// Listen with headphones for best experience //

Join Senior Curator Divia Patel and Senior Conservator Laura Ledwina as they introduce us to a very large and eyecatching object – a handpainted, billboardsized poster for the famous Bollywood film, 'Devdas' (2002). Large film hoardings have historically been very important in Indian cinema, being seen along major roadsides and above the cinema itself. However handpainted hoardings are used much less frequently today, making objects like this rare and quite special.

At over two metres high and fiveandahalf metres long, the enormous poster has been taken out of storage and needs to be unrolled and stretched. This will ensure that it is smooth and free from wrinkles before going on display at Young V&A.

Follow Laura in the Painting Conservation Studio as she adds strip lining to the canvas edges of the poster, so that it is secure and strong enough to be firmly pulled on a stretcher. In this meticulous process she carefully removes individual threads from new linen strips to create a fringe, cuts them to size, painstakingly chamfers the edges with a razor blade, and applies strong adhesive to hold this in place.

Process:
00:00 Unfurling the poster
00:15 The culture of Bollywood movie hoardings
01:44 Why do we need to stretch the canvas?
03:32 Demonstrating the strip lining technique
04:01 Pulling strings – fast flying threads
04:38 Cutting strips to size – scissor snips, no talking
05:11 Fringing edges of strip lining
06:00 Chamfering edges with a razor blade
07:41 Ironing hot adhesive onto flat linen strips
11:56 Hot spatula adhering strips onto the original canvas
13:19 Gluing gossamer security tape in place
14:37 Testing the strips – pulling and tugging
15:42 'Devdas' movie poster – revealing the whole image

More ASMR at the museum:    • ASMR at the museum  

Find out more about the poster: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O7...

Young V&A: https://www.vam.ac.uk/young