librarienne

Fayum Mummy Portraits, dating from around 30 BC to the mid 3rd century AD. 

The portrait heads were attached to Egyptian mummies of the Roman period, covering the faces of the deceased In the top pictures, you can see now they were bound to the mummy. Dating from the time of the Roman occupation of Egypt, they are closest to Graeco-Roman artistic traditions. Around 900 are known to survive and they are some of the only surviving evidence of Classical panel painting traditions. Due to their burial in hot, dry conditions with the bodies, many have survived in excellent condition. 

The term Fayum comes from an area of graveyards (necropoli) where they were found in large numbers, buried in communal catacombs. 

Deer

鶴鹿図

Kano Yôsen'in Korenobu

latter half of the 18th century to first half of the 19th century

MEDIUM/TECHNIQUEHanging scroll; ink and color on silk

DIMENSIONSImage: 129 x 53 cm (50 13/16 x 20 7/8 in.)

An illustration of a wearied author celebrating the completion of his book, from the final page of  Henry Bristow’s A glossary of mineralogy (1861).

Frass: debris or excrement produced by insects.

This manuscript is part of the José Agusto Escoto collection of Cuban history and literature. The 1574 manuscript in a later binding had extensive beetle damage ​from its previous life in the Caribbean when it arrived at Harvard’s Weissman Preservation Center. There were such copious frass deposits that large sections of the 119 pages were stuck together, so much so that the text could not be read. Karen Walter, senior paper conservation technician, had a lot of work ahead of her.

The manuscript needed to be stabilized for digitization by disbinding, separating the fragile pages, re-attaching the fragments with media, and rehousing in Mylar sleeves.

It was the “separating” part of this task that worried Karen until, during disbinding, she realized that the frass was very brittle. She did a test using a Teflon tool to apply pressure through the paper on top of a small area of frass and was surprised when it crumbled away allowing her to slide a microspatula further between the two pages until it hit the next deposit. In the worst cases, this step was repeated dozens of times.