at the bench

Geneaology of Weebles

2012-02-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

I remember playing with Weebles, those plastic, egg-shaped toys when I was a kid. I might have even had a play set to go with them, and I'm sure they got tossed around the house and the yard. They were pretty much indestructible, and sure enough you could tip them over and they would pop back up.

I never thought too deeply about them, and in a kid-centric sort of way, I guess I assumed all toys were invented in time for me to play with them. This notion was first challenged a few years ago when I did conservation treatment on a prototype box for Lincoln Logs which was flat and rectangular, like a regular board game box instead of the cylindrical tin I was used to.

Then the other day I was looking through a recent acquisition of trade literature, doing a quick condition assessment. I pulled out this Christmas catalog from Strawbridge & Clothier, the cover looked fine, but I wanted to check inside to make sure there weren't any hidden tears, sections repaired with scotch tape, or rusty staples.

And I found...

Item "E-74", Rolly Poly Dolls, made of papier mache and available for 25 cents. There you have it, the ancestors of Weebles!

Mobile Technology for Conservation

2012-01-27T07:59:00.000-08:00

The Washington Conservation Guild is a professional organization for conservators in the Washington DC area. Every January we hold a mini-conference the "3-Ring" meeting which offers three series of programs on three different topics. This year my fellow Guild member Lisa Young and I developed a "Mobile Technology for Conservation" Ring. The capabilities of mobile technology are growing by leaps and bounds and we wanted to share the ways in which people are using mobile technology and encourage our colleagues to explore the world of tablets and apps and perhaps report back next year.

The first presentation was by Amber Kerr-Allison, a paintings conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lunder Conservation Center. Amber has been using an ipad and the app PDF Notes to do on-site condition assessments of paintings.

The second presentation was by Jenny Wiley of Heritage Preservation. When I started looking for apps to feature at this session, one of my first thoughts was "wouldn't it be nifty if the Disaster Wheel was an app?", and in a delightful coincidence, the response from Heritage Preservation was, "Yes, it's in beta testing right now".

The third presentation was by me and Lisa. We talked about various apps we had found to be useful in our daily conservation work; I like the free light meter app for iphone and Lisa likes molecule and plastics related apps. I had ipads and a droid tablet loaded with demo apps for people to experiment with after the talk. We were not trying to present a definitive list but rather ideas for getting started and exploring this rapidly growing world.

Hands On

2012-01-23T08:16:00.000-08:00

There are many different skills necessary to being a book conservator.

You need research skills to track down information about the history of a book, or to find modern equivalents of historic materials.

You need fine hand skills so that you can place a small drop of paste along the edge of a scarf tear and then smooth the edges together so that no one can tell there was a tear to begin with.

And you need to know how to maintain your equipment, including the big paper cutter, more commonly known as a board shear. The board shear is like a giant pair of scissors, with a fixed blade in the bed of the shear, and a movable blade in the handle. Both blades need to be sharpened on a regular basis according to how much the shear is used.
So there's hands on with a fine brush and then there's hands on with a big crescent wrench. I take the top blade off...

...and bolt it to a piece of plywood to protect the blade and the mailman when the blade is sent out for sharpening.

Then I crawl under the bed of the board shear and remove the lower blade.

These are the 56" blades from the big board shear in the lab, bolted down for shipping. They're shipped to a vendor who will sharpen them and then bring them back and re-install.

Stay tuned!

bad plastic

2012-01-10T06:14:00.000-08:00


I took the dust jacket off the book so that the wrinkles in the plastic would be more apparent.

As a conservator my eyes have become attuned to very fine details. I notice things even when not actively engaged in documentation of an object. When this book, an edition of Catcher in the Rye published in the UK in 1951, was handed to me at the circulation desk I immediately noticed that the plastic wrapper on the dust jacket was wrinkled and distorted and that it the dust jacket had been damaged. Note on the "back" of the dust jacket that the paper has a horizontal compression fold that obscures the last title in the "list of fiction".

Here's an inside view showing the vertical wrinkles in the plastic wrapper and tears in the paper dust jacket. The wrinkles are a result of the degradation of the plastic which shrinks and warps as it ages. It is surprising how much damage a plastic wrapper can inflict, but clearly the plastic is stronger than the paper given the fractures and creases in the dust jacket.

Not all plastics are bad, we use archival polyester in a number of preservation applications, but if you see any that is wrinkled and distorted, be sure you're not using it to store or protect an artifact as you may wind up inflicting damage that you had hoped to prevent. The wrapper is now off the dust jacket which will get an upgraded wrapper made of archival polyester and then the book can go back to the shelf.

broken lantern slides

2011-12-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

While our library collection is primarily books and manuscripts, we do get other sorts of artifacts. I had an earlier guest post about a collection of glass plate negatives that presented significant storage challenges. With a big collection you can set aside staff time for a re-housing project that addresses all the issues of access, handling, supplies and so on. When you have just a few items that come in as part of a larger collection sometimes you have to create solutions on the fly.

This lantern slide is cracked but still intact. Given the shards of glass, it is not really safe to use, nor is it a good idea to put it into storage without stabilizing it in some way. Most of the slides that came in this collection were just fine, but what to do with the few that weren't? It is better not to separate the slides and
make different workflows, so the stabilization needs to be done promptly, ideally making the slide safe to

store and to use.

