick pests in, at Osterley Park (image: Laura Brooks)

Not quite Goldilocks and the Three Bears, I’ll grant you, but when looking at the Drawing Room carpet, we do sometimes wonder ‘who’s been eating our lovely Georgian carpet?’  Of course, the main culprit is going to be one of these (look away now if the sight of creepy crawly things unnerves you):

Books, pests and stairs

Our recent Conservation in Action demonstrations have been going great.  With the help of our volunteers, we have:

Surprise in one of the lacquer cabinets

While condition checking and cleaning one of the lacquer cabinets in Mrs Child’s Dressing

The Lacquer cabinet in Mrs. Child’s Dressing Room at Osterley Park.

Room, a couple of unwelcome visitors were discovered in a bottom drawer.  A few woolly bears (no longer alive) were found amid a pile of suspicious looking fragments. The base of the lacquer drawer was also patterned with golden blooms that may have been a result of previous mould damage, or some sort of damage to the wood layer underneath the resin layers. All the other drawers and the shell of the cabinet were in great condition, so the discovery of the problematic drawer was completely unexpected and poses some interesting questions. Could the drawer have contained something which attracted the pests and caused the damage to the surface?  Could this explain where the dust fragments we found came from?

Checking the insect traps

 

Insect trap with two dead pests at Osterley Park (image: Laura Brooks)

In today’s post, we will focus on the insects caught at Osterley upon a recent inspection of the traps around the house.  Be advised – there will be pictures.