Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, tech | Tags: blogging, book conservation, document conservation, framing, Gutenberg Bible, history, jim downey, Johannes Gutenberg, paper, parchment, technology, vellum, Wikipedia
I’ve previously mentioned that I do document conservation, such as a single leaf of the Gutenberg Bible. That item is paper, but one of the materials commonly used historically for important documents was parchment – an animal skin which is also called vellum. That was commonly used for grants of land or titles, affixed with one or more big wax seals. Such documents evolved over time, and the formal diplomas for college and graduate degrees you see today are their descendents — that’s why the term “sheepskin” is still used to refer to a diploma, because historically they were written/printed on actual sheepskin (or calfskin) parchment/vellum.
Parchment is still a wonderful material to write on, though it is expensive to produce and has one particular quality which needs to be taken into consideration: it is very hygroscopic — it reacts strongly to changes in humidity. Basically, when exposed to humidity that nice flat sheet of parchment wants to go back to being the shape of the animal it came from. So when it is used for a document you want to frame and display, that needs to be accommodated in some way.
Here’s one way it used to be done:
Yup, the parchment was just folded over a wood frame and nailed down.
But a rigid mount like that usually tears loose over time, like this:
To repair it, you have to slowly humidify the document in a controlled environment (without actually having it come in contact with liquid water), allow the skin to relax, then dry it under mild restraint. Usually a couple of cycles of doing that will result in a satisfactory return to “flat”, though to remove all the distortions can require many hours of labor — not typically what a client wants to do, unless the item is of great historical value. Here’s what the above item looks like after a couple of cycles of flattening:
Now it is ready for proper mounting and framing, using one of several possible framing treatments which will allow the document to ‘move’ due to changes in humidity without trying to rip itself apart.
But a lot of frame shops don’t know that they need to handle parchment/vellum documents a certain way. In fact, many places don’t know that there is such a thing as animal skin parchment/vellum … that’s because a century or so ago, paper manufacturers started to produce types of paper which supposedly had the same qualities for writing/printing as real parchment, and they called that paper “vegetable parchment”. It was a marketing ploy which worked entirely too well, to the point where people became confused about the differences between the two materials, and many people forgot (or never learned) that there was such a thing as animal skin parchment/vellum.
Now, when you have something printed on paper, and if that paper becomes distorted by humidity, one quick and easy way to flatten it is by ironing it. So long as it is done with a mild heat, and a brief exposure, it’s not *that* bad for most papers. After all, one of the ways modern paper is made is by running the sheets between heated rollers to dry and finish them. So if you take a document to a frame shop, and they find that document is a little warped/cockled, they may plug in the iron and see about flattening it.
But if you do that to animal skin parchment/vellum, it’s like cooking the skin. It doesn’t flatten out. It does this:
Sorry, that’s not a very good image. It’s what the client sent me via email*, asking if there was any hope for fixing it. I didn’t think to take my own ‘before’ image. I told the client that I wasn’t very hopeful, because heat damage can be permanent. But I agreed to try, and he brought it to me.
So I gave it the treatment outlined above, but with *very* slight restraint — I wanted to allow the skin to slowly try and relax. Here’s a pic after the first try:
You can already see improvement, even as bad as it still looks. That gave me hope that I could get the document mostly back into its original condition. The client asked me to try. Here it is after two more cycles of humidification and drying under restraint, using a little more pressure each time:
By no means perfect, but pretty good for a modest amount of labor. There’s always a trade-off with such work, between what is possible to do and what is reasonable to spend doing it. The client was very pleased with the result. So was I.
Just thought I’d share that.
Jim Downey
*Since the diploma is a private document for a living person, I asked the client’s permission to use and display these images. That permission was kindly granted.
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation | Tags: 1848, Alexander McNair, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, First Missouri State Capitol SHS, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Missouri History
Other than the Hitler book, it’s been a while since I shared any pics of my conservation work. So, here’s something a little nicer: the family bible of Missouri’s first Governor, Alexander McNair.
The date on the bible is 1848, and the inscription on the flyleaf is 1851. So this was evidently owned by Governor McNair’s children. This is actually a fairly common pattern you see across the US, where the first generation of settlers on the frontier don’t have these kinds of family artifacts — it’s their children who do.
