I Found It in the Archives!

Posted on December 16, 2011 by ARIS Staff

TSLAC is participating in the Society of American Archivists’ “I Found It in the Archives!” contest. The event offers a chance for visitors and researchers to share stories about the treasures they’ve discovered at TSLAC, and helps promote archival research.

I find all kinds of interesting things in the archives, or, rather, those things find me when they come to the conservation lab. Two finds from this week represent the breadth of the historical materials housed in archival collections.

The Big
Sometimes archival holdings put a fine point on major events in history, such as this ticket to the presidential welcome dinner in Austin November 22, 1963. President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, and their wives were to attend; Kennedy was shot in Dallas earlier that day. This ticket, along with an invitation and program for the event, are part of a larger, donated collection of newspapers and magazines documenting the Kennedy assassination. The materials have come to the lab for assessment of whether they should be removed from their library bindings.

Kennedy Welcome Dinner invitation

The Small
Though big finds are impressive, sometimes the small finds are the ones that really humanize the historical record. Probably my favorite find from this week is the following letter from the 1920s, written from a mother to a son, which reminds us that some facets of family life remain unchanged throughout the years. Note how the author pulls no punches from the letter’s first sentence. This letter is part of a collection in the lab for basic cleaning, flattening, and mending to stabilize the correspondence for researcher use.

Dear Thad, What is the matter with you that you don't write to me?

Archives offer unique, unpublished treasures that can be startling in their immediacy, especially as people grow accustomed to learning and interacting onscreen and online. Learn more about TSLAC’s “I Found It in the Archives!” contest on our website, and plan an archives visit soon!

A Pirate Diary and its Inky Mystery

Posted on November 18, 2011 by ARIS Staff

I recently completed a condition report on an extensively fire- and water-damaged book believed to be a diary of the legendary Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte. There are many layers of complexity to this item, whose authenticity has long been questioned. Its condition is poor; its maker’s identity is unclear; it has unexplained structural features that could indicate alteration; and its subject was himself a near-mythical figure whose life story is difficult to pin down. Discussing this item in full is beyond the scope of a single blog entry; it was nearly beyond the scope of a lengthy condition report! However, I would like to address one intriguing issue that demonstrates how the information in books goes beyond the written word and into the physical artifact.

The Lafitte Diary is a puzzling artifact with extensive physical damage.

First, to dispel the romantic notions that inevitably arise regarding a pirate diary, physical evidence suggests that this volume incurred much of its damage during a 1960s-era house fire, rather than a daring rescue from a sinking ship. Water damage frequently accompanies fire damage due to efforts to extinguish the flames. Tidelines and cockling typical of a water event appear throughout the volume. However, a stranger phenomenon is observed in the writing, as the brownish-black ink shifts to unexpected purple and red colors.

The ink shifts to purple.

The ink shifts to red.

As would be expected for this time period (1845 – 1850,) chemical tests confirm that the ink in this volume is iron gall. However, iron gall ink does not typically display these color shifts, which indicate that some kind of water-soluble or pH-sensitive dye was added to the ink mixture. I began to wonder if this added dye could help us address some of the item’s authenticity issues.

Feasible dyes for the time period might have included traditional, organic materials like brazilwood or cochineal. But in 1856, a major change occurred in the dye industry: William Perkin invented mauve, the first synthetic chemical dye. Aniline dyes like mauve were relatively easy to make in bulk, and they became extremely popular in the second half of the 19^th century.

Mauve is a lavender color not entirely dissimilar from the color shifts observed in the ink in the Lafitte Diary. If the Lafitte ink tested positive for aniline dye, then we could safely say that the ink was made after the dates attributed to the diary, which might help settle the authenticity debate once and for all. But there’s a catch: after research and consultation with colleagues, I can’t identify a test for aniline dye!

Should any readers be familiar with such a test, please do pass it along! And in the meantime, remember that books, as physical artifacts, carry significant information that goes beyond the written word, and that cannot be captured in a digital transfer. Perhaps one day we’ll find the physical clue that helps us understand the true nature of the complicated Lafitte Diary.

Who am I?

