 This is large two-piece knife edge. This is a piece that Moore worked on over the years through the 60s. It worked on many things that Moore was doing at the time, organic objects. There were pieces that were enlarged from flints and bits and bones. You've got sort of the sharp edges of the bones, sort of cut bones. This piece is about two and three-quarter tons of bronze. It's not massive, you know, it's hollow, but it's a fair weight. Siting this work in such a prominent spot for Moore was hugely important, as it was having major pieces or any of his work in major sites around Britain, and especially London. It was about making the almost unapproachable work approachable for the public, and there's no more approachable place than outside the House of Parliament. For him, it was hugely important. The statue was gifted to the Nation. The Minister, at the time, accepted it on behalf of the Nation, the donation, and it was installed. And the maintenance instructions were to wash it occasionally with fairy snow. That's in the file. But unfortunately, over time, the Ministry of Works changed and, of course, became partially the Department of Environment. Responsibility just disappeared, really. And so the sculpture sat here, but nobody really cared for it at all, as this became known, really, as the most damaged, the most badly presented sculpture in central London. It's pretty horrendous, actually. I mean, we're now looking at a surface which is two-thirds green. It's naturally oxidised, but there's graffiti over the entire surface. More put in his own texture, we've now got other people putting in their own texture. It's lost that beautiful gold quality that had the subtlety of the shading in there. All of that has been lost because it's naturally done what it wanted to do itself. The lacquer itself has broken down. It's peeled. I've not seen one quite this bad for a very long time, actually. Eventually, Frank Doran MP, who chairs the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art in the House of Commons, laid a question to the Minister for DCMS, asking who was going to care for this statue. And the Minister replied that would the House of Commons be willing to take on ownership of the sculpture and take on its care? And we were delighted when the House of Commons agreed to do that and it entered the Works of Art collection, which means that we can now care for this sculpture. To conserve a piece like this, we basically have to get back to the bare metal. Unfortunately, because of the damage that has been done to the surface, it's not something that you can do selectively. Bronze being what it is, it's started to corrode, turning darker browns, going through to green. So as now it's got a very almost camouflage appearance to the surface where it should be quite an even, rich, golden, yellow, honey colour. There's slight variations into the textured surfaces. It was very sensitive about the surface coatings of his sculptures. He not only was interested in the form, he was actually interested in the colour. The colour on this one has gone completely. Our approach would be to remove all the protective coatings, what's left of them, remove the wax, remove the lacquer, and get back to what remnants are of the original patina on the surface. As you can see, the surface of the bronze has got all this graffiti, which, as you can, it's not done with a green pen. What has happened here is people have scratched their names into the surface. This has actually gone through the lacquer and we're getting preferential corrosion. This is copper corrosion here. The processes for cleaning the sculpture, initially we will remove the wax. That's removed with a steam cleaner. The wax is this dark area here, which has got the black colouring in it. The steam cleaner will remove all of that. Then, once that's actually gone, we're going to remove the lacquer, which is in these yellow areas, by applying... It's a water-based paint stripper, basically, friendly to the environment, may I add. Then, once that's actually been removed, that will be removed by hand. Then, when we've got it right back to body's bare metal, we will start to resurface the metal to remove the graffiti and any other marks on it. The emphasis is going to be on minimum intervention. We want to remove as little of the original metalwork as possible while getting rid of all this graffiti, which is actually its way into the surface. The process that they're carrying out at the moment is the removal of the lacquer. The green on the surface there is a water-based varnish remover, which has been on the surface for around 36 hours. We're just scraping off the surface now, and it should be taking 99% of the lacquer with it. And then, after this process has been carried out, we'll steam clean the surface. They're all unique. There might be three of these in the world, but there's only one in London. And they've all got different surface coatings. They've all been put out here at different times and different conditions. Well, it's very exciting to see what's being revealed beneath and beginning to get an idea of the colours that it will end up with. But also, you can see the challenge ahead. So you're never really sure what you're going to find underneath. As you can see already, there's quite a marked difference between the area that hasn't been worked on and the area that has. You're starting to get that luscious luster of the original patina that Henry Moore intended. I'm hoping that when the holding comes down, people will be actually really quite surprised as to how the sculpture looks. Striking, hopefully very lush, and people will be sort of shocked in some way. This work really is quite iconic, I think, within this area of parliament. Everybody is aware of this sculpture. To an extent, it's become part of the landscape, but I think once it's been conserved, people will be very positively surprised and will hopefully start to really appreciate what they've got here.