{"id":14841,"date":"2016-06-06T15:40:17","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T20:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conservators-converse.org\/?p=14841"},"modified":"2016-06-06T15:40:17","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T20:40:17","slug":"joint-44th-aic-annual-meeting-and-42nd-cac-accr-annual-conference-book-and-paper-session-may-16th-the-coptic-binding-collection-at-the-morgan-library-museum-histor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/2016\/06\/06\/joint-44th-aic-annual-meeting-and-42nd-cac-accr-annual-conference-book-and-paper-session-may-16th-the-coptic-binding-collection-at-the-morgan-library-museum-histor\/","title":{"rendered":"Joint 44th AIC Annual Meeting and 42nd CAC-ACCR Annual Conference \u2014 Book and Paper Session, May 16th \u2014 \u201cThe Coptic Binding Collection at The Morgan Library & Museum: History, Conservation and Access\u201d by Georgia Southworth and Francisco H. Trujillo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Georgia Southworth, Independent Book Conservator, and Frank Trujillo, Associate Book Conservator at The Morgan Library & Museum, closed out Monday morning\u2019s Book and Paper session with a fascinating talk on the history and rehousing of The Morgan\u2019s singular collection of Coptic bindings.
\nThe story of the Coptic bindings at The Morgan Library & Museum began in 1910 with the discovery of a cache of nearly sixty volumes dating from the 9th<\/sup> and 10th<\/sup> centuries CE. Found in Hamouli, Egypt, these volumes made a circuitous journey with stops in France, the United States, and Italy, before coming to rest New York in the 1920s. During the nearly thirty years between their discovery and their arrival at The Morgan, the parchment textblocks were separated from the covers, never to be reuinited. While the textblocks were extensively treated at the Vatican Library, the covers were packed away, presumably with the intention of addressing them at a later time. Unfortunately, World War I and J. Pierpont Morgan\u2019s death interfered with the planned project to photograph and restore the collection, extending the timeline by several years. The covers, which had been consolidated with oil and wax, and in some cases lined with gauze, were not returned to The Morgan until 1929. They remained packed away until 1984, when Deborah Evetts, then the Drue Heinz Book Conservator, found them\u00a0still stored in their Vatican shipping crates.
\nThe covers are comprised of laminated layers of papyrus covered with leather. The decoration of the leather ranges from simple cold-tooled designs to elaborate compositions incorporating layers of colored and gilt leather and parchment\u00a0that have been\u00a0cut, pierced, and interlaced to create complex and beautiful designs.
\n

\"MS<\/a>
MS M.569, Gospels binding ca. 850 CE;
Image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThe condition of the covers varies widely; while some are almost completely intact, others are brittle, fragmentary, and riddled with wormholes. Attempts to devise a housing method for these exquisite objects had been ongoing since they were re-discovered in 1984. In consultation with Christopher Clarkson, Deborah Evetts performed minor stabilization treatment on a few of the covers, and tested several housing prototypes. The ideal housing would protect and support the covers, while still allowing for easy access and viewing of both sides of each board.
\nPrevious prototypes included deep sinkmats, Plexiglas sandwiches, and simple matboard folders lined with glassine. One prototype was made of layers of Plexiglas cut to fit the perimeter of the cover to create a customized well. Unfortunately, this design was also heavy, and caused the fragile covers to rest against a hard surface.
\n
\"Two<\/a>
Two Coptic cover housing prototypes, with half-size facsimile covers;
Image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n
\"Coptic<\/a>
Coptic cover housing prototype, showing layers of custom-cut Plexiglas;
Image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThe final housing design incorporated the idea of a custom recess, and used separate layers to allow the\u00a0sides of each cover to be viewed without direct handling.
\nThe material selected to create the well was soft, inert, non-abrasive Volara foam. Each cover was carefully traced, and the outlines were sent to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where they were laser cut into the foam. The layers of foam are sandwiched between two pieces of 1\/8\u201d Artcare archival foam board\u00a0to\u00a0create a light and rigid support. A full sheet of Volara is adhered to each piece of foamboard, and two inner layers of Volara are laser cut to the shape of each cover. These wells are slightly larger than the covers, providing protection without actually touching the fragile edges.
\n
\"Inner<\/a>
Inner sandwich of foam board and Volara;
Image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nFoam pegs keep the layers aligned, but allow them to be separated to expose the sides of the covers. When closed, the layers are held securely in place by these pegs, allowing the sandwich to be flipped to show the verso of the cover. This light, rigid sandwich is stored inside a Talas e-flute reinforced clamshell box. A linen tab was added to the interior of each box to facilitate removal of the sandwich. For easy storage, three standard sizes of clamshell were selected.
\n
\"The<\/a>
The final enclosure solution for the Coptic covers, showing custom Volara trays, linen pull tab, and e-flute clamshell box;
Image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThis solution worked well for the covers and large fragments. Smaller fragments were stored separately in Mylar envelopes, which were barcoded to associate them with their parent binding. These envelopes of fragments were stored together in a separate box.
\n
\"Fragments<\/a>
Fragments were stored separately, in bags barcoded to associate them with the correct binding;
Image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThe final element of this project was the creation of high-resolution images of all the bindings. These images are currently being processed, and will soon be available to the public via The Morgan\u2019s website. In the meantime, I\u2019m sure that many of us will have ideas for applying this novel housing concept to objects in our own collections. Thank you, Georgia and Frank, for an excellent talk!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Georgia Southworth, Independent Book Conservator, and Frank Trujillo, Associate Book Conservator at The Morgan Library & Museum, closed out Monday morning\u2019s Book and Paper session with a fascinating talk on the history and rehousing of The Morgan\u2019s singular collection of Coptic bindings. The story of the Coptic bindings at The Morgan Library & Museum began … Continue reading “Joint 44th AIC Annual Meeting and 42nd CAC-ACCR Annual Conference \u2014 Book and Paper Session, May 16th \u2014 \u201cThe Coptic Binding Collection at The Morgan Library & Museum: History, Conservation and Access\u201d by Georgia Southworth and Francisco H. Trujillo”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,23,5,16],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-14841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annual-meeting","category-book-and-paper","category-ccs","category-specialty-sessions","tag-aics-44th-annual-meeting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}