Washing and Lining a 19th Century Broadside

     The Robert C. Hansen Performing Arts Collection contains programs, heralds, guidebooks, periodicals, playbooks, sheet music, songbooks, correspondence,  autographs, original costume designs, scenery designs, posters, photographs, scrapbooks, and other visual materials and memorabilia. Each of these items help document the history of the performing arts, mainly theatre, in many countries though mainly in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Items date from 100 to 2012, with the bulk of the items dating to the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection is named for Dr. Bob Hansen, an Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Theatre at UNCG, who has generously donated the entire collection (and continues to donate additions).

19th century broadside advertisement of
Caius Gracchus, a tragedy by J. S. Knowles

      This broadside from the Hansen Performing Arts Collection advertises a 19th century theatre production entitled Caius Gracchus, a tragedy written by James Sheridan Knowles, that was performed around 1823 at the New Theatre Royal on Drury-Lane in London. The broadside arrived in Preservation Services to be stabilized and to have a protective enclosure created for it. It was discolored due to age, impurities in the paper, and environmental exposure. One corner was detached and the edges had small tears, losses, or folds.

Detail images of the broadside prior to treatment

      Due to the discoloration, the broadside was washed. (We wrote about washing documents in an earlier post. Click HERE if you want to read more about that process.) The first step of the process was to ensure the ink was not soluble in water. It was tested by adding a very small drop of water, allowing it to absorb for a few seconds, and then blotting it dry. If any ink transfers to the blotter, the ink is likely soluble in water and washing the broadside would be a bad idea. However, this test proved the ink was stable. 

Testing the ink to ensure it is not soluble in water.
Note the drop of water on the "A" in the center.

      The broadside was sandwiched between two layers of Reemay, a spun polyester fabric that can be used to support documents during the washing process. It makes it easier to handle the wet document. The broadside was submerged in water in a large, flat tray. The water was exchanged several times until it was mostly clear after soaking the document. This process helps to reduce discoloration and also serves to strengthen the paper as it removes some of the impurities and rehydrates the paper fibers.

Broadside as it is being washed

      The paper was relatively thin, so an overall lining of Japanese paper was attached to the back to provide extra support as well as to fill in the losses at the edges. (Unfortunately, there are no pictures of this phase of the project.) While the broadside was still damp, it was laid face down on a piece of Mylar, which helps keep it flat with surface tension. The crumpled edges were flattened out and the detached corner was laid in its original place. A slightly oversized piece of Japanese paper, close in tone to the original broadside, was pasted out with rice starch paste. The broadside, while being supported with Mylar, was then laid down on the Japanese paper. The Mylar was removed and the broadside and Japanese paper were sandwiched between dry Reemay. This allowed for gently burnishing the back of the Japanese paper lining to ensure it had good contact with the broadside.

Before and after treatment

      Once burnished, the lined broadside in its Reemay layers, was placed between cotton blotters to dry. It was restraint dried--placed under a board with heavy weights--to prevent warping. Once it was completely dry the following day, the excess Japanese paper was trimmed away. The broadside was placed in a Mylar sleeve and a portfolio enclosure was created for storage and protection. The portfolio provides the support needed to more easily handle the broadside as it is pulled for researchers or classes that visit the Robert C. Hansen Performing Arts Collection at Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives.

The broadside in its portfolio enclosure

Preserving the Ephemeral: Issues in Music Conservation

Image: Oberholster Venita on Pixabay

Aside from the text or images that might be written, printed, or drawn on a piece of paper, there can be much more to the historical narrative paper can convey. For example, in the image above, my text is superimposed on the image but otherwise there is no text there. Yet, what do I know about how this piece of paper was used? As you can likely guess, at least the two rings in the upper left corner indicate the person using this paper was likely a coffee drinker. The other drops would need to be tested, but they appear to be ink. It may be difficult to detect in this image, but there is a vertical and horizontal crease line in the page that indicates the paper has been folded. The additional facts related to the paper’s use may or may not become important to a future researcher, but removing this evidence through conservation treatment would deny the researcher an opportunity to consider them at all. 