Call for Sustainable Tips at AIC 40th Annual Meeting

Posted on November 3, 2011 by ARIS Staff

Conservators, please make note of the following opportunity for involvement in the 2012 AIC Annual Meeting in Albuquerque:

The Committee for Sustainable Conservation Practices is putting out a call for tips to present at our lunch session Wednesday, May 9 at AIC 40th Annual Meeting. The 2 hour lunch session, Linking the Environment and Heritage Conservation: Presentations, Tips, and Discussions, will include 2 presentations from environmentalists from non-heritage conservation fields who will discuss materials and their effect on the environment, followed by a 1 hour tips session and a 20 minute panel discussion.

Conservators will have 10 minutes each to present tips on how they are working in a more sustainable fashion. We encourage discussions concerning: materials for treatment and storage regarding their degradation and the environmental ramifications; materials no longer in use due to their environmental impact, and the materials that replace them; treatments designed for new environmental parameters; reduction and reuse of materials considered for long term storage; lighting, including new approaches; environmental control; new approaches to loans, including travel, packing and transportation; and cost savings from sustainable practices.

Tips will be followed by a discussion session led by a panel of environmental specialists and cultural heritage conservators who have focused on related topics.

To present a 10 minute tip, please submit a proposal to CSCP by December 20, 2011 to sustainability@conservation-us.org

Oversize Books, Oversize Spine Coverings

Posted on October 28, 2011 by ARIS Staff

I recently completed a treatment on which I’d be very interested to receive some conservation feedback.

Here at TSLAC, we have a great many oversize ledger bindings used as account books in various functions of state government. These bindings often feature rather sculptural spine coverings – stiff, thick board shaped into an aggressive round with very proud false bands and an abundance of gold stamping.

The difficulty with many of these spine coverings is that they’re simply too large. As you may be able to see in the following photo, the round of the spine covering extends far beyond the round of the text block. This creates excessive stress in the joints when the book is opened, and as a result, I usually make these books’ acquaintance when the spine covering has detached.

The stiff spine covering extends well into the hinge area.

It’s fairly straightforward to reattach the spine covering and replace lost material in the joint, but oftentimes this just gives new life to the same old problem. In this case, I tried simple reattachment, but the book would only open about 45 degrees before the board began to collide with the stiff spine covering and impede opening. I reversed this treatment before the book did so itself and went back to the drawing board.

The board and spine covering begin fighting Round Two; the board will likely win a second time.

In the past, I have tried trimming these spine coverings to a better fit. But there are drawbacks to this approach – trimming requires a lot of patient hand-cutting and a wealth of blades. Additionally, as in this case, the spine coverings are often gold-stamped out to their very edges. I needed another way to more closely align the shoulders of the spine covering with the shoulders of the text block.

Eventually, I landed upon the idea of using a spacer to set the spine covering back from the shoulders. To achieve this effect, I adhered a closed-cell Volara foam inside the spine covering and then attached this construction to a new hollow tube on the spine. I then filled the joints with toned Japanese tissue coated with SC6000.

Adhering the Volara strip inside the spine covering produces a pleasing ants-on-a-log effect.

The result is a book that can safely open without damaging itself, especially when used in a cradle, as is our reading room policy for these oversize items. The other result is a very bulky headcap. This appearance would seem gauche, except that the original construction also appeared overbuilt, and the item’s overall design never relied much on subtlety.

Spine covering with Volara spacer and toned Japanese tissue on hollow tube.

I’m very curious to hear thoughts on this treatment. Has anyone used Volara within a treatment rather than within a housing, as is more traditional? Any ideas about the long-term wear of a design like this?

The Unknown Craftsman

Posted on September 30, 2011 by ARIS Staff

I recently finished a book that might be of interest in this forum: The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty by Soetsu Yanagi. I first learned about this book through mention in a Brian Eno biography, but it is highly relevant for anyone invested in making, repairing, or appreciating handcrafted objects.

Yanagi was a maker and connoisseur of pottery in early 20^th century Japan. His appreciation of handcraft is rooted in Eastern traditions and Buddhist thought, and as such it provides ample exercise for a Western mind. In Yanagi’s world, the objects we use enrich our human experience, and the best objects are made by anonymous craftsmen whose honest, imperfect work embodies genuine beauty.

