Ylva and Andrew Megaw examine the Burns bible 
Stella works on one of the Watkins drawings 
Weeks after painstakingly conserving a water-damaged bible that once belonged to Robert Burns, the paper conservation unit leapt to the other extreme of the literary scale when it was called to the rescue of drawings created by Oor Wullie and The Broons creator Dudley D. Watkins.
The bible, which Burns bought for £2 in 1788, was transferred from the Burns Cottage and Museum in Alloway to allow the University conservation experts to protect its brittle pages and delicate leather cover from decay. The bible contains a hand-written record of the Burns' family history, detailing in Burns' own hand his birth date and those of his wife and children.
Following their work on the bible, Ylva Player-Dahnsjo and new Historic Scotland conservation graduate intern Stella Ditschkowski worked with Historic Scotland structural paintings conservators to work out an emergency treatment strategy for the Watkins drawings, which were discovered painted directly onto the wall of the artist's former home in Dundee. Ylva and Stella were initially looking at ways to safely remove the three drawings from the wall but the family decided against this, so the conservators stabilised the drawings and devised removable covers to protect them.