John Doubleday (restorer)

John Doubleday was a British craftsperson, restorer, and dealer in antiquities. He was perhaps the first person to hold the position of specialist restorer at the British Museum. He is best known for his 1845 restoration of the severely-damaged Roman Portland Vase. He also dealt in copies of coins, medals, and ancient seals.

About John Doubleday (restorer) in brief

John Doubleday was a British craftsperson, restorer, and dealer in antiquities. He was perhaps the first person to hold the position of specialist restorer at the British Museum. He is best known for his 1845 restoration of the severely-damaged Roman Portland Vase. He also dealt in copies of coins, medals, and ancient seals. Little is known about his upbringing or personal life. He died in 1856, leaving a wife and five daughters, all English; the eldest child was born around 1833. He worked at a printer’s shop for more than 20 years during his youth, which gave him the experience of casting type that he would employ in his later career as a copyist. He appears to have been employed as a freelancer who also occasionally acted as an agent in sales to the museum. At his death, it was noted that he was “chiefly employed in the reparation of innumerable works of art, which could not have been intrusted to more skilful or more patient hands\”, and that he “was well known as one of the most valuable servants of that department” In 1836, he presented the museum with a Henry Corbould lithograph of himself. Among other donations, his 1830 gift of 2,433 casts of medieval seals was the only significant donation recorded by the museum that year, he offered several coins and another 750 casts the following year, and in 1836 he gave the museum several coins.

In 1851, he recorded several other responsibilities at the museum, including being a witness in criminal trials. Beyond his work on the Portland vase, several other successfully restored items have been recorded by Nigel Williams in 1988–1949, and then by W. Axtell Rtell in 1948–1919, in 1948 tell tell. The vase was next restored by J. W. Rol tell in 1948, and the discolouration grew increasingly adhesive until the disc was replaced by diamond-engraved diamond-encrusted base disc of plain glass. In 2006 William Oddy, a former keeper of conservation at the. museum, noted that the achievement must rank him in the forefront of the craftsmen-restorers of his time. After his death he was labelled a forger, but with the caveat that \”hether he did copies with the intention of deceiving collectors or not is open to doubt\”. He seems to have was the museum’s primary, and perhaps its first, dedicated restorer; his death was described as leaving the post vacant.

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