Paper can become so brittle that it will crack and split apart when folded. If bound, brittle paper may crack or break at the binding edge. Edges of brittle paper may break with just a touch or crumble completely away when more force is used. Burning can destroy it. Paper can tear, discolor, darken, or be stained so severely that its content is obliterated. Biological agents can also destroy paper: insects use it as food, rodents soil it or shred it for nesting, mold stains it and breaks down its internal structure. Humans also damage paper in ways ranging from simple wear to malicious destruction.
Of all paper problems, brittleness is the most frequently encountered in American libraries and archives. The amount of paper that will eventually become brittle has increased with the development of modern paper manufacturing techniques and materials, especially from the mid-1800s. Since at least the nineteenth century, lamination, a manual repair or treatment, has been used to strengthen brittle paper. Lamination is a general term for any kind of layering and adhering thin sheets of any material together. in conservation, when a stronger sheet is adhered to a weaker sheet in order to strengthen the weaker sheet, the process is called "lamination". in this chapter, lamination and other treatment techniques will be briefly described as they developed in Western Europe to the turn of the century and in the United States to the 1940s.
In her history of American library conservation between 1876 and 1910, Higginbotham makes a distinction between two traditions in conservation history. the first or library tradition is from libraries and concerns published, multi-copy, non-artifactual materials that are usually bound. The library tradition tends to be more concerned with circulating a book as many times as possible before it is discarded. The second or archives tradition from archives, rare books, and museums concerns itself with unique materials of artifactual value that may or may not be in bound format. the archives tradition endeavors to keep materials indefinitely. According to Higginbotham, these traditions remained separate up to at least 1910 when her study ends (Higginbotham 1990, 163-176).
Protection of documents is a basic concept of archives conservation. Protection can be achieved in a variety of ways. One important archival protective technique is to restrict use of the document, since use deteriorates documents. Out of this restriction a related concept has evolved, that of substitution. Original documents were copied or facsimiles were made by some technical means, such as photography, and these copies were used or studied while the original documents remained protected in storage. As the problems of brittle paper became more general, archives and libraries developed and expanded the concept of substitution into "reformatting" or "information conservation". in reformatting, brittle and unusable paper is copied by older technologies such as photocopy or by new technologies, such as scanning, to make entirely new items. The originals of the items reformatted are often not retained. Various reformatting techniques have been developed to enhance copied images. Reformatting can produce multiple copies that may be distributed to and purchased by other institutions and individuals or distributed electronically.
The archives tradition in conservation of flat paper documents stressed the cleaning and strengthening of fragile flat paper and the repair of voids and tears. Repair of tears of voids was also applicable to book leaves and bound mss. Treatments included washing the paper to remove dirt and stains. Washing consisted of the gentle submerging of the fragile paper in water. Only documents with stable inks were washed. Washing sometimes reduced the amount of sizing in the paper, thereby changing its surface characteristics. The washed sheet was dried and flattened under a weight, and was then usually re-sized using gelatin with alum added. After the washed sheet was dry, repairs to mend tears were made. Voids in paper were filled-in using paper that had been pared and beveled to blend seamlessly into the missing areas. The best repairs used paper that matched the original sheet as closely as possible in weight, color, and texture. Sheets of translucent paper or fabric were often laminated to the front and back of the repaired original to strengthen it. When silk gauze was used to laminate the repaired original, the process was called "silking". The translucent tissue sometime chosen for use in lamination was the chemically stable paper hand made by traditional methods in Japan. It was usually chosen though because of its strength, flexibility, color, and transparency rather than for its chemical stability. The resulting document sandwich was held together with starch paste. Repaired and laminated documents could then be bound, matted and framed, or simply returned to the collection in their original folder or container.
