School Trip to Dublin–Library Visits 3: Trinity College Library

I don’t think I need to say much more than I went to Trinity College Library:. Suffice it to say it lives up to its reputation. Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed in the library or exhibitions, so the first few photos are gleaned from the Internet:

After spending time in smaller stall libraries like Duke Humphrey’s Library (Bodleian Library at Oxford) and Marsh’s Library, this place is HUGE. I heard someone at Trinity call the long hall The Cathedral to Books. This hall has two stories of books…most of the oldest books are stored here.

Down below, two volumes of the Book of Kells ware exhibited (one opened to St John’s Carpet page, the other to text in St. Matthew). The Book of Armagh (I served a good chunk of my mission in Co. Armagh/ Co. Down) and the Book of Howth were also on exhibition. They were all fantastic and definitely worth the free ticket the good folks at Trinity gave us for to see the exhibition. :D

Alrighty. The rest of the photographs are mine:

Most old books recycled used manuscripts for flyleaves/pastedowns, which I just think is fun.

School Trip to Dublin–Library Visits 2: Marsh’s Library

Marsh’s Library was the first public library in Ireland; founded at the beginning of the 18th Century by…ok I didn’t listen as well as I thought–I already forgot. OK, I googled it. How could I have forgotten a name like the Archbishop Narcissus Marsh?! (The librarian tells us his brothers names were Epaphroditus and Onesiphorus…and his two sisters were named something like Dorothy and Mary. Haha).
Marsh’s Library has had the same head librarian for longer than I’ve lived…and while she showed us the books and the garden, we didn’t even get to set foot in the conservation department! Grant it, it’s a three-rooms-stacked-three-stories-high (one room each–they had to build it up in order to fit it at all), but still…I guess somehow she didn’t quite grasp that we were particularly interested in conservation and the care for the collections…based on what I saw..I felt very sorry for the books. But it’s fabulous that this library still even exists and is intact…and perhaps over time the conservation program at Marsh’s will thrive.

Outside Gate to the back door.

The library was a chained library, and it has two main halls, each with a domed ceiling. Emphasis in these early chained “stall” libraries was to invite light into the library so the reader would have natural light for reading. Three hundred years later, we know that light causes cumulative irreversible damage to organic materials (such as leather and paper in books)…and now all these fantastic libraries have to have the windows fitted with UV filters and other measures taken to protect the books from light exposure.

The UV damage to the spines was evident. I felt like they would disintegrate if I looked at them too hard. But it’s a miracle this library/collection has survived intact…at one point the library was completely dilapidated…

These books have been rebacked, with whatever leather remained being placed over the good leather. There’s enough work left for this library to keep a conservator busy for a lifetime.

Pretty vellum books

Where the books used to be chained. The bars across the bookshelves have only been there a couple decades. Unfortunately, people still like to steal rare books. Maybe we should still chain books in libraries ;)

The stalls: legend has it that this is where scholars were locked to do their research–so they wouldn’t steal the books.

Another cage.

School Trip to Dublin–Library Visits 1: Chester Beatty Library

Last week (Mon afternoon-Thursday night) we went on a study trip to Dublin. I served my mission in Ireland, but I was only based in Dublin for 6 weeks, and that was in the suburbs. I went back to Ireland in the spring of ‘05 as a tourist, but I was with two other friends and we only spend one day in Dublin–and I was too shy to find my way to Trinity Library and try to get a behind-the-scenes look at the conservation department, etc…

So this time was complete wish fulfillment! We visited four libraries/archives: The Chester Beatty Library, Trinity, Marsh’s Library, and the National Archives. All of them spent time with us and gave us tours of the collections/conservation facilities. Well–three of them, anyway…

Chester Beatty Library:
The Chester Beatty Library was fantastic! Their exhibitions rival in presentation quality to the British Library. We were lucky in that we arrived just a week after their latest exhibition went up. I’m going to keep saying it: the collection is glorious to behold.

Chester Beatty was a self-made American gold-mining millionaire of the early 20th century…He collected books–looking especially for one-of-a-kinds and beautiful bindings (Eastern books were especially attractive to him). He found them. The collection is small compared to some libraries, but excruciatingly beautiful. Beatty moved to Dublin later in his life, and passed away at a ripe old age in I think it was the 1960s. He left his library to the people of Dublin. It’s a small library, newly added-on-to, with a nice informative video telling about him (which is why I was able to give you this scoop). The level of funding is apparent, and I suspect put to good use.

The collection is small (compared to the National Archives or the British Library), and so is the conservation team. Currently, there are two paper conservators, one book conservator, and one student. I think I would love to work somewhere like this, though–where each item is gorgeous and there’s enough time to really baby a book when treating it.

Unfortunately no photography was allowed in the exhibition space, so you’ll all just have to go see it to believe me, but here are some photos from our tour of the conservation department:

If I remember correctly, this is the earliest known Turkish Koran? It is not in its original binding.

(Turkish Koran again)

The detail on these pages, when viewed in person, is incredibly fine

Dublin Castle viewed from the entrance to the Chester Beatty Library

Leather Identification

I mentioned in my other blog that a couple weeks ago as part of my studies at West Dean College I participated in a “Professional Conservators in Practice” course where we had a bit of a crash course on leather conservation. My favorite part was learning how to identify different types of leather–i.e. what kind of animal it was, and how it was tanned. After a basic briefing on what to look for, we were given 13 unlabeled specimens and a list of the 13 types of leather, and then we went to work identifying them. Here are the leathers with their answers:

(more text giving a bit of description to come soon)

Conservation Before and After: Victorian Nursery Rhymes

This was my first project to finish at West Dean. It took me ages to finish, for a couple reasons. One, I was learning and therefore didn’t really know how to proceed without consulting my instructors. Two, it’s pretty hard to find time at the bench, what with field trips and lectures and work placements and all those other kinds of things students do. I finished it perhaps a month ago, though I’m still writing the condition report–which has proven to be a pain! So, sparing you the boring long description of what I did (since it’s still not all written yet!), I will just let the photographs speak for themselves:

Well, okay. I’ll give a little bit of description : ) In the above photo, the original sewing was loose, which caused the book to fall open at this spot, and was causing stress on the leather spine of the book. I had to remove the book from the case and remove all the spine linings in order to pull the loose thread through to the spine and paste it down. I also reshaped the spine to a nice round, since it was a pretty wonky shape and hindered proper function.

Here is a detail of some of the mending I did. The old repair ad to be removed with humidity, and while most of the book was only dry cleaned, this particular page was very stained, so I washed it in-situ by placing the page on a vacuum wedge and humidifying the page with a hand held humidifier. The idea was to loosen the dirt by moving moisture through the page and down into the blotter that was between the page and the vacuum table. It worked quite well!

More mending. This was one of the more complicated ones. Paper is typically mended with strong long-fiber paper (generically called Japanes tissue) and starch paste. It’s quite an art form, selecting the right weight tissue and using a strong enough adhesive to bond the paper, but not so stiff that the mend is crispy–because then the soft page will just tear right next to the crisp new mend.

The broken leather was repaired by lining the case (while it was separate from the book) with a tinted Japanese tissue. Then the weakened parts of the outside leather (which was ridiculously degraded–nearly everything from the Victorian era is acidic thanks to the Industrial Revolution) was reinforced with a tinted Japanese tissue.

The boards were reshaped by gently humidifying the case (while off the book) and drying it under weight. The bumped corners were put back down with paste, and tinted tissue replaced missing bits of fabric and leather.

As you can see, the leather darkened due to humidity I had introduced in order to release the flyleaves from the book. The leather was so degraded there wasn’t a whole lot I could do… The book is functioning again and fairly robust, but because of the state of the leather, I made a clamshell box in which the book will live forever more.

Ta da!

Just a quick note

To say that I’ve added to or created the following pages:

Coptic Stitch

Decorative Techniques and Plaquettes

Paper Case

Vellum Bindings

Books Covered in Paste Paper

Historically, bookbinders made a lot of their own decorated papers. The most common decorative techniques were probably marbling and paste paper. There are other historical decorative paper techniques, such as printed papers, but those require more equipment.

My brother asked what paste papers are for. In a nutshell, they are used for book covers. But I’ve also seen it lining the inside of old furniture: drawers and wardrobes. Today it is still made and used in bookbinding. I love making paste papers, and I actually do use them in my bindings all the time.

Paste paper making is pretty much glorified fingerpainting. A bookbinder might have a batch of wheat starch (or any other starch) paste that they need to use up before it spoils. They would simply add a bit of pigment to the paste, brush it out onto some paper, and either leave it at that, or draw designs into the paste. The displaced paste leaves a 3-dimensional pattern, and although the paper dries flat, the visual depth remains.

I have a terribly time-consuming habit of hunting for images of decorated papers and bindings on the internet, so I figured I may as well share, since I know I would love to stumble onto this kind of collection online. For copyright information, click on the image and it will take you to the original source. (Some of these I downloaded years ago and so I don’t have the sources anymore–I apologize to those to whom I should give the credit!)

This page may grow as I find more. Either that or I’ll just post a follow-up at some point…

The following pastepapers / books were made by me:

Paste Papers made by BYU students

This was a class that I helped to teach at BYU about a year ago. I apologize for the poor quality of some of the photographs, and some of the papers are still wet. But still I thought I’d just go ahead and post all of them, since I know I crave samples of paste papers. Someday I’ll get around to writing a paste paper tutorial…

You can also see some of my own paste papers here.

Where I can share Bookbinding, Printmaking, Art …and Other Visual or Tactile Delights

Hiya! Thanks for stopping by my blog. I have a passion for bookbinding, printmaking of all kinds, and all other things tactile…and for this reason I’m finally starting a blog where I can post photographs of my work and share other amazing websites that I have found. This is in the very early stages of development, and since I’m a full-time grad student, it may be at least six months before I really have it going. But do take a look at my pages and enjoy!