Month: March 2011

Today I have placed four bug traps within the Archives to see if anything will get caught. They are composed of cardboard with a sticky surface on the inside and a small pill supplied with them is placed inside to attract any bugs towards it. These traps have been purchased from a specialised conservation suppliers.

The placement of the traps was difficult to determine, as the Archives not only function as an archive but also as an office and research space. They needed to be placed somewhere where they do not get in the way of the everyday use of the space, but somewhere where there is a good chance something could get caught. Good places for these traps are dark corners where things do not get moved around too much. I thought about placing some traps along the rolling shelves where the collections are held, but will come back to this depending on how succesfull this first installment turns out to be.

The traps have been dated and will now be monitored. I am sincerely curious to see what happens, and to then try to identify the crawlies should we catch any.

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.

As I mentioned before, the documentation process allowed me to make note and plan for any more challenging issues that myself and Melissa Williams might come across during conservation and I thought I would share a few of those with you.

The first piece I’ll talk you through is the Atlantic Charter map from 1942. This item is a pen and ink original and has a variety of very interesting issues to bring up. The dimensions of the charter are 1100 x 775 mm and it has been constructed from two separate large pieces of paper stuck together. On the image above you can just see the slight bend on the surface where the two pieces are joined together. This off-middle joint consequently has a thicker feel to it compared to the rest of the paper.

Under the main banner of text there are three pieces of ink of paper attached – the date 1941 and two signatures. On the left is a signature of Franklin Roosevelt and on the right an original signature of Winston Churchill. All of these pieces have been adhered to the original artwork with what, at first inspection, appears to be an animal-based glue. These types of glues have the tendency to become very brittle and yellow in colour with age. The hardened residues of glues like this can be removed by scraping with care. These three additional pieces will need to be secured during conservation.

There is also an additional piece added to the original artwork at the bottom edge of the item. This appears to state the producer of the poster and will also need to be secured properly. The problem with these adhesives on any piece of art is that it they leave a permanent stain that does not really respond to washing treatments. The best that can be done is scraping away any residual adhesive and securing any such pieces to the original by using a wheat starch paste. This paste is used widely in paper conservation. It is easily reversible as it is soluble in water and it doesn’t leave any unwanted stains on the paper.

As I had mentioned before, this particular piece is a great example of showing something that isn’t intended to be in a ‘final piece’ and could, by some, considered to be unwanted markings. But as, after all, this is an original piece of artwork; Gill’s ink markings along the edges are beautiful little pieces of evidence of a work in progress.

Another piece that I thought I would use as an example is the draft watercolour from 1946 map designed to go aboard the Queen Mary ship. This item has the dimensions of 1600 x 806 mm. Before this piece was rolled up, it had been folded, as the fold creases run all across the object from left to right. It is not only an original draft watercolour, but also has ink handwriting in the top right corner area and below it, two photographs adhered to the paper.

The whole object is made up of segments of paper – there is one larger piece where the watercolour painting is that has been joined together with four smaller pieces of paper.

For whole objects that have been built up in this manner, any decision about aqueous treatments would need to be even more carefully considered than usual. When paper comes in contact with water, the fibres within it expand. If an artwork is made up of several sections and is not taken apart before washing, these sections can become separated. Once the pieces are separate, and wet, they would need to be left to dry before attaching them back together again. When paper dries, it contracts and if pieces are washed separately, or come apart during washing processes, the chances are that they will not fit together again as well as they did before wetting. The way in which paper acts and reacts has also to do with its grain direction and if joined pieces have grain direction running in separate directions, the piecing together will become even more difficult.

For the Gill material, there is a general understanding that no aqueous washing methods will be used in the conservation of these materials due to time and budgetary restrictions. However, some materials might need to be humidified before flattening if the heat press will be deemed unsuitable.