Conservation is always a matter for the owner, or curator. Conservators are always bound by their client’s brief. Policies differ widely. Some will remove anachronistic additions, or replace lost fittings shown by witness marks. Others will simply stabilise the extant – whatever the final visual result. I recommend the excellent work by Mathew King and Matthew Read, on Fromanteel’s longcase, at The Museum of the History of Science at Oxford; also Matthew Read’s outstanding work, albeit to a more pro-active brief, on the Bowes Museum’s Silver Swan (that I knew as a boy) recognised as one of England’s spectacular Cultural Properties. His methods and photo-inventories are a model. Their joint lecture to the Antiquarian Horological Society proved a fascinating insight into Oxford's exciting Fromanteel clock, and the constraints of their briefs. I had earlier also reviewed that clock at first hand.

Paul Shrouder has ably conserved Oosterwijck’s movement, returning it to running order while retaining the abused contrate and evidence of surface detail finishes so important to antiquarians as craft-signatures; we value these. In the past many horologists have arbitrarily rebuilt or over-cleaned some of our finest masterpieces, however the mood is changing. One ‘restorer’ left damning evidence of his own vandalism in Oosterwijck’s Royal Haagseklok.

Restorer’s inscriptions are cultural vandalism. Why would he inscribe, “I did not bump the bearings I did not touch them July 7,1970 (X)"? The ‘bearings’ (pivot holes to barrel and pin-wheel) probably were ‘bumped’ after the earlier accident. He also scribed the hour-wheel, “Lever added adjusted and repaired July 1970 (X)”. Paul Shrouder has seen his cryptic invoices; we believe the strike ‘lever’ is actually untouched, whereas the hammer ‘lever’ has evidence of alterations and is also wrongly located; probably reworked and moved in 1970. The hammer should be returned to its original pivots and its spring re-profiled to act under the hammer.  I should have those defacing inscriptions planished out. Restorer’s notes of ‘repairs’ are for detailed invoices or formal reports, certainly not on cultural object itself.