Anyway, this is how the book came to me:
You can’t tell from the image, but the sewing structure was also broken, which meant that the whole book needed to be disassembled, repairs done as needed, and then resewn before remounting into the extant covers, saving the endpapers because they have inscriptions on them.
Here it is after:
Cover has been cleaned, redyed, and protective consolidation done on the edges and corners. There’s a new piece of leather (goatskin) providing a new structure to the spine. If you look closely, you’ll see that the spine is wider than it was originally – that’s because in resewing the book, due to the age of the paper, I had to do it in a way which gave it strength and support – but that meant more “swelling” of the spine. It’s a trade-off you have to make: either more fragile, or slightly bigger. Usually in conservation work the choice is for more strength.
Here’s a pic of the inside front cover, showing an inscription on the fly-leaf. If you look closely you can also see a gap along the spine. That’s where the original hinge is broken, and the cover partially detached.
This sort of inscription was common during that era, where a husband (or father) would give the book to his wife (or daughter) with wishes that she will study it and live according to it. If you look along the edges, you’ll see damage from handling.
Here’s the inside front cover and fly-leaf after treatment:
The flyleaf has been de-acidified, with kozo repairs to the tears along the edge of the page, and then trimmed slightly. Again, it’s hard to see, but there’s a new hinge and the cover has been securely mounted to the resewn text block. The original endpaper has been lifted up, and the new hinge has been inserted under it. This maintains the original appearance as much as possible, but gives the book a secure structure.
And if you like, you can see it in person at the First Missouri State Capitol State Historic Site.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Feedback, General Musings, Marketing, Society | Tags: art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, feedback, honesty, integrity, jim downey
This framed item has been on the wall of my bindery (at various locations) since I started work in 1992:
Here’s the same text, taken from the Services Offered page of my business website:
I am dedicated to preserving the legacy of books and documents that we have inherited. To the best of my knowledge and ability I use techniques and materials that will last for generations. Whenever possible, the materials are of archival quality: acid-free and buffered papers & board, inert and reversible adhesives, unbleached linen thread, et cetera. The techniques I use for binding and conservation work are likewise archivally oriented, non-damaging, and reversible in the event the book or document requires additional attention in the future. All work is, of course, unconditionally guaranteed.
That last line sometimes surprises people. But it is extremely important, and has stood me in very good stead over the years I have been in business. As I told a client by email this morning, concerning work on a recently-completed project (a 1910 D.A.R. charter on natural vellum which had been poorly framed and stored):
Well, I’ve done all that can be done, I think. The document is flat, the remaining wrinkling is where it was once wet and then dried in contact with the glass.
But as it says on my website: my work is unconditionally guaranteed. I want to wait until you have a chance to see the condition of the charter, and if you’re not satisfied with the work, just don’t send me payment (or if payment has already been sent, I’ll hold onto the check until you have the charter and can judge for yourself). Seriously, it is much more important to me that you be satisfied with the work than the few hours of labor I have invested in this project. I have always operated by this policy, and it has been by far the best thing for my customers and reputation.
You might think that people would take advantage of such a policy to try and screw me out of deserved payment. And maybe a couple have in my 23+ years of business. But I think the vast majority of people are honest and well-intentioned; if I think that a client isn’t trustworthy, I just don’t take the job. That has probably filtered out a few potential problems. And the others I chalk up to being a cost of doing business. Because when I tell a client that if they are not satisfied with the work, and I will either do what is necessary to make them satisfied or there’s no charge, they see that I’m not trying to cheat them in any way. And having that reputation as a craftsman is priceless.
Recently I was helping out a local NFP arts organization, by getting information together for some renovation work they need to have done. I met with several contractors, walked them through the facility so they could see the scope of the work, and then asked them to provide estimates for what needed to be done and at what cost, so that the NFP Board and Executive could seek funding.
With the first two contractors, things went exactly as expected. However, when the third contractor went through the facility, he saw something which caught his attention and he started reconsidering the whole project (one of the other contractors had noticed the same thing and remarked on it, but didn’t investigate further). By the time we were done, he turned to me, shook his head and said something along the lines of: “I’m going to talk myself out of a job, but I think that the problem you’re having isn’t the one you think you’re having. I think you should get a qualified structural engineer in to do a formal check, but I don’t think you need me to do the work you asked me to bid on. That’s just a symptom of what is really going on, and it’d be cheaper and easier to correct the actual source of the trouble.”
