An account of conservation and preservation work in connection with Design Archives' projects written by Sirpa Kutilainen. She joined the Design Archives in 2002 and works as the Design Archives’ Preservation and Digital Resources Coordinator, undertaking collection care, preservation, digitisation and conservation duties. These responsibilities include preparing materials for exhibitions and loans for clients and partners such as The Photographers Gallery, The National Theatre, Margaret Howell, Hayward Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Tate, Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Jewish Museum and The Fashion and Textiles Museum. Her passion and research interests lie in paper- and preventive conservation, preservation issues and museology.
I picked up on the interesting story in the papers on the 9th of May in regards to the Museum of Rouen in France handing a perfectly mummified Maori head held in their collections since 1875 back to New Zealand. Sweden, Norway and Germany were also amongst the countries that have returned Maori remains to the delegation before they headed back to New Zealand. How this particular Maori head came to be in the French museum is uncertain and New Zealand has been requesting the return of all of her relics across Europe since the 1980sand since then, around 320 objects have been sent back.
This story was widely picked up by press all over the world and though not paper-related, these types of museology issues really interest me personally. Returning relics to their country of origin is a complex challenge that has many political, philosophical, cultural and at times spiritual and/or religious issues attached. Different countries have different laws on cultural artefacts but should it be the right of the originating country to request objects back?
You can read more about the story on several sites on the web but for the basics on the story, you can visit the BBC website.
Looks like the last of the Gill pieces in need of conservation attention from our end have now been completed! Yesterday, Melissa Williams and I worked on the remaining items that consisted of six pieces that make up the plan for the South Africa tapestry from 1932 and the ‘Tea Revives the World’ piece from 1940.
Two examples of the six separate plans for the South Africa tapestry
The South Africa tapestry pieces were watercolour, ink and pencil on a heavily sized paper that has an almost rubbery surface to it. The background of the image appeared printed on and watercolours were painted on to fill in the colours.
Recto of a tear in the corner of one of the South Africa tapestry piecesVerso of the same torn corner. This had been ‘repaired’ using a piece of white tape, which was very easy to manually remove. This was replaced by a repair using heat-set tissue.
The watercolour areas on the tapestry plans were very fugitive, which meant that surface cleaning was only done on the areas not coloured. We used rubber to clean these areas. It was interesting to observe that with this type of waxy paper, all of the surface dirt sits quite neatly on top of the paper surface and is not let in to penetrate any paper fibres. Has anyone else out there worked with items like this?
The ‘Tea Revives the World’ piece is on a much softer and pourous paper that can be damaged much more easily. We did however assess that it was strong enough to not need backing, which is what we originally thought we might end up doing. Both this and the South Africa tapestry pieces were made their own Melinex sleeves ready for transport back here to Grand Parade.
Detail from the ‘Tea Revives the World’ poster from 1940 that specifically caught my eye. Russia fought the eastern border of the already independent Finland further inland to the west in The Winter War of Finland in the same year. I am also surprised to find our capital called by its Swedish name, Helsingfors.
The pieces will get picked up from the conservation studio tomorrow and will then join the rest of the items we have conserved for framing. The number of objects we worked on, conservation-wise, has totalled at 34. This is obviously only a fraction of the material chosen for the exhibition – some objects are being conserved elsewhere and/or brought in from different places.
The next big push will be for the cases to be built for the items that will be exhibited this way. We are currently on a mission to determine how many of these items will need glass weights to secure curling corners to keep the items happy in the cases – the objects most likely in need of some help will be a selection of the photographs on show. A selection of the other materials will be heavy enough to be placed in the glass cases as they are.
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.
Found on the top right corner on the verso of Max Gill’s ‘Schneider Trophy’ poster from 1929
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?
This time of year is very hectic at the Faculty of Arts as the graduate exhibitions are due to open in a few weeks’ time – there is a definite sense of excitement around the building that makes everything take on a kind of new level of commitment!
