Arthur Samuel Trotman

Arthur Trotman was born on 4 July 1921 and at the age of fifteen was employed by its Keeper, Mortimer Wheeler, as a `boy learner' in the conservation department of the London Museum, then occupying Lancaster House overlooking Green Park. Three years later, in 1939, Trotman packed the collections for dispersal to safe storage in tube tunnels and at the Rothschild mansion in Buckinghamshire, and went off to join the Royal Air Force. On returning from war service he found that Lancaster House had been appropriated by the Foreign Office and he moved everything to Kensington Palace for the new director, W. F. `Peter' Grimes, F.S.A. In 1976 he was on the move again to the Museum of London's new, purpose-built premises in the Barbican. During his span of fifty years' service, Trotman saw the conservation of museum objects transformed from a craft into a science and, while he remained a craftsman at heart, deriving positive pleasure from his skills in joinery, delicate metalwork, picture restoration and exhibition design, by the time he retired in 1986 as Head of Conservation he had become one of the principal exponents of a discipline practised in well-equipped laboratories and taught in universities at degree level. He trained a growing staff of conservators at the Museum of London and students from the Institute of Archaeology of London University gained valuable work experience under his tutelage. He was an examiner in conservation for the Museums Association and a Fellow of the International Institute of Conservation. In 1967 he took an exhibition of `The British Royal Family Collection' to Japan and was invited by the Emperor and his family to describe the exhibits to them over tea at the palace in Tokyo. Trotman died on 5 October 1995.