An important concept in conservation today is reversibility of treatments or repairs; "reversibility" requires that anything done to an artifact to repair it be removable without harming or even changing that artifact. Reversibility is central to the archival tradition that stresses keeping the original, and not as important in the library tradition based as it is upon multi-copy, non-rare collections. Archives tradition emphasizes the primacy of the artifact itself (the work of art or the document); it seeks to protect the artifact above everything else, even above the repair made to the artifact. Complete reversibility may not be attainable in practice. Usually chemical changes are not reversible. Conservation treatments that change the chemistry of an artifact are not reversible and such treatments are now used more cautiously than has sometimes been the case in the past. Therefore, chemical treatments are inherently controversial and are acceptable now only as treatments of last resort. The concept of reversibility developed as the field of conservation matured into a profession. The seeds of the reversibility concept were present in the early history of restoration although it was not clearly articulated (Higginbotham 1990, 167). in the history of conservation practice, chemical treatments have sometimes been embraced as quick and easy cures for the most difficult problems. The story of Barrow's career in lamination and alkalization is no different.
The history of the archives tradition in conservation of paper documents is obscure, even though it would be reasonable to assume that paper documents have probably been repaired from the time of paper's invention in China almost 2000 years ago. Evidence of restoration techniques before 1850 comes only through a careful examination of the treated artifacts themselves. It was not until the late- 1800s when large libraries, church archives, and national or other governmental institutions with collections of ancient or rare artifacts of cultural or monetary value began to establish in-house restoration units that restoration techniques were recorded.
Evidence from the artifacts themselves shows that translucent paper, usually referred to as tissue, was used to laminate deteriorated documents since at least the mid 1800s. First evidence of such techniques in the literature appears in 1837 in the United States and in 1858 in Europe (Marwick 1964, 42-50). Another material, silk gauze, appeared to be used almost simultaneously with tissue in lamination techniques on both sides of the Atlantic. It added more strength to the document and usually was more transparent than tissue. Tissue had some advantages though: it could be written on and it was inexpensive. Both tissue and silk added weight and bulk to the document. The paste used in laminating the document to tissue and to silk was susceptible to attack by mold and insects. Since strength and translucency are usually inversely related, the strength of either the tissue or silk used would be limited. Since tissue was paper, it was subject to the same deterioration as was the document it repaired. Silk, like tissue a processed organic material, was also subject to rapid deterioration (Horswill 1986). When laminated to documents, silk can yellow or darken, become brittle rapidly, crack, and break as well (Nixon 1949, 33-34).
Father Franz Ehrle, Prefect of the Vatican Library from 1895 to 1914, publicized silking as a restoration technique in his writings and through a 1898 conference he organized on restoration. He credited the first use of silk to Carlo Marré, a restorer in the Vatican Library (Marwick 1964, 68). Ehrle's conference on restoration techniques held in Switzerland at St. Gallen was widely reported in European journals and its proceedings were thus distributed to the United States (Higginbotham 1990). According to Marwick: "[Ehrle] publicized well and effectively....Silking's adoption by the Library of Congress, and its spread from that influential institution, are attributable to him" (Marwick 1964, 85).
The restored document needed to be repaired again, each time these traditional materials (tissue or silk) deteriorated. Re-restoration could harm the document further. The document was immersed in water to dissolve, or at least soften, the paste and then the tissue or silk and remaining paste scraped off the document. a document with unstable ink or fragile paper would not survive this process.
Materials other than Western tissue and silk were also used in lamination. a translucent paper that did not have all of tissue's disadvantages because of its fiber source and manufacturing techniques was Japanese paper made by hand in the traditional way from the inner bark of several varieties of mulberry shrub native to the mountains of Japan.
Plastics were also applied in lamination; the most widely used was made of cellulose acetate. Cellulose acetate was developed in France. By the turn of the century, it was made into a transparent foil that had hundreds of applications (Marwick 1964, 120). Its transparency made it an attractive candidate for application in lamination as well. Although lamination with cellulose acetate did not require the use of paste (Marwick 1964, 121-122), the actual process of lamination with cellulose acetate was harsh and destructive. The document was sandwiched between sheets of cellulose acetate and then subjected to both high pressure and high heat. The plastic foil was thus melted and forced into the document itself. Cellulose acetate lamination is extremely difficult, and in some instances impossible to reverse (Nixon 1949, 33-34).