The conservator may not always know which aspects of damage to an item are important parts of its narrative, the story of how it was used, for the researcher. For this reason, the curator of a collection and the conservator must collaborate in treatment decisions. "Factors involved in the decision-making process for Special Collections include but are not limited to the department’s collection development policy and resulting priorities, internal budget and staffing, high researcher demand, special funding from donors or grants, physical considerations such as format, storage problems, fragility, and administrative decisions based on external university relationships. It should also be noted that many of these areas overlap and some treatment decisions are governed by multiple criteria.” (Seo & Zanish-Belcher, 2006) This collaborative relationship happens behind the scenes in special collections and archives but is integral to a patron’s experience of an artifact. The curator’s insight into research value and future use is critical to the decision making process of the conservator. For example, if a military uniform has a hole in it and blood stains, to remove the stains and mend the hole would deny a researcher the crucial information that the uniform’s owner was at least wounded if not killed while wearing the uniform. As a conservator, I am not always qualified to make those decisions, so I rely on our curators and archivists to consult about any treatments. 

Image: Performer's notations on a music score. Courtesy of Stacey Krim and Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections & University Archives. 

Stacey Krim, Curator of Manuscripts at Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections & University Archives, wrote “Music, like all of the performing arts, is ephemeral in nature. You can never hear how a piece of music sounds when it originates in the composer’s mind. Musical notation, especially prior to audio recording, is the best system we have for historically documenting sound. The standardized body of symbols is like a language, informing the person who can read it with a wealth of information such as how fast or slow, or how low or high a sound is… But, there is another creative layer to this piece of sheet music, and that is the annotations of the performer. Unless you are physically present for a performance, you will never really grasp the powerful, but momentary shared experience of how a performer intellectually, emotionally, and physically interprets and communicates a particular composer’s work to an audience.” 

Image: From SCUA's Bernard Greenhouse collection.
A score can demonstrate how often it was played.

This is precisely why it is critical that the conservator and curator talk through a prospective treatment before it is performed. It is helpful for the conservator to know how the piece will be used in the future. Will it be displayed in an exhibition, handled as part of a class presentation, studied by a researcher, or is it likely to be used very little? As a conservator, my considerations are how much time I should invest, whether the item is a priority for treatment, its research value, and how much stabilization it may need. 

Primary resources, like these music scores, can be duplicated or digitized to enhance access to the items, but it is impossible to fully replicate the experience of studying an artifact in person - a fact that has been discussed regularly over the course of the last year as many archives have been closed or providing only virtual services due to COVID-19. The materiality of the object becomes part of its story. Paper can serve as evidence for how it is used and, in this case, as a witness to the life of the musician using it. Part of the paper’s purpose is activating history as it tells a broader story than just which notes to play. 

Image: Candle wax on a music score. What
might this tell you about the musician using it?

Krim explains, “When a musician is performing from sheet music, there are two critical elements required. The first is that the pages must be flat enough for the musician to easily read, so that any breeze caused by the musician’s movement does not blow over a page. The second is that the musician must be able to easily turn the page, sometimes very quickly, as you have to stop playing your instrument to make a turn.” Often sheet music can be loose leaves of paper, but in many cases we must treat bound copies of scores. If the spine of a bound score is damaged, and it is going to be used for research or a class, then the spine may continue to decompose or crumble. It is important that any treatment performed does not interfere with or impede the function of the object - such as a score that must be opened widely to be viewed and handled. 

Often, musicians get creative in finding their own solutions to the problems of how a score functions. In the image below, cellist Lubomir Georgiev (1951-2005) taped the pages together to facilitate his page turns. It is not the way I might have solved the problem, but thanks to my conversations with Krim, I now appreciate the importance of how paper functions for the musician. 

Image: Courtesy of Stacy Krim.
Georgiev's creative solution.