Yanagi particularly admires Korean pottery, especially from the 16^th – 18^th centuries, and he examines it in great detail. Its beauty comes from craftsmen with a simpler mindset than he observes in Japan and the Western world. As he explains, Korean craftsmen didn’t strive to assert their artistry or to create works of excellence. In Buddhist terms, they worked in a non-dualistic mindset, one formed before the differentiation of artist and layman, beautiful and ugly, good and bad. They relied on the traditions and materials at hand to create simple, useful objects without self-awareness.

Yanagi discusses the two paths through which artists and craftsmen may achieve their goals: the way of the individual and the way of grace. Success is attainable through both, but the way of the individual is far more difficult. On this path, artists must reinvent the wheel at every step. With keen focus on defining and expressing themselves, they must labor to find and master materials and techniques that suit their needs (whose very definition requires even more labor.) By contrast, craftsmen taking the way of grace can reach the same goal with greater ease by relying on tradition. Rather than focusing on self-expression, they immerse themselves in inherited practice to create works of integrity and humanity.

This is a fascinating take on craft tradition, one with keen awareness of the repetition inherent in learning to work with one’s hands. Within Western culture, it provides an interesting framework through which to consider different kinds of artwork. One can imagine the Abstract Expressionist painstakingly blazing the path of the individual, while the painter of monastic art followed the path of grace and stood on the shoulders of giants. Who was more genuine? Who was more skilled? Who was happier?

Modern day Westerners like me will likely puzzle over arguments like these. Aren’t we supposed to express our individuality? Don’t we praise trailblazers as leaders and visionaries? Head-scratchers like these hide on nearly every page of Yanagi’s book. For example, Yanagi praises Korean potters for their simpler frame of mind, and for the genuine craft it produced. But it took a more modern, sophisticated sensibility to appreciate that simple beauty. Does this paradox pose a kind of duality? And when we follow Yanagi’s line of thought, do we fly dangerously close to the noble savage argument, assuming that the grass was always greener in another country and another time?

Regardless of the answers to such questions, The Unknown Craftsman is a genuinely thought-provoking counterpart to life in 21^st century America. It’s a look back to a time when machine-made goods were a new concern, and that’s fascinating for digital-age readers to whom even the machine era can look like the good old days. The mind reels at how our culture has moved from handmade things to machine-made things to digital un-things. Yanagi’s book is a snapshot from our walk along that path.

Animated Engravings in Light and Shadow

Posted on September 9, 2011 by ARIS Staff

A brief diversion today, from paper conservation into printmaking and its descendents.

Those with an interest in graphic arts may realize that the ways of producing images are as varied as the ways of interpreting them. One historical method of creating book illustrations and fine art prints is engraving. In an engraving, an artist uses a fine, sharp stylus to carve tiny lines into a metal plate. To print the image, ink is spread into the carved lines and the plate is tightly squeezed onto paper, leaving a positive image of the carved-out areas on the plate. It’s often said that sculptors make excellent printmakers because of the sculptural process of creating the printing plate.

: This engraved image shows how fine lines rendered in ink allow control over grayscale.

: Detail from the above engraving.

Today, I want to share an ingenious adaptation of engraving in the photographic world, in which light (or shadow) replaces ink. During Paris’ artistically rich interwar period, Russian / French engraver Alexandre Alexeieff and his American partner / wife Claire Parker invented an image production device called the pinboard. The pinboard consisted of a fine mesh pulled taut on a vertical square frame. Tiny metal pins were inserted in the interstices of the mesh, creating a dense surface of 100 pins per square centimeter (that’s right, one fragile pin per millimeter.) Light was then cast across the front of the mesh at an oblique angle. As each pin was pushed through the front of the mesh, it cast a shadow whose length could be controlled by the length of the exposed pin. One pin’s shadow created a mark equivalent to one engraved line. Just like in engraving, the size and density of the resulting lines allowed for detailed control over grayscale. A pair of artists working on both sides of the pinboard could use a variety of tools to sculpt their desired image into the dense cluster of pins, which Alexeieff described as velvet-like. A photograph taken of the resulting pinboard image would yield results much like an engraved print.