This was a construction job which was going to run into the low five-digits, so it wasn’t just some little thing. For a small contractor, walking away from that sort of job isn’t done lightly. Particularly when it would have been very easy for him to just bid, do the work, and then figure the repairs would hold up long enough that nothing would come back to haunt him in the future.
That, my friends, is integrity.
I reached out my hand to the contractor, thanked him for his honesty, and told him that from now on if I knew of anyone who needed the kind of work done that he did, that I would have no hesitation in recommending him as honest and trustworthy.
That’s why I have the policy I do for my conservation work. And yeah, I am convinced that it is far and away the best possible policy I could have.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, movies | Tags: art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Highlander, jim downey, video, Wikipedia
Man, that is so weird.
I just spent a chunk of time reviewing a bunch of short video clips we’ve been making over the last couple of months, in preparation for putting together some promotional videos for a series of bookbinding & conservation workshops I’m going to offer.
Intentionally, all the clips are close-ups of my hands doing different conservation techniques on actual projects. They’re not intended to be instructional, just illustrative of the things I will be teaching.
But it was so very weird to see my hands working like that, and from a different, disembodied perspective. Always, when I am doing conservation work, I am not at all focused on what my hands look like — I’m entirely focused on doing the specific task correctly.
And … well, this is going to sound a little self-promoting, and I apologize for that … it was just cool to see how magical the work is. My hands are moving with certainty and deliberation, the kind of self-confidence which comes from decades of experience. And the repairs just … happen. Right there before your eyes. It’s just plain cool. I never see things from that perspective.
Once I have the ability to transfer the video from the camera to the computer, I’ll put up a full clip for people to see. But I just wanted to share the odd experience while it was fresh.
Jim Downey
*With apologies to Mr. MacLeod.
Filed under: Book Conservation, Humor, movies | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Fifty shades, humor, jim downey, movies
Sorry — saw this in the press this morning just after hearing an ad for the movie, and couldn’t resist.
But I assure you that full consent was negotiated in advance.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, University of Missouri | Tags: 1936, Adolf Hitler, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Germany, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Nazi, Nazism, Third Reich, University of Missouri, World War II
In the 8 years of this blog, I’ve written about book conservation a fair amount. It is, after all, my profession. It’s something I truly love, take pride in, and sharing some aspects of my work now and again gives me joy. Several times I’ve posted a number of images along with a description of the work, and there are other such photo essays on my business site.
Today I am going to do so again. But this time I am going to put all the images and technical description ‘below the fold’, as it were.
Why?
Because I don’t want to see them when I am casually scrolling through my blog.
Because it was probably the most difficult job I’ve ever worked on, in 23 years of private practice.
No, not technically. Emotionally.
Because this is the book: Adolf Hitler, bilder aus dem leben des führers (pictures from the life of the Führer).
Yeah, Nazi propaganda from 1936.
A couple of things I want to say. One, I’m not Jewish. Two, to the best of my knowledge, none of my family were ever put in a concentration camp. Three, I have nothing against Germany or the German people — in fact, I have an undergrad degree in German, can still speak/read it somewhat, was an exchange student there back in 1974, and have since enjoyed going back there as a tourist.
But Nazism, Nazi ideology, and Hitler all stir feelings of deep loathing in me. I can’t give an explanation of it beyond my belief that Hitler and what he wrought represent the very worst of human nature.
But while that is the case, I also believe that the horror which is/was Nazism cannot be easily dismissed as aberrant. If one of the most humane and enlightened societies known — one which gave birth to brilliant scientists, philosophers, and artists — can turn into the Third Reich, then any society can. That is a lesson which we cannot afford to forget. (Which is perhaps an odd thing for me to say, given my personal history.)
So I understand the importance of preserving the artifacts of that history. And so understanding, felt that it was my responsibility to use the skills I have acquired to that end, no matter how distasteful the task. It was my small tribute to all who resisted, who persevered, who fought.
Find the documentation of the work below:
Filed under: Book Conservation, Connections, Failure, Health, Marketing, Publishing, Survival, U of Iowa Ctr for the Book | Tags: appendectomy, appendicitis, art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, bookbinding techniques, bureaucracy, health, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, mortality, survival, teaching, training, University of Iowa Center for the Book
The summer before this past one I almost lost my wife to appendicitis.
