Color Me Purple

Written by Hope Mitchell, Student Technician in the Conservation Lab

As a student technician, one of the things I enjoy the most about my job is the variety; every day has the potential to be completely different from the last and teach me something new and unexpected about conservation. Recently, I was given a book of paint chips titled Color and Color Names, by Gladys and Gustave Plochere, from our General Collection. Published in 1946, Color and Color Names contains 1,536 different color samples. My mission seemed simple: flip through the book and glue down any loose paint chips. What began as a simple task soon turned into nearly a week of poking and prodding over 1,500 paint chips with a microspatula.

Everything was going according to plan until I reached the purple section, where I noticed that the color had begun flaking off the chips. Initially, I tried swiping some PVA over the chip; while that held the flaking paint in place and didn’t compromise the color, it gave the chip a glossy look that didn’t match with the other matte chips.  Realizing that I was in over my head, I asked our conservator, Melissa, what I should do. She suggested that I test a small corner of the paint chip with the consolidant Klucel-G. Ideally, this would help to seal the paint, but there was also a chance that the Klucel-G would shift the color. Sure enough, it did, so we moved on to plan B…

After testing with Klucel-G (lower right corner) and methylcellulose (upper left corner).

Plan B consisted of using water-based methylcellulose instead of solvent-based Klucel-G. Once again, I brushed a small amount of methylcellulose on the corner of the paint chip to determine whether or not it would shift the color. We decided that it would be best to test the methylcellulose on a different corner of the same chip that we had used to test the Klucel-G, our logic being that it was probably best not to risk distorting another chip.  Also, testing on the same color gave us a truer comparison between the effects of the Klucel-G and methylcellulose.   In the end, the methylcellulose was a success! It stabilized the flaking paint without compromising the color, and without making the matte paint chip glossy.

During and After: wet methylcellulose just applied to the paint chip (left); the paint chip after the methylcellulose had dried (right).

 

1091 Project: Portrait of the Student Technician

This month’s 1091 Project highlights the role of student workers in the Conservation Lab.  Quite honestly, many university conservation departments wouldn’t be nearly as productive without these unsung workhorses of conservation. Often the most tedious tasks fall to the students: they make enclosures, tip-in loose pages, surface clean, and vacuum moldy items.  Yet they perform these tasks efficiently and cheerfully, and miraculously, they keep showing up for work.

When I interned at the Conservation Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, many of the students working in the lab were also studying in the GSLIS program.  We don’t have a library school here at ISU, so our students come from other departments. Of our current four student employees, one is a graduate student pursuing her MA in History (although she started working for us as an undergraduate Anthropology major), one is an Anthropology major, one is a Design major, and one is a Elementary Education major.

Hannah makes spine title labels for tux boxes.

Our students tackle a variety of projects according to their handskills and experience.  Hannah just started with us this semester, and she has learned to surface clean, insert tip-ins, sew on pamphlet binders, and construct tux boxes and other four-flap wrappers.  We have a shelf full of items needing other types of boxes which will be next on her plate.

Devin has been with us for about a year, but already had excellent handskills from her experience in the College of Design.  She performs many mid-level treatments such as custom portfolio construction, double-fan adhesive bindings, and shield bindings.  Devin divides her work schedule between Conservation and the Preservation Services unit of the Preservation Department.

Ashley clamps down adhesive bindings in a book press.

Ashley and Hope have both worked in the lab for two and a half years.  Their handskills have developed beautifully during this time, and both are now capable of executing more advanced book repairs such as rebacks, new cases, re-cases, and “full repairs,” which they tackle when the more general student treatment workflow slows down at various points throughout the year.

Hope repairs a volume of color samples. And yes, she knows that our volunteer Martha is giving her mutant bunny ears. She’s good-natured like that.

When we hire new students, we look for hobbies or work experience that show evidence of good eye-hand coordination, but we don’t expect them to have any prior bookbinding or conservation experience. The typical student workflow includes materials preparation (such as cutting spine inserts and hinging endpapers), surface cleaning, box-making, tip-ins, page mending, pamphlet binding, double-fan adhesive binding, shield binding, vacuuming mold, and small-scale deacidification using a compressor and Book Keeper’s spray unit.  The students have also been called upon to assist during disaster recovery.  In fact, when Hope and Ashley first started working in the lab, they spent a month washing Mylar architectural plans which had been damaged during the 2010 Ames flood.

We know our students’ first and foremost goal is to receive a good education here at ISU.  We appreciate being just one of their many priorities, and have been impressed by their reliability, their cheerful hard work, and their diligence in developing their handskills.  We couldn’t run the lab without them!

Don’t forget to stop by Preservation Underground to hear about the student technician experience in the Conservation Lab of Duke University Libraries.

 

Question of the Day

Do you remember that flood we had a couple of years ago?

Photo by Des Moines Register staff

The seemingly boring pile of blotter below is actually the last of the thousands of plans that we took out of the basement of Facilities, Planning and Management and treated after the flood. We’re just waiting for some storage tubes to arrive before they go to Special Collections.