Alexeieff and Parker took their process a step farther by taking multiple, successive exposures of pinboard images to create pinboard animations. Their work was painstaking and deeply detailed; the first animation lasted eight minutes and took two years to create. Only six full pinboard animations were created in their lifetime, bookended by settings of the music of Modest Mussorgsky; their first in 1933 to the symphonic poem Night on Bald Mountain, and their last in 1972 & 1980, to the first half of Pictures at an Exhibition.

Below is an excerpt from Alexeieff and Parker’s 1963 adaptation of Gogol’s The Nose (from Facets Video.) Note that the work looks like an animated engraving. Note also that each line in each still image was generated by the shadow of one tiny pin.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXGdBgJO2WI]

Alexeieff and Parker’s pinboard is a fascinating interpretation of print concepts in the photographic world, and an example of how image production methods evolve incrementally over time. I stumbled across this amazing work by way of a chance DVD rental, a testament to the value of browsing your local library or video store rather than relying solely on the recommendations of your favorite online provider.

Archival Serendipity

Posted on September 2, 2011 by ARIS Staff

As I gradually de-silk, deacidify, mend, and sleeve our collection of Confederate muster rolls, I receive periodic inquiries from the reading room staff as to whether work on a particular requested document is completed. Untreated muster rolls are not available to researchers due to their extremely fragile condition.

This week, I was surprised to receive an inquiry about a muster roll whose treatment I had just completed three days earlier. I recognized this particular muster roll by number right away for several reasons. First, it had arrived in the lab in nine separate pieces and had been reassembled into four complete sheets, one a giant 32.5” x 42.5”! Beyond the physical condition, I also immediately noticed that this muster roll was filled with Hispanic surnames, something I’d never observed in other similar documents. Not only was I excited that such recently completed work should be requested by a researcher, but I also hoped to potentially learn a little more about this unusual document.

The researcher told us that this muster roll represented a unique intersection of Civil War and Tejano history. When the Civil War broke out, many Tejanos did not support the Confederacy, and they lost land and status. By contrast, the prominent family of Santos Benavides in Laredo allied themselves with the Confederacy. Benavides took his staff and servants into battle, and their names are listed on the muster roll. Benavides eventually became a colonel, the highest ranking Tejano in the Confederate Army, and participated in several significant battles. Far from encountering ill fortune during the war, Benavides, the son of Laredo’s founder, remained a major landowner and political figure in Laredo until his death in 1891.

How fortunate to learn more about this unusual document, and how fortunate the timing of the research and conservation work! Many thanks to our researcher for taking the time to talk about Benavides’ story. I look forward a forthcoming journal article on the topic.

Deciphering a Sewing Pattern

Posted on August 12, 2011 by ARIS Staff

Today’s entry is for all you book conservators out there. And for the rest of you, here’s a scintillating look into the world of book structure!

In some of our early 20^th century US government bindings, I’ve noticed a sewing structure that’s been a little difficult to decipher. It’s definitely machine sewing. It looks rather like smythe sewing. But the stations don’t appear entirely regular. And they seem to be positioned off-center from the sewing supports.

A particularly damaged 1910 US census finally offered up a clearer picture. Here, in a region with approximately 50 leaves removed, we can see a sewing support and remaining thread.

Exposed sewing threads and sewing support.

Exposed sewing support and sewing threads.

Well, this is novel! Typically, one might see sewing threads passing around a support. But here, the threads travel directly through the supports. If you look closely, you can also see a back-and-forth pattern that creates offset sewing stations as the thread travels between sections. After examining intact sewing earlier in the volume, I created the following diagram of the sewing pattern repeating three times across six sections. Note how the pattern reverses between supports 2 and 3.

Sewing diagram

If pressed, I’d call this supported, two-on smythe sewing. Can anyone confirm or deny whether such a thing could or does exist?

