conservation

Another year over, and a new one just begun

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

I think everyone reading this will be glad to see an end to the last twelve months: what a year.

The rollercoaster that was 2020 has carried me along like everyone else, and has brought both good and bad times. Dealing with a close family bereavement in lockdown was by far the hardest, and the feeling of helplessness when you can not be with people you care for can not be underestimated.

But as you can see from the selection of images above, work has continued to develop and I have been truly lucky to have the range of projects I have enjoyed this year: everything from the conservation and mounting of a letter to Santa from the 1930s to fasciculing C13th medieval French manuscript fragments. I have been fortunate to be able to conduct several major collection assessments, with appropriate Covid-secure measures, three exhibition installations including for the remarkable (and alas, under-attended due to Covid) British Baroque exhibition at Tate and numerous studio based projects for both institutional and private clients. Several long term projects ended, with new work taking its place: for this I am thankful.

I have been amazed by the response of the heritage sector in their ability to adapt their practice and share their knowledge, much of which I distilled into the open-access Resources Roundup spreadsheet, now in its 20th incarnation. The degree to which the sector, both home and abroad, has pulled together to pool information and resources is incredible, and it is this attitude and spirit by which we will haul ourselves out of this. Working with the ARA committees on which I sit has also kept me connected, gaining from and giving support to colleagues through all the different experiences they have had in lockdown.

Presentations have been a feature of 2020, with in-person speaking opportunities being transferred online. So although my planned trip to speak at the AIC’s conference in Salt Lake City in May was abandoned – I can’t deny this was a bitter blow – I did take part in the online symposium which was more than a consolation. Speaking and discussing what I do is one of the best bits of the job, and I welcome every opportunity I am offered. Connecting with colleagues outside of my normal sphere has been one of the most positive aspects of 2020 and I have shared virtual spaces with people from all over the world and in a kaleidoscope of heritage disciplines.

Lockdown has given me a chance to think anew about where I can contribute, leading to the formation of a project to bring engagement opportunities to those groups who may not have easy access to written heritage materials or who learn by means other than purely sight and reading. This has taken the form of a CIC, Take 5 Engagement Ltd., with the aim of facilitating tactile engagement workshops for a wide range of people and involving sight, sound, touch, smell and hopefully even taste to show how and why objects were made. 2021 will see this new bolt-on venture develop, with a bit of luck and hard work, and I already have a couple of pilot workshops lined up with partners such as The Avenue School in Reading.

The several work trips and holidays I had planned – including a short break for my husband’s 50th birthday (he will be 52 by the time we go – if we go – this coming year!) – have had to be shelved. Even though the temperature was at least 10 degrees less than our planned Spanish break, the sea and sky in Cornwall this summer were a very Tyrrhenian blue, and the caravan’s hot tub made up for the lack of warmth in the air.

On a personal note, I was delighted to be chosen as a volunteer HLF-funded Women into Heritage Engineering apprentice at Crofton Beam Engines. Having had a lifelong interest in industrial archaeology (I come from Co. Durham after all, so it is kind of in my blood) this was genuinely a dream come true. This vastly important industrial heritage site on the Kennet and Avon Canal has always fascinated me, and to be contributing to its continued use as a place to inspire and enjoy is just fantastic. In January I am learning how to weld: I can not wait. I have also been heavily involved in cataloguing the history of my home town, Consett, and specifically the steelworks that made the town and its people – as well as the steel for a whole host of ships, buildings and even Blackpool Tower. For a bit of end of year fun, check out the advent calendar I compiled: who knew steel production would make such a good topic for this sort of countdown?

At the end of this bruising year, I wish all my clients both past and present all the very best for a happier and healthy 2021. Larkin missed something out: what survives of us is not just love, but also hope.

Resources Roundup

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd. / 1 Comment

Social distancing, medieval style: keeping 2m apart with the help of a lance; Verdun Breviary, Bibliothèque-Discothèque Intercommunale de Verdun

Please note: the Resources Roundup spreadsheet now has its own page, where you will find the latest version; you will find the latest resources on reopening, funding, lockdown collections care and wellbeing here.

The Covid-19 lockdown has certainly lasted longer than I had anticipated when I posted my last website entry. But amidst all the sadness and gloom there have been some great patches of light and one of those has been the generosity of individuals and organisations in sharing collections care information and advice.

I have tried to keep on top of these for the benefit of the heritage community through my various sector roles as well as for my clients and thought it would be useful to bring them together in a single spreadsheet.  I have also tried to focus on information that will be helpful for small or medium sized institutions that may not have expansive resources to deal with the impact of the virus or the consequences of reopening services. Key resources are highlighted. I hope you find the attached helpful – the latest update is always available here, and the date of the last version is given below the link.

