From a single manuscript page to an entire temple.
Heritage Preservation Atelier is a multidisciplinary conservation practice working across India since 1995. We conserve and preserve objects, archives, art and monuments — and we work to ICOM conservation ethics, documenting every decision we take.
What we conserve
Most conservation practices specialise in one material. Our range is deliberate: a collection rarely arrives as one thing, and a historic building almost never does.
✦ Paper, manuscripts and books — including bound manuscripts and traditional binding
✦ Archives and architectural drawings — including brittle, folded and damaged records
✦ Photographs and negatives — including early photographic processes
✦ Paintings — on canvas, paper and cloth
✦ Miniature paintings — Pahari miniature paintings
✦ Textiles and costume — including sacred and ceremonial dress
✦ Wall paintings and frescoes — with stucco, gilding and architectural surface
✦ Objects — metal, wood, ceramic and composite
✦ Industrial and transport heritage — including historic rolling stock
✦ Monuments and historic structures
A laboratory and a studio
Heritage Preservation Atelier is a laboratory and studio where scholars, professionals, designers, historians and conservators work together to preserve historical objects and art, and to keep them available for learning by present and future generations.
Conservation decisions are rarely only technical. Establishing what an object is, what it meant, how it was made and why it is failing draws on different disciplines at once — and getting the answer wrong in one of them compromises the treatment in all the others.
✦ Historical research and documentation
✦ Art history
✦ Archaeology
✦ Conservation science and chemical analysis
✦ Conservation ethics and treatment technique
✦ Museum and exhibition design
Our team brings together:
What we do
Conservation treatment
Diagnosis first, minimum intervention, and a written record of every material and decision. For single objects and for whole collections.
Display and storage
Microenvironment-controlled cases designed around the object — appropriate lighting, inert support materials, and a stable internal climate.
Museum and gallery design
Galleries and museum spaces that hold preservation and public welcome in balance, including collection management planning.
Assessment and survey
Condition surveys, treatment proposals and preservation plans. For most institutions this is the sensible first step, and it is often all that is needed to know what to do next.
Training
Workshops and courses in paper, photograph and painting conservation, run from our Chandigarh laboratory and with partner institutions.
How we work
Diagnosis before treatment. No object is treated before it is understood. Microscopy, chemical analysis of pigments and media, and research into the object’s history and significance come first.
Minimum intervention. We stabilise and consolidate what survives. We in-paint only where paint is lost, and never over original material. Where a site’s needs have required us to go further, we have said so in writing, publicly.
Full documentation. Condition, decisions, materials, concentrations and outcomes are recorded for the custodian — and where an object’s significance warrants it, published.
Selected work
Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar
Nineteenth-century frescoes, overpainted for a century, conserved inside a working temple for the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee.
Kangra Art Museum miniatures
A museum collection stabilised — tapes and adhesive residues removed, mould treated, flaking consolidated — and rehoused in acid-free mounts for gallery display.
Tell us about the object
Whether it is a single family painting or a collection of ten thousand records, describe what you have and what worries you about it, and we will tell you honestly what is involved.