As part of an innovative HLF funded project (‘See, Sew, Save the Doddington Tapestries’) run by the Doddington Hall Conservation Charity, a number of opportunities have arisen to join a team working on the conservation of a set of C17 Flemish tapestries. The tapestries were cut up and nailed to the walls in 1762. By the C21 the tapestries were filthy and in desperate need of conservation. In 2014 they were removed from the walls and cleaned. Conservation is now taking place on site, in the Drawing Room at Doddington Hall, near Lincoln.
The post holder will undertake conservation treatment of the tapestries, following agreed conservation practice with advice as necessary from a Conservation Consultant. The main task at this stage of the project will be lining all the tapestries from the Yellow Bedroom and recreating the 1760’s fitted scheme. At times you may be working on public view and may be required to explain and demonstrate the conservation process.? You will be part of a team of 3-4 people.
Knowledge, Skills and Experience
Essential:
To have completed a recognized textile conservation course or general conservation course with a specialism in textiles through work placement or internship.
Excellent needlework skills, good team-working, organisational, written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills. Must be comfortable working at heights from a scaffold tower.
A good level of understanding of best practice conservation techniques. Some experience of working in a textile conservation studio post training.
Desirable:
Tapestry conservation experience.
Valid Driving Licence
Interviews will be held on November 23 and 24 at Doddington Hall.
Application Instructions: To apply send your CV, including a 500 word statement detailing your practical experience and your current salary details to Louise Joynson, conservation@doddingtonhall.com.
The Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN) is seeking candidates for the position of liaison to the Conservators in Private Practice (CIPP) specialty group. This is a one-year term position, with the potential to renew for another year. It is open to early-career conservators who are currently working in private practice and are members of CIPP.
The liaison would join ECPN’s growing Specialty Group Liaison program, and serve as a connection between Specialty Group leadership, ECPs in your specialty group, and the larger ECPN community.
Both ECPN and CIPP’s charges and current leadership can be found on the AIC website here and here, respectively.
CIPP Duties and Goals:
Conference Calls with CIPP Officers (first Wednesday of the month)
Subscribe to CIPP Officer listserv
Assist with developing CIPP programming targeted toward emerging conservators (such as Annual Meeting programs, webinars, resource guides, blog posts)
Participate/co-author one CIPP article in AIC News
Provide content for updating the CIPP website
Produce a summary of activities for CIPP biannual report to AIC Board of Directors
Funding may be available to offset the registration costs to attend the annual meeting
ECPN Duties:
Conference Calls with ECPN Outreach Officers (1-2x/year)
Conference Calls with ECPN Officers (1-4x/year)
Disseminate information pertinent to the ECPN community (e.g. BigTent forums andspecialty group listserv)
Make at least two short entries on BigTent updating the ECPN liaison community on upcoming or successful initiatives
When appropriate, advocate for ECPs in specialty group meetings and promote specialtygroup initiatives to ECPs
Assist with the AIC Wiki edit-a-thon on specialty group web pages in consultation with specialty group chair and ECPN
Provide support to ECPN entries on the AIC blog
Publicize ECPN webinars (two organized annually)
If present at the annual AIC meeting, attend the specialty group business meeting and give the ECPN update presentation (talking points will be provided by ECPN Officers); promoting ECPN programming
Stay connected via Facebook and ECPN posts on the AIC Blog
Brief Spring Report: a short summary of the work done by the specialty groups and how it affects the ECPN community and how this information was circulated.
Please send a CV and brief statement of interest to ECPN’s Outreach Officers at ecpn.outreach@conservation-us.org by August 4, 2017.
Lukasz Bratasz et al presented about a risk assessment and recommendations made for storage of the collections at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History. Trying to get away from flat-lined standards, they are taking a risk management approach to most effectively spend their preservation resources in a pragmatic and sustainable way. By doing a risk analysis and gathering data on current energy use across the campus (and comparing with some far-flung peers), a pretty stark result was revealed. What struck me most about the presentation, the active question and answer period notwithstanding, was the confirmation of my gut feeling that chemical degradation is the most serious preservation risk that many collections face. Yes, fires can be catastrophic and leaks happen frequently, but chemical degradation happens constantly and quietly at human-comfort temperature storage with extreme relative humidity swings, until one does an analysis like this and bring it to everyone’s attention.
In their relatively quickly assembled risk assessment, the notion of item value was disregarded and every item was assumed to have the same value. This is appropriate for collections that are of value in the aggregate. Some audience members found this to unrealistically skew the data, but I don’t have a problem with it. It is always possible to add on the variable of value later, when one is ready to address multiple risks of similar likelihood and severity. But to get the big picture, I think this kind of assessment is a good first step. The most significant risks identified included mold growth, pest damage, chemical degradation, and mechanical damage.
The scope of the project was to analyze energy consumption and current environmental conditions, assess the preservation condition of the collections and determine the risks. The risk assessment revealed that chemical degradation was two orders of magnitude above any of the other risks. They found they could both address the most significant risk and save energy at the same time, so they prioritized on improving the climate for the collections.
Some of the comparisons for energy use seemed like apples and oranges (i.e. comparing a multi-use, aging building in New Haven with a relatively new passive-environment storage facility in Denmark). However, it was clear that the aging building was wasting money and energy compared to other buildings at Yale. This was due primarily to a high ventilation rate and constricted set points that did not allow for any floating. In other words, they were bringing in too much fresh air, and keeping such a tight set point that they were constantly running the equipment to either heat or cool. The rigid temperature set point combined with the uncontrolled humidity brought in by unnecessary fresh air meant that the indoor humidity ranged from 10-80%, extremes which cannot be safely tolerated by natural history collections without risk of mechanical damage.
They made the point that the collections had weathered temperature and humidity changes for years before the current flat-lined temperature was implemented, and thus the collections have been “proofed” and don’t require the flatlining. Among my library conservation colleagues the proofing concept is not fully embraced…just because the mechanical damage hasn’t happened in the past, once chemical degradation has progressed to a certain point, mechanical damage due to the shock of a temperature or RH spike could still happen even to an aged object. However, within a moderate range I suspect the Yale authors are right that some variation of temperature and humidity is not likely to cause damage.
The recommendations made were to move the most vulnerable ethnographic collections to cool storage, reduce the ventilation rate, adopt dual set point control (i.e. minimum and maximum rather than single point) for both temperature and relative humidity, control the relative humidity to eliminate the extremes, and evaluate the conditions according to long term temperature and relative humidity values. While the recommendations at the end of this presentation did not emphasize energy savings, I’m guessing this was a selling point and was part of the bargain with facilities and administration, who juggle multiple priorities and are more likely to embrace a win-win solution.
Confession time. Having done my third-year intern in the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), I was already familiar with the artwork and treatment involved in this presentation. The first time I heard about it, I was shocked, then curious, then awed. The complexity of the problem and solution never ceases to impress me and make me question my previous opinion, a feeling familiar to those who specialize in the conservation of modern and contemporary art.
Mapa estelar en árbol. Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Per Knutås, Paintings Conservator and Chief Conservator at the CMA, and Samantha Springer, Conservator at the Portland Art Museum and former Objects Conservator at the CMA, gave a joint presentation on the issues and treatment process of Gabriel Orozco’s Mapa estelar en árbol (Stellar Map in Tree). Their presentation was a drastic change of pace from the previous two lectures that dealt with 15th-16th century European altarpieces (the Ayala and the Monopoli altarpieces), both of which coincidentally had problems with the formation of insoluble oxalates on the surface (a possible topic for a future symposium?). Although a three-dimensional object, the thought here was to look at Mapa estelar en árbol as a modern panel painting which is how the artist conceived the piece. The treatment crossed traditional conservation specialty boundaries and required collaboration between conservators and the artist.
The artwork
Mapa estelar en árbol is a 30-40 cm thick cross-section of a salvaged mango tree trunk, 70 cm in diameter. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco wanted to resurrect the tradition of panel painting and used the tree trunk as a modern and unconventional panel. He prepared the end-grain surface in the classical manner by covering it with fabric and layers of gesso. The geometric sgraffito design was created by applying graphite all over the gesso and then incising into it with a compass, another tool that has fallen out of use. The back (other end-grain surface) was sealed with a waxy material. The work debuted at the Kurimanzutto Gallery in Mexico City in 2009. A CMA curator bought the work on opening night.
Detail of the damaged surface. Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The problem
Mapa estelar en árbol arrived to the CMA months after its debut in Mexico City. The work had already developed hairline cracks and delamination in that short amount of time. It was unexhibitable within a year. The wood had shrunk with changes in RH, the canvas buckled, and the gesso/graphite layers were severely cracked and lifting from the surface. No conservation treatment, however extraordinaire, would be able to mask the damage and restore the pristine surface. It would leave a scarred surface and the viewer would only see the hand of the conservator. From the CMA’s point of view, the piece was dead.
The meeting
Hoping to get a replacement or get the work re-made, the CMA team got in contact with the gallery and the piece was sent back to Mexico City to be examined by the artist and his team. The Mexico City meeting included Per Knutås, Reto Thüring (Curator of Contemporary Art at the CMA), Gabriel Orozco, his fabricator (who also happens to be a conservator), and the Kurimanzutto Gallery. While the artist initially said he didn’t mind the changes as they spoke to history of the piece, he then suggested his fabricator/ conservator carry out a restoration treatment to fix it. The CMA reserved the right to reject the restored work if the appearance didn’t meet their standards and expectations as this was an option they had previously discussed and rejected in-house. After a failed attempt by the Mexico City fabricator/ conservator, a new arrangement was reached.
The Solution
Refusing to have the work remade in the same way as the original, the CMA staff proposed the addition of a new layer to the original stratigraphy: an inert substrate that would serve as an interleaf of sorts between the dimensionally unstable wood and the fabric. After several rounds of mock-ups and testing back in the Conservation Department at the CMA using green cuts of Mulberry trees (no mango trees to be found in Cleveland) to mimic the original, they settled on the use of a stainless-steel plate that would be adhered to the wood with a custom-made silicone adhesive that could be flexible enough to move with the wood. The canvas would be wrapped around the stainless steel and adhered with BEVA Film. Per traveled to Mexico City where he adhered the canvas-wrapped stainless-steel plate to the original tree trunk. Gabriel Orozco and his team completed the rest of the recreation.
Samantha Springer doing materials testing. Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.Per Knutås in the artist’s studio adhering the fabric to the stainless-steel plate with BEVA Film. Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Conclusion
Mapa estelar en árbol as it is currently displayed in the CMA galleries. Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The second iteration of Mapa estelar en árbol returned to the CMA months later, where it was left under watch in the Conservation Department for several months (this is when I first met the piece). The new inert layer worked perfectly and no changes or damages have since been observed on the piece, which is now happily displayed in the Modern and Contemporary galleries. The original creation date was kept as they deemed it to be too confusing to list a new intervention date. Also, the artist created another version of this piece (now in a private collection), and he wanted both to be a pair with the same dates.
While the artist retained the traditional conceptual role, this treatment put the conservators in the unusual role of producers driving the process and pushing ethical boundaries. Most would question if it even is the same work of art. Many in the audience struggled to come to terms with it. The Q&A session was dominated by questions on whether they tried to do any consolidation or transfer techniques before deciding to scratch the original surface. An audience member brought up an interesting point. Where Per and Samantha acting as conservators or collaborators? They were not using their technical information as conservators. They were collaborators and technical resources for the artist and as such, the ethics of our profession didn’t apply. This was one of the longest Q&A sessions I have been in, a clear sign that the presentation provided much food for thought.
In her talk, Quinn Ferris discussed a new conservation workflow recently implemented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, called “Medium Rare Conservation.” This new workflow was initiated in response to the realities and limitations facing the conservation staff at the UIUC. The library’s holdings are massive (24 million items, including 13 million volumes), and must withstand frequent use (1 million patrons visit the library annually). Meanwhile, recent budget cuts have eliminated the possibility of hiring additional permanent staff, while services are never allowed to be reduced.
The “Medium Rare Conservation” workflow is a response to the problem of inadequate resources facing so many university libraries. It is a streamlined approach to treatment that combines elements of special collections conservation (ethical and logistical considerations) and general collections conservation (speed and efficiency).
The term “medium rare” is not new. It was used in 1987 by Stephen Ferguson to describe a category nineteenth and twentieth-century books that, while not considered rare, were “endangered” in the sense that the poor quality of their materials resulted in rapid decay, and finding replacement copies was difficult and expensive. In contrast, the term “Medium Rare” is used at the UIUC to indicate the appropriateness of a specific conservation treatment approach. It does not describe an item’s value, priority, or rarity. A book designated “Medium Rare” in this context could, for example, belong to either special or circulating collections. Because the term has been used in both ways in recent years, it can be problematic and cause confusion. Ms. Ferris addressed this, explaining that she supported the development of more precise terminology. Specifically, she suggested more neutral or objective language for categorizing based on complexity of treatment required, such as numbers 1, 2, and 3.
The “Medium Rare Conservation” workflow was established as a way of increasing efficiency, but as with any major change, its implementation required significant time and patience. The designation needed to be clearly defined and given a list of criteria that would allow for easy identification of collection materials to be channeled into the new workflow. For example, items requiring basic mending, flattening, or simple book repairs (such as those performed regularly on circulating items) could be categorized as “Medium Rare,” while any treatments involving leather work or the use of solvents, could not. Treatment documentation guidelines needed to be created. This involved building a new interface within the existing treatment documentation database, and developing a regimen of abbreviated photo documentation.
Once established, the workflow yielded a number of benefits, some more surprising than others. Treatment turn-around time was decreased, and a greater number of collections were served. Closer working relations with colleagues were established. Treatment opportunities were expanded for conservation technicians, interns, and student employees, who are now able to perform simple treatments on special collections materials. Meanwhile, conservators are allowed to focus their treatment time on items requiring greater care and more complex interventions.
The “Medium Rare Conservation” workflow at UIUC is still in it’s infancy, and will continue to be fine-tuned. Still, it was clear during the lively Q&A session at the end that the issues raised by this talk are on the minds of library conservators. How should Medium Rare treatments be prioritized? Should items be treated if they are available in alternate formats? Stay tuned to see how this kind of hybrid conservation work develops at UIUC and other library conservation labs over the next few years…
Our Lady of Mercy with St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond Nonnatus. Oil on canvas. ca. 1814-1817, 74.8 x 53.3 cm. Image courtesy of Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile.
Mónica Pérez, Paintings and Frames Conservator at the Centro Nacional de Conservación y Restauración in Santiago, Chile, introduced us to the painting Our Lady of Mercy with St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond Nonnatus, the painter José Gil de Castro, the independence movements of Chile and Argentina, and hanging scroll paintings. There is a lot of history, iconography, and treatment to unpack here. I was initially interested in blogging this presentation as I have a special interest in Spanish Colonial Art, and am currently research Our Lady of Mercy and the development of the devotion during the colonial period in South America. My interest was further peaked by the fact that it was a hanging scroll painting as many of these rarely survive in their original format.
José Gil de Castro was a Peruvian portrait painter who worked in Chile and Argentina in the first half of the 19th century. Gil de Castro started by signing his name in Latin and writing the date in numbers to show he was a cultured man. He progressed to writing out the date in letters, and later switched to writing in Spanish. Gil de Castro was involved in the liberation movement of Chile in the 19th century so his move towards writing and signing in Spanish could be seen as him adopting a more patriotic stance. He transitioned from painting Spanish leaders and royalty to painting military leaders, local aristocracy, and patriots, and is considered the father of Chilean national painting. Starting in 2008 a team of Latin American scholars conducted a six-year study on José Gil de Castro that resulted in the Getty supported publication Más allá de la imagen (Beyond the Image) as well as the colloquium Gil de Castro contemporáneo. El pintor en su tiempo y en el nuestro. I was not able to access the publication Beyond the Image online, but I did find a blogpost related to it in The Iris, the Getty’s blog. Unfortunately the existence of Our Lady of Mercy with St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond Nonnatus was unknown at the time and the painting was not included in the publications.
Our Lady of Mercy with St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond Nonnatus (1817) is in the collection of the Museo O’Higginiano y de Bellas Artes de Talca, Talca, Chile. The painting, measuring 74.8cm x 53.3cm, is a typical depiction of the Virgin Mary as the crowned Virgin of Mercy wearing the white habit typical of the Mercedarian order and with arms wide open. In one hand she holds the Mercedarian scapular and in the other a yoke, symbol of the order’s original dedication to the ransoming of Christians taken captive by the Moors. In the lower part of the painting are St. Peter Nolasco on the left and St. Raymund Nonnatus on the right. At the very bottom of the painting is a banner with an inscription that indicates it was commissioned by María del Carmen Ruiz Tagle from Santiago, Chile, in 1817 and signed “Fecit me Josephus Gil”. In terms of the iconography, Mónica Pérez talked about how devotion to Our Lady of Mercy was transferred to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who became the patron of the liberation and was adopted as the patroness of Chile in the 19th century. This information, couple with what we learned about the evolution of the artist’s signature, could be used to place the work within the context of Gil de Castro’s shift from vice regal to patriotic painter.
Our Lady of Mercy before treatment. Image courtesy of Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte.
Interest in the painting and its subsequent 2015 treatment at the National Center for Conservation and Restoration was motivated by its inclusion in the then upcoming exhibition José Gil de Castro, Artist of Liberators at the National Fine Arts Museum in Santiago, Chile. The painting as well as its frame were in need of repairs. The painted canvas was nailed to a plank of wood. Although it is common for Spanish Colonial paintings to be nailed or glued to the front of a strainer, paintings nailed to a full board are not. There were horizontal distortions and tears, particularly towards the bottom of the canvas. There were losses to the paint layer and overpaint over the text at the bottom of the composition which made it hard to read, all topped by a yellowed varnish. These are all common condition issues found in paintings and as such, they proceeded with a treatment proposal typical for an easel painting which included removal of the discolored varnish, removal of planar deformations, lining, and compensation for loss. If you read the title of the presentation then you know they were in for a big surprise!
Detail of ribbon around the edge of the painting. Image courtesy of Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte.
Upon unframing the painting, they came across signs that this was not a typical easel painting. There was a silk ribbon hand stitched around the perimeter of the canvas which combined with the horizontal cracks and distortions, suggested this was a hanging scroll painting. The scroll format and a note containing a prayer suggested the painting was used for private devotion. The painting would have initially be composed of the extant canvas with a rod and case attached at either end, all together making a single unit. Study of other paintings by Gil de Castro shed further light into his use of the scroll format. Displayed on the wall behind two other sitters that the artist painted were hanging scroll painting of Our Lady of Mercy. Paintings within paintings! In addition to this, IRR analysis revealed that the artist modified the date at the bottom of the painting. It was initially painted in 1814, that same year Gil de Castro made two other versions with similar iconography of Our Lady of Mercy. Pérez did not venture to guess why the change of date.
Detail of portrait of José Manuel de Lecaros Alcalde (1814) by Gil de Castro. Notice the hanging scroll painting of Our Lady of Mercy on the back wall. A more close up detail on the image to the right. Image courtesy of Centro Nacional de Conservación y Restauración and Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte.
In light of this new discovery, the team of conservators in conjunction with a team of curators, art historians, and the painting’s owners decided to re-evaluate the initially proposed treatment. They wanted to preserve the evidence of the original format and history of use of the painting which meant limiting themselves to addressing issues that affected the interpretation of the image. Although cracks affected the visual appreciation of the painting, they attested to its intended use. They removed the painting from the board, removed the yellowed varnish, relaxed the planar deformations, carried out tear mending with the application of welded stitches, did some visual reintegration, revarnishing, and placed a Crepeline ribbon over the edges to protect the original ribbon. The painting was then mounted like a hanging textile. The treatment provided a new interpretation and context for the painting, and added to the understanding of Gil de Castro’s materials and techniques.
You can read more about the treatment of this painting at the Centro Nacional de Conservación y Restauración’s website, including images of the painting’s original condition and examination. The National Fine Arts Museum’s website also has some online resources related to the exhibition José Gil de Castro, Artist of Liberators as well as the catalogue in pdf form . Most of the resources are in Spanish so time to brush up on it!
Involving a beautiful dress from the late 1860s and stunning before and after photos, Suzan Meijer’s talk was a definite crowd pleaser. Her talk focused on a silk moire dress in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. (Now on my Top Ten list of places to visit, as it has over 10,000 textiles, the largest collection in the Netherlands!) Treatment of the dress was spurred on by the museum’s launch of an expanded website that would allow digital access to select objects in the collection. This dress was selected because it is one of the few examples of the late 1860s pre-bustle period remaining unaltered. However, its selection meant that it would have to be dressed on a mannequin for extensive photography. The dress had been kept in hanging storage, covered, for decades, and Suzan spoke of the truly delicate condition it was in: the silk was split throughout the skirt, and shattered in many places across the bodice. These damages far exceeded those outlined in the last condition report from 1950 (which may have been partially caused by the dress having been worn to a party at the museum in the early 20th century!). Although wear and long-term hanging storage undoubtedly contributed to the poor condition of the dress, Suzan noted how the moire production process would also have contributed to the degradation of the silk. Moire is produced through calendering, which involves heat and a lot of pressure. Tests showed that the silk may further have been weighted slightly, as small amounts of aluminum and iron were found in the fibers. But despite structural issues, the silk was phenomenally un-faded! The dye came back from the lab as 50% barberry and 49% unknown purple, red, and violet components. One could easily see why the museum was eager to have this dress appear on their website!
However, to make this possible, it was determined that the skirt had to receive a full lining, and that the full lining would have to be adhesive since the silk was so delicate. Unusual for the period, the bodice and skirt of the dress were attached. Suzan said they hoped to apply the adhesive lining without clipping any of the original stitches but that attempts soon proved this impossible, due to the tight cartridge pleating at the waist. Therefore, the decision was made to remove the skirt from the waistband so it could be laid flat. Evacon R, an EVA adhesive, was applied to silk crepeline. The adhesive coated silk crepeline was then attached to the interior of the skirt using heat reactivation, between 65-75 degrees Celsius. When this was completed and the skirt began to be re-pleated, it was noticed that some of the slits were popping. To fix this, nylon net was used as an overlay along the top few inches, sewn down to the underlying silk crepeline.
As for the bodice, it lacked both boning and lining, which proved fortuitous when repairing the shattered silk. As with the skirt, adhesive-coated crepeline was used, but rather than a full lining, patches were applied. Again, net was used as an overlay and stitched through to the crepeline. However, unlike the skirt, small areas of the silk were missing, rather than just split. Toned Japanese paper was used to fill in these losses. After the stunning photograph was taken, available here, it was time for the dress to go back into storage. Obviously, hanging storage was no longer an option, so a large custom box was made in which the dress could be stored flat. A small “shelf” and tray was built into the box to accommodate the separate belt. Suzan says that how surprising the condition of the dress was when treatment commenced led them to re-think their hanging storage. Covers were removed and the garments moved farther apart so that any downturn in their condition would be noticed immediately. I wish I had before photos to truly illustrate the amazing transformation this dress underwent. Good job, Suzan!
You could hear the mental wheels turning in the room as conservators scribbled notes and thought: “Where is my nearest makerspace? How many custom mounts will I need for my next exhibit? And how nice would it be to not wrestle with an overflowing closet of book cradles?” This talk provided a futuristic vision of an endlessly sustainable cycle of 3-D printed exhibit mounts that are created on-demand with precision and recycled for the next show – an elegant, zero-waste utopia. Of course, reality isn’t quite there yet, but Fletcher Durant, Sara Gonzalez, and Lourdes Santamaria-Wheeler have been developing prototypes at the University of Florida and are moving us toward the future.
When discussing 3-D printing it’s good to have actual 3-D printed examples on hand. The audience was lucky enough to get a feel for the size, heft, color, and surface texture of the Florida prototype. Thanks to my hand model, Suzy Morgan!
Fletcher presented on behalf of the team, starting with an overview of the standard book cradle options for library and archives conservators and the advantages, drawbacks, and costs of each approach. The University of Florida library system has a robust exhibit schedule, mounting 15-20 exhibitions a year, requiring hundreds of book cradles. Storing these cradles is a challenge and logistics are complicated by the fact that the conservation lab is off-campus. Commercially produced Plexi cradles are expensive, take up lots of storage space, and are not always the appropriate size and fit for the books. Custom mounts made of mat board are more functional than the Plexis, but there are costs and waste associated with creating them, an off-campus lab means complicated construction and transport logistics, and as Fletcher noted, they’re not always the most attractive things to leave the lab. Custom mounts out of Vivak® (PETG) are also popular, aesthetically pleasing and can be constructed/modified in the gallery space, but they cost $10-15 each and still have to be stored after use.