“Sheet music, with its personalized modifications, can also be viewed as an artifact in which the physical damage imbues the piece with greater meaning beyond the music,” wrote Krim. She continued, “Luigi Silva (1903-1961) was one of the great Italian cellists of the 20th century. As the story goes, when he was young, his father took him to meet several of the great cellists of the early 1900s, including the legendary Pablo Casals, hoping to have Silva taken on as a student. When he met Casals, Silva was told his hands were too small to ever allow him to be a great cellist. Silva dedicated his life to demonstrating Casals incorrect, becoming a renowned teacher, performer, and recording artist. This dirty hand print on the back of a score in his collection is believed to be Silva’s. [Krim's] hand is the hand in the comparison, and as you can see Silva’s hand was a little smaller than [Krim's]. Given the importance of hand size in Silva’s life, this print is something we want conserved.” 

Image: Courstesy of Stacey Krim. Luigi Silva's
handprint next to Stacey Krim's hand

It may be possible to remove, or at least lighten, the hand print or similar markings, but that is one of the decisions that must be made in consultation with the curator. In the case of Silva’s hand print, it is a physical reminder of his ability to overcome the challenge of having small hands to become a gifted musician and teacher. Paper is uniquely suited for recording information quickly in the moment that we want access to for the long term. It is easily transported, can be manufactured almost anywhere in the world, and it is absorbent. We don’t have to carve into stone or etch into metal plates, we simply mark the surface with ink or graphite. That type of notation can communicate the artistry of a master to a budding cellist many years later in a way that a recording of the same music cannot. And, it is due to the collaborative relationship of curator and conservator that the ephemeral, such as a scribbled notation or a hand print, will be protected and preserved.

 _____________________________________

References: 

Sawyer, S. M. & Krim, S. (2021, April). Preserving the Ephemeral: Issues in Music Conservation [Conference presentation]. Society of North Carolina Archivists Annual Meeting, Virtual. 

Seo, H., & Zanish-Belcher, T. (2006). Pitfalls, progress, and partnership. Collection Management, 30(3), 3–19.

A Custom Enclosure for a Special Book

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Special Collections division recently acquired a copy from the limited edition of Louise Levergneux’s book “Surveillance” to add to their artist book collection. This unique work questions the prevalence and abundance of security devices that track our movements and actions, every hour, around the world. She asks, “Who’s watching?” Who monitors and uses these collections of visual data of which we have become, sometimes unknowingly and without consent, a part? “Is privacy a thing of the past?” We are no longer guaranteed our freedom and anonymity as technology is developed and information is tracked, monitored through facial identification, and logged. Levergneux photographed security warning signs she encountered while traveling and incorporated these images into her tunnel book, creating an overwhelming view as you look through this passageway of notifications into the lens of a camera. A fake security camera is mounted on the cover alongside a power switch. Once you open the book, timed warning beeps sound and ultimately a flash erupts, to simulate the flash of a camera documenting your exposure. “CCTV (closed-circuit television) is the bane of mass surveillance, which erodes intellectual freedom and deconstructs the social fabric of our society… Through built-in backdoors, security agencies can tune in to our phone calls, read our messages, capture our photo, look through our emails, steal our files … Anywhere, 24/7!” -Levergneux

Housing this artist book was essential for us to protect and preserve its carefully constructed format. The mechanism requires two AA batteries, that the artist recommends storing separately when not in use.

We designed a box that has a peek-a-boo circular window over the security camera dome. The volume slides into the housing recess, under side ridges that hold the book in place, keeping the book secured when the clamshell enclosure is moved. There is a small, covered compartment to store the batteries with an interior strap that lifts the batteries forward, simplifying retrieval.

Louise Levergneux’s Surveillance presents us with a moment or two to reflect upon those who surveil, among other things. To what end is this data being collected, for what use? This data has proven to be useful, to protect victims and identify those up to no good. This data has conversely been used by those up to no good, harming and manipulating individuals. We have slowly and steadily found ourselves living in a world where nearly everything we do can be monitored, blindly enjoying the conveniences and thrills of technology, and like the frog in the frying pan, as the heat rises, we find it may be too late to hop out. For more information about this artist, please visit her website: 

https://louiselevergneux.com/ 

 

 -Audrey Sage

Building a Post Binder for a 19th Century Sewing Book

Sewing Book

Models with Instructions

used by

State Normal and Industrial School

Greensboro

N.C.

