#paper conservation

Join us on the 6th floor of Hatcher this Thursday, 19 March, between 4-6p for our next Third Thursdays at the Library event of the semester! This open house will feature conservation work. 

Come chat with the conservators and technicians who care for the library’s rare and special collections.  The Preservation Services department is charged with caring for vast and diverse collections — from the world’s first atlas to (fake) blood-stained movie costumes. 

Projects on view will include structural repairs of bindings, complex paper washing, intricate custom boxes, and a large scale rehousing project. Some examples of projects involving technical analysis and multi-band imaging will also be presented.

Terribly measured mats

Tape

Pens

Bleeding ink

Dust

Spilled “liquid” (made with dried glue)

Improperly labeled chemicals

Toxic chemicals in the open lab! With a double dipping dirty cotton swab in the jar

Mold (fake)

Fading (I half faded my own cyanotype for 9 months)

Thanks for your question @tepid-bathwater. A standard way to repair paper edges and corners is to use Japanese paper and wheat paste (methyl cellulose). Here is an instructional video on one method for doing that repair.

If you don't want to go through that trouble, you might consider mylar encapsulation. Here is a site with an instructional video on encapsulation at the bottom of the page. Both of these processes are reversable.

For more information you might want to contact @conservethis on Tumblr. It's a good resource for conservation infomation on social media.

November 4th is #AskAConservator Day! Conservators around the world will be answering questions about their work in the spirit of sharing knowledge and celebrating the growth of the field, and our #BKMConservation staff would love to hear from you. Our conservation lab is made up of ten conservators, four interns working across paper, painting, and object conservation as well as four Collection Management staff. Our conservators worked on approximately 840 objects and artworks this year while our Collections Management team has worked on multiple large, long-term storage/rehousing projects across all our collections.

Have a question for any of them? Look out for our post and Instagram stories on November 4th. The lab will be answering questions from 9am-5pm EST.⁠