Bridget Leach
Bridget Leach
Papyrus Conservator, British Museum
Bridget Leach is the British Museum's Papyrus Conservator, and has been working at London's biggest museum for almost two decades. Her tasks involve checking and conserving papyri for display and exhibition, which has before included cleaning away shoddy Victorian 'restorations' which have obscured an item beyond recognition. Bridget has always been involved with papyrus in her career, and has helped preserve various items for institutions such as London's Petrie Museum, Dublin's Chester Beatty Library and Queen's College Oxford. She is also an expert in the use of colours and pigments in the production of papyri, and has conducted several lectures on the Egyptian use of realgar and orpiment.
Bridget has assisted with a number of excavation projects, including the Cambridge Theban Mission at Luxor and the Egypt Exploration Society's Qusur Ibrim mission in Aswan. Further work in the field has taken her to Dra Abu el Naga with the Spanish-Egyptian mission. Former BM work has seen Bridget team up with Dr Richard Parkinson on 2005's Ramesside Papyri Project. Bridget is currently working on a mission to perfect the digital unrolling of papyrus, and is an accredited member of the Institute of Conservation. 2006 also saw Bridget appointed External Assessor of the Post-grad Diploma and MA Paper Conservation Courses at Camberwell's University of the Arts.