1895-1896

State Normal and Industrial School (now UNC Greensboro) once offered sewing classes for the young women attending the school. Along with preparing students to be teachers, the school's Domestic Science Department was also concerned with fostering the skills necessary for women to become good wives and mothers. No doubt sewing could be a useful skill to have during the early 20th century. The Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) is fortunate to have three of these sewing books created by students in the late 19th century. 

Three examples of sewing models sewn by hand in 1895-1896

The three sewing books were delivered to Preservation Services so that we might devise a way to keep the pages as intact as possible while also stabilizing them. The goal is for these books to be used with classes visiting SCUA. Unfortunately, the substrate pages of the albums are quite discolored and brittle due to the acidity of the paper. Nonetheless, the sewing samples are incredibly intricate and interesting, especially considering they were all sewn by hand. Though there was not much we could do in house about the condition of the substrate pages, we were able to create post binders to better protect them. We also elected to leave the metal fasteners and pins that were securing the sewing samples to the pages because the pages were too brittle to remove them.

Left: Spacers cut from museum board, Center: Drilling holes with
the drill press, and Right: A preview of the spacers between the pages

Often, paper manufactured in the late 19th and early 20th century was created from wood pulp. The lignin, an organic substance that makes the cell walls in plants rigid or woody, in wood pulp contains acid that degrades the paper over time. You may have heard of the “Brittle Book Era”, which refers to this time period when paper manufacturers were under pressure to create a large quantity of paper very cheaply in order to meet the demand of the publishing industry. The wood pulp was cheaper to process into paper but resulted in very brittle paper over time. When brittle paper is torn, or more accurately “broken”, it is difficult to mend as the mend ends up being stronger than the paper being repaired and it simply breaks again along the edge of the mend. There are processes for deacidifying paper, such as washing it to remove some of the impurities and adjust the pH to a more neutral level, or spraying it with an alkaline solution to slow down the process of aging. However, there are often conservation solutions that simply are not feasible for us due to the cost or labor involved. Thus, creating post binders was the right solution for us at this time.

The assembled post binder

The sewing books’ pages were already loose and simply resting inside the sewing album covers, so disbinding was not necessary. The first step of stabilizing the pages was to put each page in a protective Mylar sleeve. This type of sleeve is often referred to as an L-sleeve because the edges are sealed along two sides in an L shape. They serve as a protective barrier both for the item inside the sleeve as well as anything it might come into contact with, such as neighboring sewing samples in this case. Once all the pages were sleeved, the next step was to drill holes near the spine edge so that the posts could be inserted through the covers and the block of pages. However, due to the thickness of the sewing samples, spacers were needed at the spine edge between some of the pages or else the spine would be much narrower than the pages which would result in a wedge shaped book that bulges open at the fore edge. Spacers of museum board (similar to mat board)  were cut to the height of the text block and drilled with a drill press (see pictures). The Mylar pages were also drilled based on the same template so that the holes will align when the binder is assembled. Custom covers were made in three pieces - a spine piece and two covers. The covers also had to be drilled. Once all the parts were prepared, the post binding was actually quite simple to assemble. The screw posts come in a variety of lengths so they can be fit to any thickness of textblock.

Additional views of the assembled post binder

Though it is common to have an extra allowance of space on the spine edge of the Mylar so that the pages can turn, these sleeves were left even larger so that the sewing book pages would not have to flex as much. The original stamped cover designs of the sewing books were removed and adhered to the front of the new post binders. Because the sleeves are not sealed along the top edge at the head of each book, custom-fitted clamshells were later built to house the binders to prevent them from collecting dust.

An open view of the post binder

The post binders are a versatile option for protecting the pages of a book. In this case, they may not be the perfect solution, but they have succeeded in stabilizing the pages and making them a bit safer to handle with a class of students. Ultimately, that is usually our goal - to preserve items for use with researchers, classes of students, and perhaps in exhibitions. 