Finished plans between blotter

What have we learned over the last two years and two months?

Melissa learned how to put theory into practice by organizing an impressive and creative salvage response.

Drying operation in the mechanical room.

Our newly hired student workers learned about the lab and each other while washing sheet after sheet of plans on Mylar. Amazingly, two of three are still will us.

Ashely, Ben and Hope

And as you have read over the course of the years, I have learned quite a bit about architectural drawings, the Iowa State campus and more than I’d like to know about tape removal. I could say that I learned how wonderfully helpful everyone in the lab is but I knew that before the flood. Still, many thanks to everyone for lending a hand when needed, because as you can see from the photo below a conservator often needs a third hand.

A third hand would be helpful right now

Mostly what we learned is something we already knew: responding to a disaster is hard and time consuming work. Taking steps to prevent a potential disaster is well worth the time. I will leave you with one final photo and a question. What’s in your basement?

Flood residue left after washing

 

Beanie Box: The ISU Freshman Beanie, ca. 1918

Click on image to enlarge.

Here in the Conservation Lab, I am currently treating the original of the photo shown above, a silver gelatin print of a football game at ISU on August 21, 1930.  Thanks to my oh-so-discreet arrows and captioning, you’ll notice two young men in the crowd wearing beanies.  These beanies, with alternating triangles in cardinal and  gold, are ISU freshman beanies (also called “prep caps”).  The beanies were worn by ISU freshman (emphasis on the men only) from 1916 until 1934.

The Library Special Collections and Archives holds a rare example of such a beanie from 1918.  Since campus tradition dictated burning the freshman beanies in a bonfire at an end-of-the-schoolyear “moving up” ceremony, surviving examples are few and far between.  This past spring, our undergraduate intern Alex Menard designed a special box for the beanie which would allow this artifact to be viewed by Library visitors — and even removed from its box for exhibit — without the beanie itself being handled.

First Mock-up.

Second Mock-up.

First, Alex built a few miniature mock-ups to test her design.  The first design was simple and elegant, but was not as structurally sturdy as she wanted it to be.  The second design added some reinforcements that worked beautifully, but also added a complicated drop-down front that Alex ultimately decided was unnecessary.

Museum-quality hat stand for the beanie.

Next, Alex ordered a museum-quality hat stand to support the beanie, and measured off the stand to get the exact measurements to use for the final box.  The sturdy final box functions easily, and allows a dramatic presentation of one of our treasured artifacts of ISU history.  Great work, Alex!

 

Preservation: Student Perspectives V (Final Installment)

This is the final post in our series from the students in Honors Seminar 321V, Smelling Old Books: The Art & Science of Preserving Our Past.  The students were asked to consider ways in which learning about heritage preservation has changed their attitude about any aspect of their relationship to the objects around them in their daily lives and habits.

Katie Gerst

I have been toying with the idea of becoming an art conservator for a few years, but I’m not entirely convinced that it is the correct path for me. The best I can do right now is prepare for the graduate school application process, and see what I decide when the time comes. It doesn’t hurt anything to take a few extra classes. Regardless of my choice to be a conservator or not, my material choices as an artist will forever be affected. I could purposely choose a medium that does not stand strong through the test of time, or I could pick a more stable material depending on the project.

Click on this image to visit AIC's "Become a Conservator" guide to conservation education and training.

When looking at my family’s photographs, I now see the adhesive backing of the photo albums as more than a producer of an annoying sound.  You know the sound: kind of like Velcro, but stickier. It’s not pleasant. Today, with a fresh set of preservation goggles, I now know that that adhesive backing could be a photograph killer! What would we do if our photos of the 1973 family reunion were destroyed? How would we remember the good times and the bad hair? Luckily, I am now equipped with the knowledge that I need to get those photos into a more stable photo environment. Also, it’s probably time to digitally back-up those images.

Claire Wandro

As a child, my weekends were spent following my mother around auctions and flea markets.  We would scavenge and barter for treasures others threw away.  My mother’s favorite finds were old black and white portraits from the early twentieth-century in which children sit rigidly on their parent’s knees and ghostlike brides stand in their long lace dresses next to their ancient husbands, both staring mysteriously into the camera.

Instead of storing these prized possessions in an album or frame, my mother pasted the portraits to the walls in the back hallway of our home.  Layer by leayer, she glued.  And in between strangers, my mother added images of her parents, our cousins our brothers and sisters.  Portrait by portrait our back hallway became a collage of familiar faces, sending us off in the mornings and welcoming us as we arrive home.  Photos yellow, they rip, and from time-to-time, they fall.  Then, my mother adds another and it too becomes part of our home and of our family.

These photos are not preserved or conserved.  They are not protected safely between the pages of an album or in the archivesof a library storage room.  But, the images and stories the strange and familiar faces represent are important to and valued, as part of our home and our every day lives.