Going back to how marks and details at the verso of a print or a piece of original artwork can be just as interesting as the finished piece on the recto, I have a really lovely example for you. Above you can see Gill’s Schneider Trophy poster from 1929 and I thought I would show you the verso too.

Personally I absolutely adore the printed image on the back, but then I do have a bit of a thing about old advertising images! I wonder if all of the posters were printed on this type of ‘headed’ paper or if this particular piece was a test run that was printed on paper they were reluctant to waste?

On a light note for a Friday afternoon –  this compass from the corner of Max Gill’s ‘Post Office Wireless Stations’ poster from 1939 has to be the most beautiful interpretation of a compass I have seen for a long long time.

The five items I talked about in the previous post have now been framed by Senior Technician David Cooper at the University Gallery. Due to budgetary limitations, most of the materials will be exhibited in recycled frames. This means that the materials are found suitable frame sizes from the existing empty frames rather than frame sizes being made to measure. The frames used for this exhibition have had an interesting journey so far. They were used to exhibit both Grace Robertson’s photographs and John Lord’s illustrations in major exhibitions at the University Gallery – so Max Gill is in good company.

The Coventry tapestry miniatures could not be framed in the traditional way of cutting a window mount due to the thickness of them. Instead, David Cooper attached the items to an acid free board with archival tape placed at each end of the piece. Archival tape is an adhesive tape that has one side that becomes sticky when wetted and is generally used by the University Gallery staff for mounting exhibition works.

Due to the thickness of the two miniatures, a way in which to frame them without the surfaces of them touching the mount glass needed to be invented. For this purpose, David added a necessary thickness of foam board along the edges of the frame on top of which the board with the miniatures attached would sit. When the frame was then sealed, the pieces sit happily in a chamber created for them with the aid of the foam board.

For the other three items mentioned in my previous entry were framed in the ‘traditional’ way where a mount was cut to size for the two photographs and the original artwork to go into the frame together. The actual items were attached to the acid free board by placing a strip of archival tape along each of the top edges. When the exhibition comes down, the tape will be cut off as close as possible to the edge of the original and a piece of it will be left on the verso.

David Cooper has decades of experience in hanging up shows at the University Gallery and objects have been hung this way for just as long. I have personally not ‘worked with’ archival tape or removal of it from objects in my short ‘life’ in paper conservation but obviously archival tape has been developed to be safe and effective for use in hanging objects. If I was hinging these items for the exhibition, it is very likely I would be cooking up a wheat starch paste from scratch to use as an adhesive and fiddling with different types of hinges –  taking a lot longer to do a job David managed perfectly well in a blink of an eye with his years of experience!

From the selection of Gill objects we have here at the moment, there were two items small enough for our scanners here at the Design Archives. The items themselves actually hold within them 5 separate pieces. I mechanically surface cleaned the items and the went ahead and scanned them.

In the collection owners numbering system, item number 2 is Gill’s North Moreton ‘triptych’ from 1921. It holds within it two black & white photographs attached to board and a watercolour and ink piece of original artwork. The photographs’ dimensions are small and they fit into our scanner perfectly but the original artwork needed to be scanned in two halves and pasted together using Photoshop.

The original artwork is generally in good condition, though the paper itself is very thin. There are creases and pin holes on the piece showing great evidence of it being a ‘living thing’ at the time. These will be left as found.

The photographs have slight fading along the edges, but like most black and white photographs, they have stood the test of time very well. In an ideal situation and with a lot more time, I would determine whether removing the backing boards from the photographs would be advisable. A lot of objects out there are mounted in this manner, but if the board used for mounting is of an acidic nature, this can cause objects unnecessary deterioration in the future. The adhesives and tapes used in sticking objects to backing boards can also cause harm and discolouration. Backing removal is a very long process as the layers of backing boards need to be removed one thin layer at a time to avoid making the object adhered to them to lose strength. Top layers are obviously a lot easier to remove, but the closer you get to the original, the more risk there is of damaging it. Not for the faint hearted!

In the numbering system, item number 36 is a miniature version of the Coventry tapestry from 1937. This holds two separate pieces within it. These are original watercolour paintings on thick board that are basically incredibly detailed realisations working towards the final tapestry. The dimensions of the miniatures are 268 x 90mm and 243 x 94mm. There are also pieces of black and white photography adhered on top to illustrate the text areas of the tapestries. The colours on these objects are in immaculate condition and the only issue with them is the board in which they are on bending slightly inwards. This is a great visual demonstration of the grain direction of the board accented by the use of watercolours – the water has acted as an agent that saturates the paper fibres on contact and retracts again when drying, causing the board to bend in on itself.

These five objects have now been cleaned, scanned and passed on to the Senior Technician David Cooper for framing as they do not require any conservation work aside from the mechanical surface clean.

To try and maximise the time I have for the conservation treatments when I get to the studio, I made a decision to mechanically surface clean some of the smaller pieces on premises here at the Design Archives. For this, I enlisted the help of our current volunteer, Suzie Horada, who is a History of Design student here at Brighton. After explaining to her the reason for doing this, and more importantly how to do it safely, we have mechanically surface cleaned the smaller scale items that will only need flattening in the conservation studio.

In total, eight of the exhibition pieces have now been surface cleaned. Three of these I can go ahead and scan before handing them over to the Senior Technician David Cooper at the University Gallery for framing.