Too Much Mending, Too Little Time

L: Bound cello music score, R: Detail of damaged cover

This 1917 volume of bound scores, from the collection of Luigi Silva (1903-1961), is part of the Cello Music Collection in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives at UNC Greensboro. It is part of a set of several works bound together under the handwritten title Pezzi repertorio II (Repertoire Pieces II). This volume contains parts for a violin or violoncello and piano. The score also contains handwritten performance notes by Luigi Silva. Silva was a renowned musician as well as a teacher and scholar of the violoncello. To learn more about Luigi Silva, please visit the Luigi Silva Musical Score Collection and Personal Papers.

Damage to the cover on left and to the pages on right

Often, when we receive a damaged item in Preservation Services, we do not know the exact cause of the damage. This score is one such example. The front cover had been punctured by a sharp object, which caused damage through the cover and into the first 20-25 pages of the bound score. Because so many pages had been damaged, it was going to be a time-consuming task to mend the same hole or loss on all of the 20 or so damaged pages. 

Mending this type of damage requires careful consideration of materials. Though the score is unlikely to be used in performance any longer, it was necessary to ensure that the mend would remain flexible as the pages are turned by researchers or perhaps when the book is shared with a class. Mending tissues are often selected based on the type, age, and condition of the paper being mended. For example, a very brittle paper mended with a thick piece of Japanese paper would simply break again next to the mend, as the mend would be stronger than the paper itself.

L: Hole as it appears on one of the first pages, vs.
R: Hole as it appears on the last damaged page

The paper in this score was relatively stable in condition, so brittleness was not a concern. However, adding a Japanese tissue mend to each of the 20 or so damaged pages would quickly build up thickness in that one area that could be problematic in the function of the book. For that reason, a thin Japanese paper was used along with rice starch paste to mend each of the holes.

Another consideration in completing this type of mending is how much time is involved. Often in Preservation Services, we are able to go beyond basic repair and even restore a damaged item to close to its original condition. However, we must balance how and how often the item will be used in the future with how much time we can invest in its repair. Not every item warrants a full restoration.

L: The hole being repaired, R: Applying pasted tissue to the hole

In this case, the item may be used in the future by researchers, in a class, or in an exhibition, so it was necessary to spend more time in the conservation process rather than simply providing a protective enclosure for storage. To that end, in projects such as this one it becomes necessary to save time whenever possible as there are so many conservation projects in the queue. Not only do we conserve items in Special Collections and University Archives, but we are also tasked with preserving materials in the general circulating collections of Jackson Library as well as those in the Harold Schiffman Music Library on campus.

When time and space are not as much of a concern, or when working on a flat item such as a letterpress printed broadside, it would be common to allow each mend to dry under blotter and weight while working on another project at the same time. In the case of repairing this bound score, a quicker method was employed. A small travel iron on a very low heat setting was used to quickly dry each mend before moving on to the next one. So, mending more than 20 pages took a fraction of the time it might have. Applying heat is not always ideal, so the conservator must consider the type of materials being mended and what impact heat may have on the item.

L: Ironing mend to dry it quickly, R: Finished mend

For each mend, a substrate is placed under the page being mended. It consists of a piece of release paper (like parchment paper you might use in baking), which is layered over a cotton blotter on top of a scrap of book board. Rice starch paste is applied to a thin piece of Japanese paper torn to size and applied to the area of the page needing repair. A Teflon folder is used to press and smooth the tissue onto the paper being mended. Then, another piece of release paper is layered on top of the mend and the iron is used to apply heat to quickly dry the paste. The blotter underneath helps to absorb the moisture from the paste. In this way, 20 or more pages can be mended in a fraction of the time. Likewise, because a very thin tissue was used, the "stack" of mends did not build up into a thickness that might have impeded the cover from closing completely. So, the problem of too many mends and too little time was easily resolved.

As you see pictured below, the cover was also mended with a black Japanese paper. Two years ago, we posted another blog entry about mending the corner of a cello music score much like this one. Please click HERE to read about that repair.

Detail of repaired cover