As always, stay safe and well, and if you need any help or advice please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

2020_VSACR_COVID_19_ResourcesRoundup_V20

This version added 31 December 2020

Look, write, say

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

This year has been filled with looking, writing and talking, three things I enjoy very much indeed. I have had several very interesting assessment projects, ranging from a gorgeous collection of medieval and early modern European manuscript fragments to an incredibly complete representation of arts and crafts printing heritage in a collection based on the output of the Essex House Press.  Looking inevitably precedes writing, and the resulting reports on all these great projects must run to many thousands of words of advice.

Talking this year has involved several presentations, most recently to the members of the Royal Philatelic Society of London on their Perkins Bacon collection of letter books. This vital and complete record of early stamp history and printing on an international level was very difficult to access  due to the damaged condition of the material, and is currently undergoing conservation with the generous support of the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust.

A project that is just drawing to a close – and one that will deserve a post all of its own – is the extensive work I have undertaken on the Oliver Messel Archive for the University of Bristol’s Theatre Collection. This has been such a wonderful project to conserve, and centres on a series of evocative photograph albums detailing Messel’s early life and work as a theatre designer and an incredible collection of architectural plans of his later interests as an interior designer.  As there are to be no spoilers for the longer post at the end of the project I will leave it at that for now, with one small tantalising example of Messel’s output – who would not want to live in a house like this?

 

My thanks to the Royal Philatelic Society of London and the Theatre Collection for kindly allowing me to use these images. 

 

It’s Friday, it must be Winchester

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

This week I have been extremely fortunate to have some company on my travels and in my studio, with Surjit Singh joining me as part of his two month internship in the UK.

Surjit has just completed the first year of his Masters degree at the National Museum Institute of History of Art, Conservation and Museology in New Delhi, and is in the UK to develop his understanding and practice in library and archive conservation.

It was a bit of an immersion into the life of a conservator in private practice, with the days being spent both on the road and in the studio. Monday saw us visiting several clients in Oxford, and Surjit got straight into the swing of things by helping me take some cradle templates for a forthcoming exhibition at New College library.

Tuesday was a studio day, and together we worked on the cleaning and repair of the early C19th Petitions of Assistance collection of paper documents for the Salters’ Company archive. This NMCT funded project was a great way for Surjit to practice some key paper conservation techniques and get experience of handling and treating different types of paper which had a variety of damage types, including iron gall ink corrosion.

Wednesday saw us back on the road and heading west, this time to Winchester Cathedral, where I have been working on the Morley Library cleaning project for a number of weeks. We began by helping the volunteers set up the next phase of the cleaning of the collection, and then Surjit moved on to start the installation of the fishing line handling deterrent. In this system, originally developed for use in National Trust libraries, fine nylon fishing line, dark brown in colour, is laced between two conservation grade boards at either end of the shelves. This discourages and prevents casual browsing of the books, and acts as an aide memoir for visitors that touching is not allowed.

Thursday was a welcome studio day after all the activity of the week, and we looked at case binding repair and methods to conserve circulating library collections at Corpus Christi College library. This included scraping and poulticing old degraded spine linings and sewing on new textile linings for additional strength.




We were back on the road again early on Friday morning, bound for Winchester Cathedral to complete our part of the project as well as hand over the cleaning to the volunteers to continue to work their way around the 2000 books that make up the library. It’ll be great to see the progress they have made next time I visit.

Friday afternoon was all about iron gall ink, that key – and rather tricky – component of so much of our manuscript heritage. I showed Surjit how to make and use gelatine-coated remoistenable tissue, through which repairs may be made on iron gall ink media whilst controlling the level of humidity, the primary cause of iron gall ink corrosion.

The week with Surjit Singh went by all too fast. He put up with my hectic schedule, spirited driving style, the menagerie of wild animals that seem to be taking over my garden and my attempts to cook Indian classics for him admirably. More importantly, it was great to revisit some of the techniques and procedures that I do as a matter of course and see them from a fresh perspective. It was even better to see Surjit taking these techniques, thinking how they could be adapted and making them work for him: this is how we all develop as conservators.

Good luck to Surjit Singh, there’s a great future for him just around the next corner.

 

My thanks to all the clients and sites we visited during the week, and for allowing the reproduction of the images in this post. 

