Author: Noah Smutz

Joanna P. McMann presented the conservation treatment of a terrestrial globe from 1835 made by John and William Cary in London (UK). She, Janet Mason, and Sherry Guild completed the treatment as well as the treatment of its partner celestial globe at the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) over two years ending in 2013.
The terrestrial globe required treatment due to a fall out of a window. To quote from the abstract of this talk: “Impact upon landing forced the central pillar of the globe to move, pushing the sphere out at the North Pole and pulling it in at the South Pole. Extensive cracking, with losses of paper and plaster at both poles, had been repaired prior to the mid 1970’s with a generous application of polyvinyl acetate adhesive. An area of plaster loss, where the papier mâché foundation was indented, had been filled with a thick plaster.”
The damage meant that the globe was no longer spherical and could not rotate on its axis and the brass Meridian ring was distorted. Each hemisphere of the globe is covered in 18 half-split gores. Each of these gores is comprised of 20 degrees of longitude. Bodies of water were hand colored and the landmasses were either fully or partially colored. The globe was coated with a colophony varnish, which had discolored and become brittle over time.
One of the first steps in the treatment was figuring out how to support the globe. This was done by creating a stand made of a beanbag chair insert placed inside a ring to create a ‘nest’ that was then covered in polyester film. Once this problem was resolved the next tackled was how to remove the varnish. It was soluble in both ethanol and acetone, however these were not used due to concerns of staining the paper gores. Instead mechanical removal under stereomicroscopes was undertaken with ethanol and acetone used sparingly. This setup allowed up to four conservators to work on the globe at once!
Next the plaster repair was removed to inspect damage to the papier mâché. Then a small hole was cut in the papier mâché to insert a small camera into the globe and make sure there was not more structural damage hiding. This examination found the wooden support rod and the rest of the papier mâché to be in good condition. It also allowed the conservators to discover that the papier mâché globe was made of waste sheets of printed paper.
The next step was to examine the paper gores. Raman spectroscopy and a portable XRF were used to determine the chemical makeup of the colors. The brown color on the landmasses was found to contain copper. Following this a 5% Gellan gum was used to clean certain areas of the globe and to remove soluble copper II ions. Only certain areas were cleaned because the Gellan gum was found to remove colors in some areas.
The repairs at both Poles required the gores to be lifted and supported with pieces of wove paper before being rolled back out of the way. Polyester film was used as a barrier layer to protect the gores during the plaster repairs. The film was adhered to the gores using methylcellulose. Rhoplex W24 was used to repair cracks in the plaster and they found that Jade 403 had enough bulk to fill small losses. Flugger was chosen after testing to be used for the larger plaster fills. Once these steps were completed the gores were put back in place and repaired where needed. At the North Pole losses were filled with digitally printed fills made of Griffin Mill paper. The infills were sized with a 1.5% B type gelatin.
Next the entire globe was sized with five coats of a 2.5% gelatin in order to achieve the correct look after varnishing. There were six resins tested as potential varnishes: UVS (Regalrez 1094), Regalrez 1126, MS2A, Golden MSA, Soluvar, Paraloid B-72. In the end Paraloid B-72 in toluene was chosen and 10 coats were applied via sprayer.
Finally, when the globe was reconstructed the Meridian ring had to be flipped due to the distortion left from the fall out the window.
This was a very insightful talk into a vast and complex treatment of an interesting object. One thing I could not convey in my post without it becoming overly long was the amount of thought and testing of different options that went into every decision made in regards to this treatment.

I was very excited for Saira Haqqi’s talk about rebinding at the Pierpont Morgan Library when I first saw the 2016 AIC Conference Program. Most of my scholarly interests lie in book history and early binding structures. Inevitably this means coming across manuscripts and incunabula that have been rebound.
This talk focused specifically on the early 20^th century rebinding of the Morgan’s collection by Marguerite Duprez Lahey. Marguerite was the first binder contracted by Pierpont Morgan to rebind some of his ever-growing collection. Her appointment was a departure from past practices. Until the early 1900’s most bookbinding in the United States was carried out by immigrant binders. For example, the Grolier Club in New York City brought in binders from France when needed. But the Arts and Crafts movement led to the aristocracy taking up bookbinding as a hobby. Many who did so were women. This was how Marguerite entered the field. Originally she took up bookbinding as a hobby, studying with binders in New York and Paris but not as a formal apprentice.
She quickly came to be regarded as one of the preeminent binders of the day in America and began working for Morgan in 1908 and continued to work for him and later the library until her death in 1958. During her career she rebound over 400 books for the Morgan Library as well as working with other collectors. Her own personal style favored sewing books on cord as a tightback with a French double endband (common for the time period) and with limited board decoration, though a healthy amount of spine decoration. Her tooling was something she was particularly proud of—she made sure to mention it in every interview she gave. Marguerite was also very particular about the leather she used in her bindings, which lead to high quality goatskin being used frequently.
Conservation as the field we know today was in its infancy during Marguerite’s lifetime and the modern field of book conservation did not exist at all (most agree book conservation as it is known today began with the response to the Florence flood in 1966). Therefore, there are almost no records of what type of binding books had before being rebound and the records that do exist are mainly Marguerite’s notes about payments received and what work was done. These records tend to read as “X amount of money received, two volumes rebound in goat”, which is not overly helpful when trying to piece back together the history of these objects.
As a result many things were done that today would not be considered in a conservation lab. The tightback structure was regarded as a very strong structure—something Morgan wanted his books to have. Saira points out that there are many conservation issues with tightback structures. This has led to many modern conservation concerns with Marguerite’s bindings. These include books not opening well—especially those with parchment textblocks, flaking of pigments on illuminations, and the joints failing. These issues are not solely Marguerite’s fault.
Pierpont Morgan, Jack Morgan (his son), and Bella da Costa Greene (first librarian and director of the Morgan Library) all had input into the designs of bindings and had very particular thoughts about how books should look without any knowledge about the structure of books. Book collecting during this time period was viewed as collecting art objects and functionality was not considered. Bindings were only considered interesting if they were pretty or had belonged to someone important. And many of design changes can probably be attributed to Morgan’s changing tastes over time.
Marguerite did her best to please her clients and did so while conforming to the standards of the time in her work. As many of us still do with treatments she had to balance practical concerns with aesthetic preferences. It is also likely that many of the books she rebound were purchased by Morgan rebound (though there is not direct evidence of this in her records) and as such makes her own rebinding less problematic. Still in the recent past some of her rebindings have again been rebound due to the conservation concerns mentioned above. However, this does not change that she was regarded as the best American binder of her day and her bindings are still sought after by collectors.
Saira did an exemplary job exploring the use of rebinding at the Morgan Library early on in its history and presenting it at AIC. She has helped shed light on how these decisions were made and explored Marguerite Duprez Lahey’s role in executing these treatments.