#preswk

This manuscript appears to be copied from multiple texts concerning both medicinal and culinary recipes. While the binding may appear damaged it may be more likely that it was not produced by a professional bindery. It is actually quite soundly constructed and in wonderful condition, but the rough turn-ins and lack of any paste-down, as well as the imprecision of the blind stamping, suggest a home binding. 

So while the boards are exposed there is no conservation treatment that would seek to correct this. Additionally the boards themselves have gathered further evidence of ownership, with notes from Edmund Blunden, who’s personal library is held in our special collections. 

It’s Preservation Week (April 22-28, 2018) and we’re so excited!  Preservation Week is a national campaign sponsored by the American Library Association, the Library of Congress, the Society of American Archivists, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and maybe even a cultural heritage organization near you!  The week focuses on raising awareness about collecting and preservation of papers and artifacts and to connect the general public with preservation knowledge, expertise and information.  It emphasizes the close relationships among personal, family, community, and public collections and their preservation needs.

There are events going on in-person across the country and on social media.  To find some events near you, check out www.ala.org/preservationweek. 

To get your curiosity going, you can read this interview on the importance of preservation: bit.ly/2Hg7uxd.

This recipe for “hour hound” (horehound) candy was recorded in this civil war correspondence from Edwin to Almyra  Brown   . 

“Hour hound Candy, Boil the hourhound in as much water as will cover it, and tilt all the Juice is extracted. then strain it and give it another boil stirring in gradually sugar enough to make it very thick and stif. Afterwards sift sugar over a shallow tin pan, and fill it with the paste and leave it to congeal, any hard candy may be made as above.”

While the paper shows a major loss it is good quality and the ink has hardly faded. You can see from the deep creases that the recipe and letter remained folded for a very long time. While there was no interest in reducing the appearance of the creases we did want to store them unfolded to reduce wear and tear of folding and unfolding with use. Luckily these relaxed quite well on their own without humidification or weights.

All images: Letter from Edwin Brown to Almyra Brown, August 20, 1861 Ohio University Libraries. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections Collection. Brown Family Collection (MSS 18)

Photo credit: Misty Thomas-Trout

We’re closing our celebration of Preservation Week with a book that shows us the value and impact of something we often take for granted. This excellent book traces economic networks in Athens, Ohio and shows the interconnected foodways that are such an vibrant and important part of this community. 

“Experience has taught me that through direct relationships and interactions of support, people tend to care more about their part in the whole. It has shown me that we are interdependent. We do make individual choices but they are not made in isolation. Our everyday decisions affect those around us as they also create patterned ways of living — patterns that build the social and cultural environment that surrounds us.” - Artist Statement 

Also...it’s VERY big.  

Sometimes we take objects of unusual size into the collection. Here we’ve had to improvise when our backroom space didn’t quite cut it. 

Artist Misty Thomas-Trout is showing us how to unpack and repack the components of her artists’ book, which consists of a network of threads moving across canvas.

Atlas of Athens: A Visual Literacy of Place

That’s a recipe for marble cake, 1/2 vanilla 1/2 molasses, clearly written by someone who already knows how to make a cake, but needs little more than to remember the ingredients. The Eclipse may have had many wonderful recipes, but so did the owner of this book and what better place to write down your recipes than a cookbook?

“Doughnuts 1 1/2 cup sugar 1 cups butter 1 1/2 cups sweet milk 3 eggs Pickel for Hams Make a brine strong enough to float an egg to each one hundred pounds of meat add 2 pounds of sugar and 2 cups of saltpeter” 

“Cream Pie One pint milk 2 large spoonful sugar 1 tablespoon flour yolk two eggs white 1 beat eggs sugar flour together let milk get boiling hot pour in beaten parts stir till hot make crust bake fill with custard heat the white of eggs stiff spread on top return to oven brown slightly __(?)”

Our challenge with this item is that the pencil is not only light but also prone to smudging and fading as people touch the pages. In addition we have clippings from newspapers and magazines that are acidic and attached with old and drying adhesive. Digitizing this book allows us to share its contents more widely while minimizing the risk of loosing the ephemeral aspects. We then have the opportunity to transcribe the hand written recipes to preserve that information even if legibility of the handwriting continues to deteriorate. 

We still want this volume to be available for use and that makes this book a perfect candidate for box with an integrated cradle. The box insures everything stays together even if a clipping becomes detached and the cradle minimizes the need to hold the book with fingers over the penciled recipes.

Happy Preservation Week!

Meet Barnett Hook, an Ohio man with a fabulous mustache. A jack of all trades born in 1845, Hook was at one time known as one of the top needle workers in the country. The OHIO Libraries holds the Barnett Hook manuscript collection which includes samples of his lace and embroidery work, hand painted signs advertising his instruction, as well as photographs, and other materials such as the cabinet card pictured above. 

In honor of Preservation Week’s 2017 theme, the preservation of textile collections, we took the opportunity to revisit how these textiles were stored as well as how we might display them.

Most of the embroideries and lace were rolled around a core with acid free tissue and tied gently with a scrap of muslin. Included in the roll is an index card with information about the method of needle work used. 

This storage method has done an excellent job of keeping these textiles fairly clean, and the colors of the embroidery thread bright, even though they were not placed in a secondary enclosure. However, the cores are re-purposed from paper towel rolls (with layers of tissue between the board and the textile) and the tissue provides minimal protection from dirt and mold on its own. We have an opportunity to make some improvements so we are jumping at the chance.

We will start by replacing the ordinary cardboard cores with solid archival versions. We then will add two additional layers to the rolls most likely clean untreated cotton and Tyvek. The cotton will add stability while the Tyvek will serve as the outer layer, keeping off debris and taking the brunt of the tie.Then the rolls will go into boxes with foam supports that keep the weight on the ends of the core rather than on the textile itself. 

To display the cotton lace and strawberry embroidery we opted for a black supports made of ArtCare foamcore. These supports gave us a dramatic contrast and allowed us to utilize pins to gently hold the lace in place. We used small rectangles of polyethylene strapping between the pin and the cotton lace to gentle some of the pressure of the pin. We pinned Pellon to the board behind the strawberry embroidery which provided a grabby surface to keep the textile in place without tacking. More delicate lace and samples of embroidery thread were held in place gently with polyethylene straps.