Backing and wrapping is a technique I use to exhibit small or thin items and when I saw these slides come through our processing unit I thought it would work well for broken lantern slides. The basic technique involves cutting a piece of white mat board just a few millimeters larger than the slide, wrapping a piece of clear 3ml. polyester around the slide and board and then securing the polyester with double stick tape. The white board allows for viewing of the image and the polyester holds all the shards in place, protecting anyone viewing or handling the broken slide. This back and wrap can be done quickly, and with offcuts we have on hand from other projects.

wrapped slide, front


wrapped slide, back

Neat and effective!

Forever Amber

2011-12-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I was at the Dibner Library looking at amazing 16th and 17th century books by the likes of Andrea Palladio and Robert Hooke (see previous post). This Friday I am at my home library reviewing books for an upcoming exhibit on "bestselling fiction in America". Quite the contrast! Where the Palladio book was a fascinating mix of the original text plus a re-purposed 15th century vellum music manuscript, some of the books in this exhibit are, well, plain old "racy".

Forever Amber, (which was banned in Boston!) is the story of Amber St. Clare, who (according to the front flap on the dust jacket) "uses her striking power over men to gain her own ambitious and worldly ends". Wow! Apparently it was the bestselling book of the 1940's, and was made into a movie.

I love this author photo! When I write my bestseller, I want to look just as glamorous.

Most of the time 20th century books don't really interest me. The bindings are all pretty much the same: case binding; machine sewn signatures or adhesive bound; glued-on endbands; plain cloth. The dust jackets can be fun, but there is nothing structurally distinctive to catch my "binder's eye". But I have noticed one thing about books printed during WWII, the paper they're printed on is different, usually thinner, duller and a little more flimsy feeling as you flip through the book. I know that paper production changed during the war; so many resources went toward the war effort, that it is no surprise, really. But still, it's kind of neat to have a subtle, tangible hint of how all aspects of American life were affected at that time.

I doubt this picture can convey the details I'm describing, but if you ever have a chance to compare a 1940's era book for yourself, you'll see what I mean.

Another Palladio

2011-12-09T07:17:00.001-08:00

While I was very pleased with the results of my treatment of our Library's copy of Andrea Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura that doesn't mean that I'm done with Palladio. I may never treat another copy of this work or another Palladio book, but I can certainly keep learning about 16th century printing and bindings and the best way to do that is to look at other copies.

This is the Dibner Library's copy of I "quattro". Like the UVa copy the original binding has been lost to time and while the "re-binder" did do another vellum binding, they chose to use a 20th century case binding instead of something more contemporary with the text.

See the note from the Burndy Library, confirming my first impression.

I love this colophon and the marginalia on the facing page.

And what do I mean by case binding? See in the picture below how the spine of the book pops away from the spine of the cover. Back in "the good old days" books were sewn on leather thongs or heavy cords which were laced into wooden boards or a piece of vellum. In the late 19th century book production became more of an industrial process and the process of sewing and making the cover became two separate steps. The parts were joined by gluing the first and last pages (and maybe some linings) to the insides of the covers, much less sturdy, but much faster. I'm not sure why the binder chose a case binding for this book, but the work is neatly done and since book has been in a rare book library since the early 20th century, careful handling has kept the binding intact.

I'll post some pictures of my Palladio when it comes back from exhibit. Stay tuned!

Making Headlines

2011-12-07T09:30:00.001-08:00

My lab, and that of my colleague Steven Villereal, the Library's Audio-Visual Conservator, were featured on the University's "UVa Today" website. We're delighted with the opportunity to share what we do behind the scenes with the broader University community. I was particularly pleased with the way the writer drew a parallel between what Steven and I do despite the differences in the materials we work with. Conservation is just as much about research, decision making and ethics as it is about torn paper or warped film.

The media department also did a separate video of me talking about my research into the Library's copy of Micrographia, although I wish there was more footage of the book instead of my "talking head".

Enjoy!

The Reluctant Dragon

2011-10-04T08:23:00.000-07:00


double checking the page sequence

In addition to working on rare books I also spend time working in the book repair unit for the Library's circulating collections. I work alongside the book repair technicians although I tend to work on the more complex repairs, in addition to offering training in advanced skills.

The book I am working on now is Kenneth Grahame's "The Reluctant Dragon" which is an adorable story about a little boy who is the son of a shepherd but also a great reader, who "spent much of his time buried in big volumes", a dragon who loves to write poetry and the knight St. George.

Working on circulating collections can be fun, especially when the book is such a charming read, but it also reinforces skills I use in working on more rare and delicate books. The page mending techniques and materials are the same, and in the case of this book, the need to collate the book so that I can be sure I put the pages back in the right order. This book is only three signatures, or sewing sections, but it doesn't have page numbers which means that I have to double check to make sure that I am putting the detached pages back in the right order. In the good old days of manuscripts, printing and hand binding "catch words" were used to make sure the pages were in the correct sequence, but they haven't been in common use since the late 18th century.

Good thing that the story is such a fun read, because I have to re-read the last few lines of one page and the first few lines of the other to make sure I've got it right.