All my adult life I have known that sudden, unexpected death can strike those we love. And I have tried to live my life accordingly.
The flip side of that, of course, is that I know I could die suddenly, as well. And while I have done a number of crazy and stupid things, I’ve always tried to keep an eye on the real risks involved. It’s not smart to lose track of the fact that you’re mortal.
But being there in the hospital with my wife, as she recovered from an emergency appendectomy, reflection on my own mortality took a slightly different direction. Rather than just thinking about what I had accomplished, and whether it had been a full life, I got to thinking about what I had to offer. And one thing I started thinking about was that I had accumulated a lot of very specific experience which was fairly rare: my book conservation skills.
Now, there are some really good schools out there to train conservators. As well as professional organizations, and workshops and all the sorts of things you would expect. But not a lot. Certainly not enough to meet the need for trained conservators; a need which will only continue to grow as more and more books and articles are published only in electronic format, and the current inventory of printed material starts to age and grow fragile.
Since I have been in private practice as a conservator for 20+ years, I haven’t done a lot of just low-level routine repairs. Rather, I’ve worked on the more valuable items from both private and public collections — the sorts of things which individuals and institutions felt it was worth paying me for my expertise. In other words, I’ve been fortunate enough to work on the cream of the crop from multiple collections, as it were, which has given me the opportunity to further hone a wide range of techniques and demanded that I do my very best by the books and documents entrusted to my care. And with that experience came judgment about what techniques are appropriate in what cases, what will work and what won’t. Judgment which often isn’t even conscious, but lives in my fingertips and can only be shared by close example and repetition.
That’s what I have to offer. And that’s what would be lost were I to die suddenly.
That’s what I got to thinking.
As luck would have it, about the same time I started working with an old acquaintance who had developed an interest in medieval bookbinding. He doesn’t live close, so we had to discuss things online and over the phone, with his coming to visit for weekend training now and then. Because *nothing* compares to hands-on, face-to-face training.
And working with him reminded me of how much I enjoy sharing my skills and love for my craft. Oh, I’ve taught plenty of bookbinding classes over the years, and that has been enjoyable. But there is nothing like working with a student who shares my intense passion for caring for historical texts, rather than someone who just wants to make some blank books for Christmas gifts or needs to have another example for their arts portfolio.
So I got to thinking of how I could find another mechanism to share my skills with people who already share my passion. And I decided to sound out a local institution about perhaps training some of their staff (many large libraries and archives have one or a few preservation technicians, who do the valuable basic repair work on the collection). I knew that while the budget environment wasn’t good, there might be a way for us to work out an arrangement for long-term, careful training in depth of some of their staff, allowing me to transfer both specific skills but more importantly nuances in judgment through hands-on work of items in their collection.
The institution was certainly receptive, and for a while we worked hard to see how to bring my initial thoughts into reality within their system. Meetings were held, brain-storming sessions conducted. Lots and lots of meetings, involving lots of different people and departments, different budget lines and facilities. The prospects were very promising, and I was very excited about the possibilities to begin a new phase of my book conservation career, teaching others part-time. But ultimately the bureaucracy proved too hard to overcome; rather than starting a long-term, fairly permanent training program, the bureaucracy could only accommodate a temporary ‘pilot’ program within its usual rules and guidelines for professional development.
And here is where the title of this post comes into play: knowing when to walk away.
Because when all was said and done, there was a chance … but only a chance … that the temporary pilot program teaching two or three people might find a home (and funding) within the institution. Maybe.
What should I do?
I considered and consulted with some close friends. After all the discussions, after all the meetings and brainstorming, I was deeply vested in seeing this work out.
But I had to take a step back and think about my initial goals, and rationally assess whether or not this would accomplish what I wanted. I decided that it didn’t — that I would be committing too much time and energy to trying to meet the needs of the bureaucracy rather than my own needs, and that I would have too little control over what I could teach.
I can’t blame the bureaucracy; it exists for a reason. Trying to change it, to get it to do something unique and risky, was probably a fools errand from the start.
So, failure.
Maybe.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, though. The bureaucracy at the institution in question, as well as the bureaucracy at many such institutions, is already set up to handle another version of training for their staff: specific workshops conducted by outside consultants, lasting from a few hours to a few days.
