25 years ... and 25 iconic projects

25 years ago today marks the day that Julian Bickersteth founded International Conservation Services (ICS). Well, not quite, in that it was originally called Campbell Conservation before morphing into ICS in 1991. Back in 1986 a wonderful man called Chick Campbell, who owned and ran the Campbell Group, was prepared to back Julian's idea that there was an opportunity in the Australian market for a privately-run multi-disciplinary fine arts conservation business, and the rest, as they say, is history.

At ICS, we've chosen to acknowledge and celebrate our past 25 years of conservation in a number of ways.  One of the ways, as is obvious by the image at the beginning of this post, has been with a commemorative logo.  We'll also be celebrating with our staff, and with the Australian conservation community, over the next couple of months.

But one of our most enjoyable, and interesting, exercises earlier this year was to identify 25 iconic projects that ICS has completed over the past quarter of a century.  Selecting them was very difficult - and we cheated a bit in the end!  A few of the 'projects' are more like relationships - where we have carried out a range of projects over many years for a single client or institution, including Old Parliament House in Canberra, and the National Trust of Australia (NSW).

Then there are projects where we contributed to the conservation of a significant heritage place. These projects include the Capitol Theatre in Sydney, the Parramatta Justice Precinct and the Sydney Harbour YHA (Big Dig in Cumberland Street, The Rocks).

 

We've also included projects where we developed new conservation techniques (Childrens' Chapel, St James), acquired new skills, or ventured into new fields of work.

And of course, there is one of the first projects worked on by Julian Bickersteth when he started the business in 1986 - co-ordinating the ‘Treasures of the Holy See' exhibition from the Vatican for Expo 88 in Brisbane.

All of the projects and objects we work on have stories to tell. But the projects we've selected as our 25 iconic projects have particularly interesting stories to tell, and they are special ICS stories that we treasure.

Visit our website to discover more about our 25 iconic projects.

David West
Executive Director
internationalconservationservices