Whilst I have been busy continuing my day-to-day duties in the Design Archives, my involvement with the Gill project has been a little on the quiet side over the past few weeks – until this week! In the meantime, decisions have been made about pieces that are going to be exhibited in cases rather than hung and from what I can gather, wall space and the sequence of the items being hung is also very close to being finalised. This week I have determined any additional Gill works that will need conservation attention and scheduling this work in for next week. I have also been consulted on the best way in which the items in cases should be secured.
The studio set-up in which we photograph larger archival materials too big for our scanners, located at the Photographic Unit here at Grand Parade
Yesterday I spent the day in the studio photographing the objects that were conserved by myself and Melissa Williams in the first selection of objects needing conservation attention. We do the digitisation using the medium of photography as opposed to scanning by having a set-up of two flash units to assure even lighting. This also means that there is as little exposure to continuous light as possible, minimising any long term light damage to any colours in the long run.
Currently the objects are stored in their own individual made-to-measure Melinex sleeves that are sandwiched between two very large pieces of plywood strapped together. Due to the size of the items, this is to not only protect the works during transportation but to encourage the flattening process further while the works are in storage with limited space. This type of care makes not only all the conservation work worthwhile, but makes the items easier to handle and to eventually frame. Transporting the works from our storage area to the photography studio on the second floor safely required some major team work!
After the large items had gone through a flattening process, handling them on your own is close to impossible. For the photography to be done safely, I needed an extra two pairs of hands to help me. The large scale items were done in the morning with the help of my colleagues Barbara Taylor and Madeleine Meadows. I decided against photographing a few of the pieces due to their size and the weight of the paper as I had concerns about their safety using the T-pin system. In the afternoon I finished photographing the smaller objects on my own, after which all of the works were taken back to storage prior to framing. Some of the this will be done in-house by Dave Cooper but the larger items are going to be delivered to a local framing shop.
What I wanted to do was to use Gill’s ‘European Aerodromes’ poster from 1930 to do a little test with. This poster was small enough for me to scan but I also wanted to photograph it to compare the two different digitisation processes.
Detail from ‘European Aerodromes’ poster at 200%. Photographed using a Mamiya 6×7 camera with an Imacon digital back
When digitising by using photography a lot of the very fine details on objects get lost in the process, despite using a high quality medium format camera with a digital back. With a digital photograph of this nature, colours seem a little more subdued compared to ‘reality’ and the focus always appears to be a lot softer than it should be. This could of course also have something to do with my eyes and the ability to focus the camera properly! A lot of the surface detail appears to get lost, and the object can look very two-dimensional and flat. This method is, of course, a suitable way in which to digitise objects that are not likely to be enlarged to anything bigger than their original dimensions.
Detail from ‘European Aerodromes’ poster at 200%. Scanned using Epson Expression 10000XL
Scanning with high quality equipment gives the objects a lot more detail and therefore makes them somehow more alive; colours tend to be more vibrant even before any adjusting is done on Photo Shop to get the digital file as close to the original as possible. I have scanned items before where there has been a tear or a hole – and when the scanning is done to a high standard, you can almost feel the paper fibres on screen when zooming in to the details. The surface of the object has a three-dimensional quality to it when you are able to see the roughness of a surface – almost like looking at it through a microscope. Scanned objects like this then have the potential to be reproduced even bigger than their original dimensions without losing too much of the information in the process. Scanning sometimes makes me feel as if I am making objects a little bit ‘over-realistic’.
Either way, these types of issues should be taken into consideration in archives and museums that are dealing with digitising flat pieces of work. Of course the quality of a digitised item is also dependant on what it has been digitised for. I personally feel that if you are going through the process of digitising materials, the time it takes should be used efficiently and the aim should be to create a digital file to a very high standard. This also means eliminating having to scan or photograph an object more than once by having a good quality, high resolution file from which to work from. This can then be re-sized and used in many different ways – from possible reproductions to publications, databases and the web.