Digital Preservation

Posted on August 5, 2011 by ARIS Staff

As a person involved in both libraries and music, I have a great many high-stakes encounters with the digital world. Overall, I think the tenor of the discussion about this world can be too feverish. Digital media are neither the sky falling nor the second coming. They are media that work well for access; that work problematically for preservation; and that uproot economies of the arts.

Regarding digital media and preservation, I often wonder what will happen in archives as more and more information is born digital, and as the pace of its creation continues to quicken. How can we archives staff collect all the digital records of a government, or of an artist, or of a company, and reliably shepherd them through myriad instances of hardware and software obsolescence?

Here’s an answer I’ve been trying on for size lately: we can’t. At least, we can’t in the completist way to which we’re accustomed. That’s not to say we won’t try. But given finite and decreasing resources, especially in the public sector, humanities, and the arts, I can’t imagine how archives can reasonably keep up with seemingly exponential growth in digital data and ensure its availability in 50 or 100 years. Digital data are far less stable than paper, and in our shift from paper to digital, we’ve traded relative permanence for ease of access. Simplified, in this particular Faustian bargain, we can have everything right now, but we can’t keep it.

Surprisingly, this idea actually gives me some relief from digital anxiety, like a cease-fire in the giant Tetris game of incoming data for archives. There’s something in it that implies a near-Buddhist acceptance of change and loss. But if we’re to accept the idea of a patchier cultural record, then selection becomes all the more significant. Collections managers will have to make very smart decisions about what to keep. Records retention policies will have to reflect this reality. And is it OK for future researchers to guide our collective cultural understanding with a more selective view of the past?

I could say much more about this and related topics, but I’ll stop here in hopes of encouraging the commentary of others.

Working Solutions for Letterpress Copying Books

Posted on July 14, 2011 by ARIS Staff

Some of you, especially the conservators in the audience, may be aware of the perils of letterpress copying books. These books are the products of a 19^th- and early 20^th-century office duplication technology. In this process, an original manuscript was created with special ink, laid next to a blank, dampened, translucent copy page, and pressed together in a copy press. The result was a mirror-image copy, which was read through the opposite side of the translucent paper. For more on this process, see recent work presented by Beth Antoine at the American Institute for Conservation 2011 annual meeting, or Barbara Rhodes’ 1999 publication Before Photocopying: The Art and History of Mechanical Copying 1780 – 1938.

Many copy presses, like this one, have been repurposed as small book presses in binderies and conservation labs.

The inks and papers required by letterpress technology produced documents that have many physical problems today. The fragile papers wrinkle and tear easily, and often incur severe damage from ink corrosion. To further complicate matters, these materials can be seriously damaged by water, rendering many water-based conservation treatments off limits.

For a copying book in the lab this month, I improvised a treatment method that worked satisfactorily well. I needed to mend several copying book leaves that were severely wrinkled and torn due to ink degradation and research use. I skipped traditional humidification and achieved moderately successful results flattening with weight alone. But the problem of holding the translucent tissue flat for mending still seemed to require more hands than I have. To address this problem, I used the suction table.

Mending with heat-set tissue on the suction table.

By drawing gentle suction under the item, I was able to arrange it flat and then have both hands free to apply heat-set tissue mends with a tacking iron. This method allowed for quick application of mends and hinges for re-securing the pages in their binding.

Question: Is this the most beautiful, perfect, and complete conservation treatment ever devised?

Answer: Definitely not! The mends are visible on the translucent paper. This is a stabilization treatment only; other steps would be required to arrest degradation processes inherent in the copybook materials. Due to the paper’s warping over time, some compromises between legibility and flatness are required during mending. And the treatment requires leaves to be loose from their binding. (Several of the leaves in this treatment were already loose; the remaining ones were removed and re-hinged after treatment. This was quicker and likely less damaging than working in situ.)

But consider the following: archives often have thousands of these letterpress copying books in their collections, all in similar states of need. Conservators must develop efficient solutions that make sense within the scope of the problem. This copying book may not be a thing of beauty, but it is stabilized for use, and that makes all the difference for the next researcher.

Copying book after treatment, open to a mended page signed by Texas Governor Pendleton Murrah (1863-65.)

TSLAC Conservation

Conservation at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission