One of our Preservation Unit interests is the impact of our work on the environment around us. We’re interested in implementing sustainable initiatives in all aspects of preservation work—any steps to change both our habits and typical procedures are worth taking. Understanding the goal of preservation helps when considering sustainability in our operations. Our aim…Continue Reading Library Preservation and Sustainability: Part 1
During the summer of 2020, the staff of the Preservation Unit was working from home. Being home did limit our access to collections material and force us to create a make-shift studio in a spare room, but thankfully we weren’t the only ones around the world having to adjust to this temporary stage. Many Conservation…Continue Reading Summer Webinar Series Recap
This is the last part! If you’ve followed the adventure since the start of “Fish Leather” till now, you’ll have seen the entire progression from raw fish to finished book! How exciting! Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2 first, and let’s dive right in, shall we? 7. Leather Prep Now that my book…Continue Reading Assembling A Fishy Book: Part 3
This is Part 2 of 3 in my adventures of creating a book using fish leather. In Part 1, we divulged the hidden sewn skeleton of the book, showcased the importance of end sheets, and created a mock gilt edging of the bookblock. In this part, more attention will be on shaping the bookblock and…Continue Reading Assembling A Fishy Book: Part 2
For more information on the origin of this project, please see the “Fish Leather” post. In order to use as much of the fish leather as possible, I decided to do what’s called a modern half leather library binding style. This style uses leather for the spine, and sometimes, the corners of the covers. The…Continue Reading Assembling A Fishy Book: Part 1
The Challenge Answering a petition by Peter Verheyen, of the BookArts group, one of my projects this summer was to showcase the versatility of the material of fish skin, through experimental research. The BookArts Bind-O-Rama project was to craft fish parchment or fish leather and make something out of it. By doing this project, it…Continue Reading Experimental Archaeology: Fish Leather
I came from a background of archaeology, and there’s a saying that an archaeologist creates their own tool-kit, borrowing tools designed for other fields. Conservation and Preservation tools are essentially the same. As the trade is still developing, there are so few tools designed for our work specifically that we often amass a hodgepodge of…Continue Reading 10 Unusual Tools on our Preservation Workbench
Image from the American Institute for Conservation website In this, our first post, we’re going to discuss two common questions about our field. What’s the difference between Preservation, Conservation, and Restoration when it relates to material culture and heritage? Are Conservators and Conservationists the same? Hopefully, by the end of this post, we’ll have cleared…Continue Reading Preservation, Conservation, or Restoration?