In the honors seminar that Hilary and I are teaching, we recently discussed the ethics of conservation treatment where provenance is concerned. Some of the questions raised were about artistic intent, the history of the artifact, and evidence of provenance. This Monday’s post is a bit of a brain-teaser with no quantifiably right or wrong answer — it’s simply a matter, as they say, of principles.
This little volume of children’s poetry belongs to a private individual who inherited it from her grandfather. The book has great sentimental value, although its monetary value is debatable. The masking tape repairs were made by a well-meaning family member long ago, and were subsequently colored in crayon by the volume’s owner herself as a child. The tape repairs are still extremely well-adhered in some spots, while the adhesive has turned brittle and failed in other spots. The textblock sewing is failing, so the book’s pages are starting to come apart. The paper covering the front and back boards (the cover) is fraying and peeling at the edges. Tape removal would be time-consuming, and might cause damage to the board-covering material beneath it. The tape is also a part of the history of the book as an artifact. However, the tape is partially failing in spots, so it is clearly not a stable material, and will continue to deteriorate and cause potential damage to the book.
Would you advise the book’s owner to have the tape removed, or to leave it in place? What factors do you think her decision should be based on? If you disagreed with her decision, would you still perform the treatment? Would your opinion change if the book was deemed valuable monetarily?
If this book were not owned by an individual, but was a recent acquisition by institutional archives or a museum, would your opinion about the recommended treatment change? What would your decision be if the crayon-scribbling on the masking tape had been executed by a renowned artist as a child? What would your decision be if this book were intended as part of an exhibit?
None of these questions necessarily have clear-cut answers, but please share your thoughts in the comments section!
September 12, 2011 at 4:53 pm
I’m a huge sucker for the well intentioned and charming bad repair – so my first preference, no matter who owns the book is to stabilize it in its current condition. Naturally, this would include a box. One thing that would change my mind about the approach would be if the existing repair is causing more damage. I guess the anticipated future use of the book would also figure into the equation, but if somebody wanted this book for its informational value I’d suggest reformatting either through photocopy or digitization.
If the book’s owner or curator librarian wanted the book “fixed up” and looking as good as can be, I’d voice my preference for keeping it as is, but do whatever the owner finally decided.
September 13, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Kevin, I share your appreciation for the occasional charming bad repair (though they are more often not-so-charming). We once had a volume come through the lab with a home-made board covering of awkwardly pieced and sewn black velvet, but so much personality and love for the book came through that I left the binding as it was (and yes, boxed it up).
September 12, 2011 at 5:49 pm
I usually talk with my curators/owners about the three prime concerns that drive decisions: value, use and risk. Value in the first scenario is mostly sentimental, which is not to say it is any less important than monetary value. So value is high. But what is valued? the object itself? the repairs to the object? its provenance?
As for use, does the owner want it in usable condition? or is just having it and holding it enough? Will they be reading this to their kids? What do they expect the final outcome to be?
Risk is a judgment call, usually done by the conservator. How brittle is the paper, is it even repair-able? Is the tape causing more damage as the item is manipulated? Would removal allow better access to the text block and thus allow you to repair the text block? What are the chances the carrier and adhesive can be removed, and how long would that take (which translates into money spent)? Can the client accept a certain amount of scarfing to the surface of the cover? [Personally, I cannot get attached to the masking tape repair on this item...sorry Kevin. Although the costs in time to remove it may be prohibitive.]
Many of these same questions would be posed to our curators if this came into our collections. I would need some pretty solid proof that “The Artist As A Young Man” did the doodles, and even then I would need convincing that the tape is more important than the item being usable. Although I can be persuaded. Heck, if a curator says “don’t fix it, it’s too important as an object as it is….there is plenty of other fish in the sea to pursue. If the item is deemed low-use, low-value and high risk, I would likely box it with one of our “return to conservation after use” labels and deal with it after it demonstrated use (if it could be used safely at least once).
Excellent example!! I am preparing a session for a class and may just use your sample instead of finding one of my own (with ample citation of course).
September 13, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Fantastic questions, Beth, and thank you for detailing your decision-making process. For me, the dynamic between conservator and curator can be one of the most frustrating and also fascinating aspects of the job. I love being forced to consider an issue from multiple perspectives and hammer out a (hopefully satisfying) compromise.
Feel free to borrow the example for your class. That’s just the sort of collaboration and sharing that this blog is all about.
September 12, 2011 at 11:03 pm
I second the “excellent example” vote above! Thanks for stimulating this discussion here and in your class…my two cents follow.
I think it’s important to consider some of the research and historical values that accrue with the traces of an object’s use and handling. These values are even more important when the object is in an institutional collection than when it’s in the hands of an original owner (or his/her heirs). Part of what we do when we appraise cultural heritage collections is try to understand their ENTIRE context and provenance, and the significance of their survival in whatever state we happen to encounter them, as well as anticipate their research value and potential for use in previously unanticipated ways.
This is a book of children’s verse that shows clear evidence of having been owned and used BY A CHILD–indeed, by generations of children within a single family. My mother would have said that this copy “had been loved to death,” having been repaired several times instead of being replaced. This, I feel, invests it with something more than sentimental value; its evidentiary value as a document of what we might call the juvenile “readways” of the 19th and 20th centuries (like “foodways,” but it’s text that is being consumed) will likely increase as more and more children learn to read on screen-based devices–e-readers, iPads, etc.–and fewer and fewer children encounter second- or third-hand family copies of paper-based books. (Let’s not even talk about how many children are likely to be presented with a volume of poetry as entertainment in this day and age.)
Intervention to try to restore this volume to something closer to its original condition is something I would perhaps attempt in only two instances:
1) if the volume was extremely rare or unique, and/or wanted for exhibition in a context in which its original condition was crucial to reflect. In this case, I would still likely echo the first commenter’s suggestion to create a digital surrogate. A high-quality digital copy could be repaired virtually and used to create a facsimile (and displayed with or without the original). This would also allow a wait-and-see stance on the original, if it seemed likely that failing to intervene more radically would lead to further or more severe deterioration.
2) If the owner him/herself wished the book to be more aggressively cleaned and restored, I feel that’s no worse, nor less honorable, than the intentions of the family member who conducted the earlier, invasive and irreversible repairs. In that case, I’d be inclined to offer conservative, moderate, and aggressive treatment options and convey the pros and cons of each to the owner, letting it be their final call.
If this were something in an institutional collection and the mandate from above was to make everything owned by the library/museum/archive look its best, short of actually destroying it, then that’s a question of which side your bread is buttered on, isn’t it?
September 13, 2011 at 2:56 pm
You raise some great issues, Snowden — thank you for your perspective! I’m particularly struck by your comments about this volume’s evidentiary value, documenting “juvenile readways.” This aspect of material culture fascinates me, and I often regret the loss of information attendant to the removal of original binding structures and, in some cases, previous repairs. I also feel some frustration that libraries and archives lack a codified method for tracking, recording, and making accessible such artifactual evidence.
September 21, 2011 at 9:41 am
Except that we do have the MARC 583 field but so few preservation departments are using it to record the work we do. I missed the ALA talk on this, I’d love to hear about it if anyone went.
I would love to put into a 583 our lab log number (a unique tracking number for the lab) and a link to B/T and A/T photos (opening a mega can of worms there). I think we can wrest this field away from the NEH microfilming projects (a dying program) and start using it for just this sort of evidentiary data. Of course, to really make it useful we would all have to agree to open our records to the inevitable scrutiny that would follow. But, I think, if our procedures and practices are sound we shouldn’t be ashamed of the work we do (a whole OTHER can of worms).