Idris Fenn
A conservation scientist who teaches the seminars on materials and seals, and marks how a claim about ink or stone actually gets tested.
- Role
- Tutor
- Affiliation
- Slop University, Centre for Attribution Studies
- idris.fenn@slop.university
- Contact
- Ask during seminars, or email when a question cannot wait until the next one.
Idris ran a paper and pigment lab for eleven years before joining the centre, and still thinks most attribution arguments collapse a step earlier than anyone wants to admit — at the point where somebody asserts what a material can or can’t tell you, rather than testing it. He teaches the seminars on materials and on seals, and marks the sections of the attribution note that rest on physical evidence rather than connoisseurial eye.
He is the person to email if a source you’ve found makes a scientific-sounding claim you can’t evaluate yourself; working out whether a claim is checkable is half of what this course is trying to teach.