So that’s what I am going to do. In the next couple of months I will put together the initial offerings of training workshops for specific conservation techniques. All will have detailed descriptions of what the workshop will include. All will include plenty of hands-on practice under close supervision. All will be completely modular, so that any institution can select from the menu of offered workshops without being committed to other workshops.
I may not be able to do in-depth training of a small number of people, but I can share my skills and judgment with a much wider selection of institutions. It’ll be a lot more work on my part, but will hopefully also accomplish more.
We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted as to developments as things happen.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, Book Conservation, Connections, Humor, Weather | Tags: architecture, blogging, book conservation, historic building, home repair, horror, humor, jim downey, photography, roofing, technology, weather
Three weeks ago we started a “small” home repair project.
Well, we thought it was going to be small. And then we discovered the horror within. As I said in my first blog post about this:
When you start a project like this, you don’t really know what you’re getting into until you actually start getting into it.
Boy, howdy.
Well, it became much more of a project than originally envisioned. If you want to know why I haven’t done a lot of blogging recently, this is almost entirely the reason: we wound up replacing everything about the original porch except the two upright posts, and those we altered. We even wound up having to clean up and put aright some of the work which had originally been done to tie in the porch roof to the house roof, which was a real horror.
And when I say that “we” did it, I mean that literally: my wife and I. We actually did every single aspect of the work. My wife is an architect, and we’re both very used to working on smallish practical repairs — the sort of thing you always have pending on a house which is 130+ years old. Had we known that this job was going to turn out being so big, we might have opted to put it off until a contractor we trust was able to work it into his schedule. But once we got started, we were committed to doing the work all the way through, not according to someone else’s schedule. So, we did it.
What follows below is a step by step photo documentation of the work, just for grins. We finished the work this weekend (well, except for the painting, but that’s pretty minor and will get done in a week or so when we have a chance), and I’m really pleased with how well it all turned out. So, if you’re interested, take a look.
And with a little luck this week I’ll get back to a more normal posting schedule.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, tech, University of Missouri | Tags: 1480, art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, incunabula, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, technology, Thomas Aquinas, University of Missouri
Been a little while since I did a book conservation post. So let’s have some fun.
Recently I had this item come in for some minor work: Summa contra gentiles by Thomas Aquinas, printed in Venice in 1480. That makes it an incunabula, one of the relatively rare books published before 1501 (in this case, just a quarter century or so after the Gutenberg Bible). Even more noteworthy, this book is still in its original binding. And that binding is in remarkably good condition.
Here’s a pic of the outside of the binding:
Lovely. And an excellent example of bindings of that period. That’s the front cover, a nice very deep red (almost a dark brown to the eye) in goatskin. What I love is the way the binder used fairly simple tools to create an elaborate cover design. Here’s a detail:
And the hardware is wonderful, too. Here’s a detail of the front clasp hardware:
That clasp was designed to receive a simple hook attached to a leather strap mounted on the back, here:
Also, take note of the delightful small brass strip mounted on the corners:
There’s a similar strip mounted to the bottom (called the “tail” in bookbinding) edge of the covers, near the spine of the book on both the front and rear. That protects the cover from excessive wear when the book would be resting in a lectern or something similar for reading (books in this time period were usually shelved on their side):
Cool, eh? But the real treasure of this binding was revealed when I removed the (probably) 19th century endpapers which had been added. Under that was the original structure of the book, showing both the original boards (probably quarter-sawn oak) as well as the way the supporting strips of alum-tawed goatskin of the sewing structure was laced into those boards. Here’s an overview:
And here’s a detail showing how the supporting strips were lain within a small channel carved into the wooden board covers, and then pinned in place using a softer wood or (in this case) other leather:
But equally cool is a detail shot showing the simplicity of how the leather cover comes around the corner of the board:
Lastly, here’s a little detail from one sheet inside:
It’s a little hard to tell what it is you’re seeing there, so let me explain. The darker strip is the outside edge of a piece of vellum which has been adhered to the spine of the text block. This was added *before* the supporting strips of alum-tawed goatskin were laced into the wooden covers, and just serves to help protect the exposed sewing thread.
So, there you have it: a perfect example of late 15th century binding. Just like all the history books (and book conservation training) says it should be, but exposed by me today for the first time in probably 200 years or so.
Fun stuff. Have I mentioned recently how cool my job is?
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 