Making a full recovery

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

Despite my New Year’s resolution to be a more frequent correspondent, like so many other people the good intentions enthusiastically made on that clean temporal slate in the first hours of every January are easy to make but difficult to implement. As you can see, it has taken me until May to have time to actually put virtual pen to paper.

But what a year so far!

 

 

 

 

I spent a good part of the first two months condition assessing the most remarkable collection of bound volumes in advance of a current installation at Tate Modern, Yinka Shonibare’s The British Library: a three-dimensional work of art that is so much more than the sum of its 6327 parts.

Having assessed and measured every single book in the work it was incredible to see it installed in all its impressively colourful glory in the gallery. The books themselves are carriers of the concept of the work: through the application of various patterns of Vlisco’s veritable wax hollandaise textile and with the names of notable Britons with heritage from all over the globe or links to immigration policy or protest blocked in gold on selective spines, the volumes are elevated beyond that of usual library book stock.  The atmosphere in the library-like gallery space was fantastic, with visitors really engaging with and responding to the installation.


A large part of the year so far has also focused on the completion of a treatment based binding project which also has a twist to its covering method, but instead of modern art this was working with very old craft indeed.

Abbots’ Register B is a C14th cartulary that is part of the manuscript collections at Gloucester Cathedral Library and Archive and was conserved through the generosity of the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust and the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral.

The manuscript had clearly had some history to tell during its 700 years of life. Having undergone at least two previous sewings, the final binding was no longer extant and the sewn parchment textblock came to me very much au naturel and without boards or a cover.

Where every project starts: the manuscript waiting to be surface cleaned in the dusting box

The lack of a binding presented a great opportunity to preserve the now visible evidence of the structure, sewing and binding history, and it was important not to impose a binding style that was either inappropriate or would potentially create problems for future analysis of the manuscript.

One of the few decorative initials in the manuscript

A non-adhesive binding method was used to attach a beautiful thick linen rag paper cover made by the Moulin de Verger papermill in Angouleme, France using traditionally stamped rather than beaten fibres. This creates a strong and durable paper with excellent stability. Alum tawed supports, laced through the cover, and stitched alum tawed and linen textile linings provided the primary cover attachment, mechanically fixing the paper cover to the textblock without the need for any adhesive. The cover, linings and sewing may be removed at any stage without additional disruption to the textblock, particularly as the previous sewing holes were used.

Linings and sewing supports being sewn into place

Punching the lacing holes through the cover – nerves of steel required!

Alum tawed slips laced through the cover

Before treatment, the back of the spinefolds were heavily glued. By removing this adhesive and by choosing a non-adhesive method of lining as well as through the use of a structural endband and packed sewing, the textblock now opens much more easily and with much greater fluidity and flow, allowing improved access to the gutter margin and reducing the strain on the sewing structure by more even distribution of the weight of the textblock.

A structural endband, non-adhesive lining method and packed sewing provides a good level of fluidity in the textblock

My year continues at an exciting pace, with some fabulous activities in the pipeline, including several externally funded conservation projects ranging from large format C19th mine working plans to Livery Company records saved from the Great Fire in 1666, as well as conference presentations for the CILIP Rare Books Group and ARA 2019. More as these projects unfold, and hopefully before another five months elapses…

The completed manuscript project with laced in linen rag paper cover

 

All images reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral and the Trustees of Tate

Chartering a collaborative project

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

In the solitary working life of a freelance library and archive conservator, there sometimes comes along a project that provides you with a welcome opportunity to collaborate closely with other conservation professionals as well as the client to ensure a really sound outcome. A recent project to conserve, digitise and rehouse two mid-C16th parchment foundation charters was such an opportunity, with some impressive results.

 

 

 

 

The larger 1562 foundation charter                                  The smaller 1551 charter

The charters had been displayed and stored in standard frames with minimal preparation or secure mounting. Consequently, they had not only retained their fold creases and damage from their previous storage but had also slipped down in the frames.

They had previously been displayed in an office environment where conditions were understandably more suitable for human comfort than housing parchment charters. Despite this, and given their age, they were in an acceptable condition. The larger, 1562 charter had lost its great seal and black seal cord, and the heavily applied header ink was cracked with some losses, commensurate with the storage environment and repeated folding and refolding. The smaller, earlier 1551 charter had been extensively water damaged at some stage, and this had resulted in extensive planar distortions and what looked like a loss on its left edge. Both had plenty of ingrained and surface dirt – but some grubbiness after 450 years is to be expected.

The clients’ aim for the conservation of the charters was two-fold: to be good custodians of these key archive items in their institutional story and to provide a means of protecting them for the use and enjoyment of future generations. In discussion with the client, I suggested that the permanent housing could also be a very suitable means of display. Using the example of a Perspex fronted boxed display mount I created for a C13th charter, part of an Oxford college collection, I showed that the charters could be stored and displayed in attractive permanent mounts which allowed full access to the objects whilst offering a high level of protection. Additionally, the two layers of housing – the box mounts and the storage box itself – would act as a buffer against environmental fluctuations, inevitable where storage conditions are unregulated or primarily for human comfort. It was also decided that digitisation of the charters would provide a flexible and safe means of accessing their potential for teaching and research as well as wider institutional interest.

Once out of the frames the charters were lightly cleaned to remove the loose surface dirt. This was approached cautiously, due to the friability of the media of the larger charter in particular. They then spent several weeks between felts and under weights to encourage the most severe folds and distortions to relax and flatten down. This meant that minimal humidification could be employed to remove the most persistent creases. Controlled drying techniques using pinned bulldog clips to tension the minimally humidified parchment as it dried were used to remove the planar distortions.

    

 

The above image (left) is a good comparison between the flattened charter and the as yet to be worked upon codicil attachment

After flattening came repair, with the welcome discovery that the damage to the left edge of the 1551 charter had resulted in very little loss, and most of the torn area once flattened could be returned to its original position.

Repairing the damage to the 1551 charter with lightweight toned Japanese paper

Now we come to the collaborative part of the process. Working closely with library and archive digital photographer Colin Dunn of Scriptura the conserved charters were imaged at a high resolution to produce a faithful digital copy for archiving and facsimile reproduction as well as lower resolution images for use online. I was able to transport and handle the charters safely on behalf of the client and return the items to the studio within a day. After digitisation, my final task was to strap the conserved, digitised charters to individual bifold mounts with inert polypropylene strapping, secured on the verso of the mount with Tyvek tape. The charters themselves were not hinged or permanently secured in any way, and the strapping could easily be removed if it was necessary to take the charters out of their mounts.

The final stage of the project was the construction of the box mounts and the storage box for the mounted charters. My design was based on each mounted charter being stored and displayed in individual Perspex fronted hinged box mounts with a paper covered plastazote frame to give the necessary height. The two box mounts would slot into a specially designed presentation box which could safely and securely accommodate both charters, with the smaller charter recessed into a step in the base of the box and the larger and more frequently used charter on the top. Here effective collaboration was essential, as the measurements had to be exact to ensure a good fit for all the components with no movement during storage or transportation.

Originally specialist box and mount maker Bridget Mitchell of Arca Preservation was going to create the outer presentation archive storage box only but given the need for exact measurement required it made sense for her to create the box mounts too. The impressive results wholly vindicate this decision, and are an effective demonstration that the sum can be equally good as the parts in a complex project where many talents come together to create the best outcome for the object and the client.

       

    

  

Christmas greetings from the Holy Land

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

At this time of year, it is appropriate that I should be involved in the conservation of Harris Manchester College’s copy David Robert’s Sketches of the Holy Land and Syria along with its companion volume for Egypt and Nubia.

Based on drawings made by Roberts during his travels in the region in 1839, this impressively proportioned elephant folio volume is lavishly illustrated with some exceptionally fine and evocative lithographs of significant sites in the region. The image of as yet un-excavated monuments such as the Sphinx are quite remarkable, and let us see very clearly an area that in some cases has changed beyond all recognition or ancient sites that are, alas, no longer there. This is the second copy of this book that I have conserved and it never fails to be a fascinating object to work on, such is the intricacy and perfect perspective of Roberts’s work and the beauty and precision of the lithographs.

For Christmas I bring you Roberts’s drawing of the the Shrine of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Although not the most beautiful or exciting image it is definitely the most appropriate for the time of year. I wish you and all my clients past and present a very merry Christmas and a happy and peaceful New Year.

 

My many thanks to Harris Manchester College Library for allowing me to use the image. 

Trust trainees to do a good job

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

This week, I have been fortunate to work with Poppy Garrett, one of the museum trainees at The Wordsworth Trust.

Poppy came to my studio to learn about handling and cleaning methods in preparation for working with me on the conservation and fasciculing of a large and significant Wordsworth Trust archive collection. The items we were working with during the training were very generously provided by the archive of The Salters’ Company who were pleased to have Poppy and myself treating a collection that otherwise may have not be cleaned in this year’s conservation schedule.

The collection in question was a box of petitions for assistance, dating from 1805. These documents detail the requests for financial help received by the Salters’, mainly due to hardship and unemployment. As you can see, they made good subjects for cleaning training, with plenty of historical storage surface dirt for Poppy to tackle.

 

 

 

 

We started with making a dusting box, an essential piece of kit to control the spread of eraser crumbs and dirt, moved through to cleaning with a latex sponge, brush and vinyl eraser, including grated eraser, and finished with a couple of simple and straightforward tear repairs. We also managed to fit in a quick tutorial on the best way to adhere bookplates, something that Poppy was going to be doing in the coming week.

 

 

 

 

It was great to work with Poppy, who picked up the techniques really quickly and had a good awareness of how to handle and support these often fragile and damaged items during the cleaning process.

My thanks to the The Wordsworth Trust and to The Salters’ Company for supporting Poppy’s training with me. We have an excellent collections care professional in the making!

Read all about it!

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is:

Do you get distracted by reading what is in the documents and books you work on?

I have to confess that yes, sometimes I do, particularly where there is a human element to the text such as photographs or, in the case of this object, some wonderful insights into a previous version of Britain with many differences but some striking similarities to our lives now.

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to conserve a copy of The Times dating from Thursday 7 November in 1805.  As anyone with a heart of oak will tell you, October 1805 was when the Battle of Trafalgar took place – in fact, 212 years ago to the day of me posting this. How things have changed – from broadsheets and broadsides to blog posts and drone strikes.

 

 

 

 

 

The condition of the object was very poor, as is to be expected from newsprint even back in 1805. This was right at the beginning of wood being introduced into paper pulp. Although wood wasn’t used extensively in newsprint until slightly later in the nineteenth century, it is likely that this object, given its browned and fragile paper structure, contained low quality fibres and a weak and possibly acidic size. It had extensive ingrained surface dirt and was split and torn along the fold lines and in several separate pieces, making handling, let alone, reading impossible. But it was clear that it was all there – tantalising for its owner, who was keen to read all about it.

 

 

 

 

 

The treatment was fairly straightforward. After gentle surface cleaning using a very light touch due to the fragility of the paper, the paper structure was strengthened with an application of a low-aqueous surface size. This had the additional benefit of flattening out the curled and folded areas, allowing better repair.  All the splits, tears and losses were repaired using a toned Japanese tissue and dilute wheatstarch paste as an adhesive. The paste was applied to the repair tissue on a blotter to reduce over-wetting and the risk of localised staining.

 

 

 

 

The treatment revealed the full text for the first time, and with it some glimpses of a world both very different and strangely similar to today. The newspaper was in a typical format for its time: classifieds on the outer pages and the main story in the centre spread. The account of the battle was suitably heroic and florid, and rather out of step with war reporting today, with plenty of blow-by-blow action to keep readers informed and entertained. But what was most charming were the advertisements.  Solutions to bilious disorders, genteel youths requiring a situation and lost dogs: the conservation has enabled these very human, and familiar, stories to continue to be told and enjoyed.  Let’s hope poor Basto was found and returned to his owner.

 

 

 

 

 

As always, permission has been sought for the inclusion of this project and images.

Bindings with strings attached

/ Victoria Stevens ACR Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.

As a book conservator, I spend a lot of my time working on earth coloured objects – I am an unofficial specialist in the colours brown, sepia and rust. Most historical bindings and archive objects are varying shades of these colours, and as they degrade the colours may change but usually to another derivative of brown. It will come as no surprise that the toning colours I turn to most frequently for paper and binding repairs are yellow ochre, raw umber and burnt sienna.

Wonderful as shades of brown are, occasionally I get the opportunity to inject a flash of colour into the work I do. The following images show the process of sewing a decorative endband.

 

 

 

 

As the endband sewing progresses, the core is tied down by passing the thread through the centre of the section, firmly securing it to the head and tail of the spine. Endbands were originally intended to add strength to a binding, providing support for the sewing structure and shape of the textblock and also, when laced into the boards, board attachment. Over time their decorative capabilities overtook their structural function, and they gradually ceased to be anything other than a means of adding to the aesthetic impact of a binding.

Another very different form of tying down in book conservation is used during rebacking. Back to the brown: this tightback binding needed to be rebacked after the previous, nineteenth century rebacked spine failed due to chemical degradation.

In order to get the leather firmly adhered across the spine and prevent ‘tenting’ either side of the supports, the book is tied up with strong but soft cord after covering and whilst the leather is still damp. This is particularly important in a large folio volume like this, where extra help to ensure good adhesion across such a large area is very welcome. Anyone else reminded of Gulliver in Lilliput?