TAA i.3.13.4

Answered Feb. 12th 1931

                                                                         34, Upper Hamilton Terrace,

                                                                                                             N.W.8.

                                                                                  December 29th 1930.

My dear Carter,

                        All the best wishes possible for the New Year

and for the continued success of your work. I had intended

to write in time for Christmas but did not get it done. I have

been busy with one thing and another especially as our Laboratory

is to be taken over entirely by the Trustees of the British

Museum on 1st April, so I have been distributing to my staff

formal notices from the Department of Scientific and Industrial

Research that their appointments under it will cease on March 1st.

I have not seen the new conditions yet but I do not think they

will necessitate much change in any way. We are also to have a

new Director of the Museum on 1st January, Dr G. F. Hill, whom

I know to be very well disposed to our Laboratory and work.

                        I see from The "Times" of Wednesday last that you

are finishing your work especially on the shrines and I believe

I have made quite an interesting discovery concerning

the overlying gold leaf and gesso work. I had some very small pieces

of this which I brought away in 1924 and I did observe then when

detaching the gold leaf by means of dilute acid in order to

measure its thickness that there was a semi-transparent residue

which was practically of the same shape and size as the piece

of gesso. At this time I thought it was only gelatine or albumen

which had been rendered insoluble by time, etc., and put it down