As the
Archbishops’ Registers Revealed project is drawing to a close along with the
year 2015, I wanted to offer a brief overview of my involvement in the project.
It can be quite tricky for a conservator to accurately convey exactly what it
is they do in the workshop. This blog certainly isn’t as catchy as the 12 Days
of Christmas - but I hope that it provides some advent calendar-sized tasters of
the work I have been doing.
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| 12 Limp parchment volumes |
There are some things that conservators can do to improve the digitisation process – cleaning, unfolding, repairing, etc – but there are also some things that we cannot improve. We can clean a surface, which will lighten the areas around the ink and make the ink stand out better, but we cannot replace abraded or faded ink. Consequently we do need to assess archives before a digitisation work plan is put in place, so that we know what we will need to tackle and how long it might take.
Abp Reg 11 is the volume that required the greatest number of treatments.
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| Abp Reg 11 with the highest number of treatments recorded |
Within the 37 volumes that were treated but not disbound 610 treatments were documented in total. 127 of these treatments were undertaken within Abp Reg 11. Treatments ranged from dry cleaning the surface of folios or unfolding the corners of a folio, to removing a previous repair that was obscuring text or repairing the edge of a folio that had suffered loss and damage. We would only undertake treatment where either text had been obscured (by dirt or folds) or the area was vulnerable to further deterioration during handling. Without this guideline in place it would not have been possible to complete the treatments in time for the digitisation to take place!
10 volumes required paper repairs.
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| 10 volumes contained paper in need of treatment
such as this document
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10 volumes required paper repairs.
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The majority of the folios in the Archbishops’ Registers are parchment, but there are occasional paper inserts and modern paper endleaves in the volumes too. 33 of the 610 treatments mentioned above were on paper, but almost all of the others were on parchment.
9 descriptive phrases for the metadata that created plenty of
debate. |
This is a
very subjective number, which would certainly fluctuate depending on who you
spoke to! I first became involved with the metadata when it became apparent
that not all of the images could take their image number from a folio number.
The Archbishops’ Registers are nothing if not inconsistent, and there were
various hiccoughs to accommodate, as well as the structural features of each
volume (and those thrown in from previous bindings). A lot of my time was spent
deciding what information to include, what to leave out, and which terms best
reflected what the end user would see in the image.
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8 volumes requiring only minor treatments such as
the dry cleaning shown here
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8 volumes requiring minor work…
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As opposed to 32 volumes requiring major work! In my initial
assessments, ‘minor work’ refers to cleaning or small areas of flattening.
‘Major work’ includes larger areas to flatten and more invasive or time
consuming treatments. A small local humidification with a non-aqueous solvent
could be applied and dried within an hour or so, whereas the application of a
repair would take a minimum of 3 days of treatment when drying time is taken
into account. My workflow planning needed to take all of this information into
account, so that I could ensure the photographer had a seamless flow of volumes
to image and process.
The Archbishops’ Registers vary in size, but the most
memorable
volumes are the largest. 7 of the volumes have spines between 10 and 15cm wide.
Several of these have also been bound with thick wooden boards, and
consequently they are large, heavy and unwieldy to manoeuvre. This has made
them challenging to handle safely during conservation and digitisation. In
spite of this (or partly because of this?) these are some of my favourite
Registers – most of the bindings still function well, and they have an
undeniably weighty presence. I can’t help but think when I look at them that
they must contain a formidable number of sheep!
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| 7 spines over 10cm in width |
6 hours of Conservation at the Summer
Institute.
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5 sheets of goldbeater’s skin
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5 sheets of goldbeater’s skin used
to repair damaged parchment such as the example above from Abp Reg 10 f.25
(left: before treatment; right: after treatment) |
4.3 kg of magnetic restraint
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| 4.3kg my favourite magnetic pull strength |
I have been using magnets as a tool to restrain parchment
when it is drying. I use a ferrosheet under the parchment folio, so that a
magnet placed on top of the parchment will hold the parchment in place. I have
experimented with various sizes and strengths of magnet, but my current
favourite is a neodymium cylindrical magnet of 12mm diameter and 6mm height at
a strength of N42 which gives a pull of 4.3kg!
3 volumes disbound
The decision
to disbind any of the registers was not taken lightly. The process is very
invasive and can risk damaging the register; loose leaves are more vulnerable
to future deterioration than those in a binding; removing the binding alters
the format of the register; and historical evidence can be lost during
disbinding. On the other hand the bindings we were considering were not
original bindings; they were very stiff, which obscured a significant
proportion of text on the majority of folios; and the stiffness of the binding was
also hindering the functionality of the volume. 3 registers have been disbound
and digitised as loose leaves. A major concern for the New Year will be to
discuss with the archivists whether these registers will be re-bound, and if so
in what manner.
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| 3 registers disbound |
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2 sheets of gelatine remaining, used
for repairs
and poultices such as the example above
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2 sheets of gelatine remaining
I have been
using gelatine as my main adhesive of choice for both paper and parchment
repairs. I have also used gelatine to create poultices, which I have used for a
number of treatments. Poultices allow a slow transfer of moisture. I have used
them to soften the adhesive of previous repairs in order to remove them. I have
also used poultices to remove paper guards from parchment inserts. Lastly, I
have been using gelatine poultices to remove materials that have been adhered
to the spines of the volumes I have disbound. Including the volumes that have
been disbound, I have used poultices to treat 289 folios, and removed spine
linings from 3 volumes. This has used 61 sheets of gelatine – with 2 sheets
left over for the New Year.
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1 happy conservator!
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1 frazzled but very happy conservator
I have
sincerely enjoyed working on this project. It has been a privilege to work on
the Archbishop’s Registers, and a pleasure to work with such beautiful volumes.
I look forward to seeing the images of all the registers available online in
the not too distant future!
Catherine Dand, Project Conservator
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