Florida has three 3-D printers available for student and staff projects. The machine is a Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) system, which is an off-the-shelf widely used consumer product. Students are charged $0.15 per gram of filament used, and the average projects require 100g, or $15.00. One important limitation to note is the size of the printer; it can only accommodate approximately 14” x 14” x 12.6”, so average-sized book cradles are fine but anything larger would have to be assembled from multiple pieces.
I’ll leave most of the technical details to the authors in the postprints, but here’s a quick summary of the process: An STL (STeroLithography) file is necessary to produce a 3-D print. You can download existing files; thingiverse is one online source for sharing 3-D print files. Lucky for us, the authors have made their book cradle design available to us all here. You can also scan an existing object with a 3-D scanner to create a file. Or you can create your own original design: Fletcher recommended tinkercadas a good design tool for beginners.
Fletcher did note that, if you’re not already familiar with 3D design and printing, the initial learning curve can be steep and it’s worth it to work with someone more familiar with the process at first, but once your initial design in ready, minor modifications to the size, face angles, and spine opening can be done quickly.
Materials mater, of course, especially to conservators. There are many, many kinds of filaments available to use in FFF printers, but they all vary in terms of their environmental impact and their ability to pass the Oddy test or meet other standards of exhibit case appropriateness. At Florida, they use Nylon PLA, a plant-based product with no off-gassing. In theory, after the exhibit the book cradle should be able to be shredded, melted, re-formed into filament, and re-used. The authors are working on establishing an in-house recycling program at Florida, but Fletcher noted that realistically you can only get five uses out of the nylon filament. They’re also hoping to Oddy test more filament options.
A few other notes and observations:
Printing a complete cradle takes approximately 10 hours; this is hands-off time (they set the printers to run overnight) but it does mean they have to plan carefully about when to print – since students are also using the printers, they try to avoid scheduling large print jobs during finals week.
A modification of the design could include slots for book strapping.
The surface of the cradle is slightly rough; if desired, it can be smoothed with solvents or by sanding.
They have also created mounts for objects (pictured below), which Fletcher thinks might be a more realistic use for this technology in library exhibits. He’s also excited about the idea of using 3-D scanners and subtractive technologies to carve Ethafoam for custom housing inserts.
Whether or not the zero-waste book cradle utopia ever comes to fruition, understanding the process of 3-D printing and the materials involved is important, since we will begin seeing (if we haven’t already) 3-D printed objects entering our collections.
To promote awareness and a clearer understanding of different pathways into specializations that require particular training, the Emerging Conservation Professional Network (ECPN) is conducting a series of interviews with conservators in these specialties. We’ve asked our interviewees to share some thoughts about their career paths, which we hope will inspire new conservators and provide valuable insight into these areas of our professional field. This post is continuing our series on East Asian Art Conservation, where we have posts from Sara Ribbans and Yi-Hsia Hsiao.
This post is continuing our series on East Asian Art Conservation with Hsin-Chen Tsai, an Associate Conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the Asian Conservation Studio. In 2008, she graduated from National Tainan University of Arts in Taiwan, where she specialized in Asian paintings conservation. She received a BFA degree in Art Education with a thesis in Art Education from the Department of Art at the National Changhua University of Education.
The former Payne Whitney Mansion on 5th Avenue near 79th Street in New York City (now the Cultural Services of the French Embassy) built in 1906 contains a small “Venetian Room” which has a cornice of metal lattice entwined with dozens of porcelain flowers. The room is in a very fragile condition and plans have been made to stabilize and restore the decorations . To raise money for the restoration, individuals are being asked to donate $500 to “Adopt-A-Flower”. [I was in the building yesterday for a lecture and was handed a very small pamphlet about the project.] I wonder if finding multiple “small” donors to raise the cost of the restoration is easier than finding one or two large donors, or if this is a public relations campaign designed to catch the eye of large donors.
