Harold James Plenderleith, C.B.E., M.C., B.Sc., Ph.D., LL.D., F.B.A.

Harold Plenderleith was born in Dundee on 19 September 1898 and went to Harris Academy, where his father taught art. His chemistry course at St Andrews was interrupted by army service in World War I in which he was awarded the Military Cross. He was later wounded at Ypres and, after demobilisation and completion of his first degree, he was awarded a doctorate in 1923. In the following year Plenderleith joined the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at the British Museum, becoming assistant keeper in 1927 and keeper of the Research Department from 1949-59. During his twenty-five years at the Museum he analysed and conserved finds from some of the most notable excavations of the twentieth century, including those from the tomb of Tutankhamun, from Sir Leonard Woolley's site at Ur and the Sutton Hoo ship burial - an archaeologist's dream ticket, greatly facilitated by Plenderleith's study of German and Swedish techniques for the application of chemical processes and radiography to the analysis of antiquities, particularly ceramics and metal. But, new discoveries apart, Plenderleith spent much of his time arresting the deterioration of the Museum's artefacts caused by their years of concealment in the London Underground from 1914-18, and repairing the damage done to them. This was, after all, the purpose for which the department had been established. Even while remedial work was under way, it became evident that another war was inevitable but, this time, when evacuation to the Underground again became necessary in 1939, Plenderleith's preventive measures ensured that the objects were immune from the adverse effects of temperature and humidity. After the war, he worked on the complex reconstruction of the fragmented finds from Sutton Hoo which had been stored away after the improvised excavation in the summer of 1939. He began to travel widely, becoming internationally respected as a leader in his field and when the International Institute for the Conservation of Museum Objects was founded in 1950 he was appointed honorary treasurer, and president in 1965 until 1968. The choice of Plenderleith as the first director of Unesco's International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, established in Rome in 1959, was due not only to his scholarship and expertise but to his personal attributes of what today we call management skills. When he retired in 1971 he was the recipient of academic honours and awards from east and west alike, including the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries in 1964; Unesco Bronze Medal, 1971; the Conservation Service Award of the U.S. Department of the Interior, 1976 and the ICCROM International Oscar, Rome, 1979. He had inherited from his father a love of art and among his most rewarding appointments was membership of the National Gallery's honorary scientific advisory committee from the time it was set up in 1935, through his chairmanship from 1944 to 1958, until resignation in 1981. It was this that led to an invitation from the Dutch government to join the commission of inquiry into the wartime Van Meergen forgeries of Vermeer paintings. From 1936 to 1958 Plenderleith was Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Academy of Arts, in which capacity he honed his skill as a lecturer, and delivered the Rhind Lectures in Edinburgh in 1954. His publications consisted largely of papers in learned journals, though The Preservation of Leather Bookbindings appeared in 1946 and The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art in 1956 (2nd edn. with A. E. A. Werner, 1971). Plenderleith's retirement was spent in his native Dundee with regular visits to London where he was a familiar figure at the Athenaeum. He died, aged 99, on 2 November 1997.