Autor/-in: KATE BAILEY

Kate Bailey started working life as a reluctant solicitor. At the age of 54, on the strength of nothing more than a magazine article about a paper conservator, she abandoned the law and enrolled at Camberwell College of Arts for a degree in paper conservation. After obtaining an M.A., and being accepted for a PH.D., for three years Kate stalked Reeves in libraries, museums and auction houses while at the same time drawing on her own childhood memories of Singapore and Hong Kong in the early 1950s. A post-doctoral year at the V&A followed, working on a collaborative project into the pigments found on Chinese export paintings using the Reeves pictures for comparison. Then came a request for a book to bring the work of a modest, dedicated East India Company tea inspector and his band of skilful Chinese painters to a wider audience. Kate continues to research, write and lecture on Reeves and related art-botanical subjects.