Oh man it's only been 2 days and I am already exhausted. For some reason paper conservation is so much more draining than other kinds of conservationy stuff. Maybe it's just that it's a lot more brain-oriented less intuitive. With general book issues, I'm to a point where I basically sort of know what to do, or at least I have some idea, and it's just sort of natural. Paper is still challenging because even though I know all the chemicals and materials a lot better this time around, I still have to pause and think for a while before I say Oh yeah, maybe blah blah blah will do the trick. Anyway, that is what teachers and friends are for, I guess! I flatter myself I'm doing a pretty good job with my non-intimidation goal; I am better at volunteering what I know and asking questions then ever before!
Okay so what I've been doing so far is mostly boring stuff, but this afternoon I started on a cool thing! One of the books I brought (one I found in the SLC bookstore) is this book of Tennyson with a crazy huge blue ink stain throughout the entire thing. It's like it was sitting on the edge of a shelf and someone tipped over an ink bottle and it spilled all the way down. Anyway, I bought and brought it almost as a joke, because it is so intense a staining I thought it would just be fun to see what we could do and what would happen. So, this afternoon I started washing it. I'm only doing one signature to start with (a gathering of 4 papers) so that we can do tests and see what works. So, what I tried today was a lot of total immersion washing in a mixture of water and ethanol alcohol. After doing that a lot I did a few washings in really hot water--like, straight from the electric kettle hot. Here is the final comparison:
I hope it is obvious that the one on top is the one that's been washed to death and the one on bottom that is all pretty and bright blue is what the rest of the book looks like. I'm kind of sad--I've looked at the bright blue so much that I kind of like it by now, and the washed out color is weird and ugly! But I'm going to go in early tomorrow and Renate and I are going to try treating it with another kind of chemical thing that is kind of fume-y and extreme, so we will see what results that produces!
This is a picture I snapped of Emilie, holding a jar of used wash water/alcohol from my book. It came out such a pretty blue! I tried dipping scrap paper into it to dye it blue but it didn't work :(Okay so here are pictures of what Emilie has been doing. She has this big poster woodblock print on fragile handmade paper, and all along the edges it had these horrible tape stains from where it had been taped to picture mats and frames. Exhibit A is a picture of one such stain:
The other thing I did today was start dry cleaning that awesome etiquette book I posted pictures of before I came here. It went through a fire so the cover is all burninated and there's lots of smoke damage to the pages. The cool thing was that the chemical sponges we use for dry cleaning (which is basically just sweeping the dust and nonsense off the surface of the paper) totally worked to reduce the smoke marking! It was the first time that dry cleaning has made a totally visible difference for me, so that was fun and exciting! I tried to take a picture to show how well it worked but I don't know if it'll show up very well to the untrained eye:
3 comments:
Oh my goodness!! I can't believe the stain Emilie was working on vanishes completely! Book conservation is so awesome. As for your book, I can totally see the difference, but I definitely agree with you. Something about the brightness of that blue stain is really awesome!
I'm so eager to hear how your chemical morning went with Renate! Thanks for all of the explanation. :) I think your studio is anxious for your return !!
Not to be demanding, but you posted on Tuesday and now it is Thursday? OK, so I read your post on Wednesday and that sort of sounds like you have only missed one day in my book instead of 2, but technically, I stand my ground!
Post a Comment