Cellulose acetate was first applied in restoration for lamination of the leaves of deteriorated books at the New York Public Library (Baker 1981). By 1934, it was recommended by the National Bureau of Standards to preserve newspapers, Photostats, and archival records (Kimberly and Scribner 1934, 1). in 1936, the National Archives began using cellulose acetate lamination to restore documents in its collections. The laminating press used by the National Archives was an industrial-sized steam-heated flatbed hydraulic press weighing several tons. It required both a cool water system and large amounts of electricity to run. As described in a National Archives bulletin, cellulose acetate lamination appeared to be a cure all. Once the document and cellulose acetate foil sandwich reached the appropriate temperature, the foil softens and the hydraulic press squeezes the melted plastic into the pores of the paper document. in the process, the press also seals the edges of the overlapping plastic together to give a plastic edge around the document so that it can be handled, hinged, or bound safely (Minogue 1943).
Barrow studied and used the traditional methods of lamination using tissue or silk at the beginning of his career. the development and application of cellulose acetate lamination in restoration happened just as Barrow was establishing himself in the restoration field. at this time, he was open to innovation and interested in ways to improve his techniques, increase his production, and maximize his profits. He actively followed developments in cellulose acetate lamination, studied its materials, their characteristics, and the equipment it required. Barrow modified and adapted cellulose acetate lamination to his own uses under the guidance of the National Bureau of Standards, the Government Printing Office, and the National Archives. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 detail his modifications of cellulose acetate lamination and his attempts to patent these adaptations and profit from them.
Other, less universal restoration processes existed in the early history of archival conservation. Library and archives literature documents both long-lived traditional methods using good hand skills with paper and paste, and short-lived fads that used various chemical treatments.
The best known, at the time, of these traditional methods was backing or lining. Backing involved mounting or pasting a fragile one-sided document onto a sheet of strong, new paper. This technique is in general use today, especially for works of art on paper.
Paper splitting is a variation the backing technique used for two-sided documents. Fragile paper was strengthened by carefully splitting it in two, front from back, and then pasting these sides together again on either side of a strong sheet of new paper. Paper splitting, obviously, required great manual dexterity and probably works well only for papers retaining a measure of their original strength. Today, paper splitting has been revived and mechanized by Wächter in Germany (Banks 1999).
Another technique is encapsulation. It is one of the most reversible methods used. a document is fully encased in translucent or transparent materials that were adhered only at the edges without the document being adhered in any way to the encapsulating material. Encapsulation's reversibility makes it the treatment of choice for protecting brittle documents today.
Restorers also attempted to save the contents of fragile documents by wetting water-soluble inks and transferring the ink under pressure onto a sheet of translucent paper or tissue. Ink transfer produced a mirror image of the original and was read through the translucent tissue from the back of the sheet. This technique was also used as a copying method. Ink transfer technique removed some of the ink and could damage or destroy the documents if improperly used. The harm caused by ink transfer, combined with the inherent weakness of the translucent tissue used, limited the utility and application of this technique.
Stains were removed in a variety of ways, by rubbing the stain with abrasives, by washing in a water bath, and by placing the document bath in the sun for "sun bleaching". All of these techniques are still in use.
Early chemical techniques, involving treating paper with various chemicals in order to bleach it, remove stains, and darken faded or discolored inks, were generally destructive to the treated documents. Increasing the strength and flexibility of fragile paper was also attempted by coating it with a variety of transparent compounds by immersion, spraying, or brushing. All such coatings were eventually discredited because of a variety of defects, which became evident over time, including darkening and discoloration, fading of the documents' inks, brittleness, and offensive odors (Marwick 1964, 112-119).
None of these chemical treatments were considered successful. The bad experience restorers had with bleaching stains, darkening inks, and coatings may have caused a general and accurate mistrust of chemical applications in document treatment. By the early 1930s, when Barrow began to study restoration, with the exception of bleaching, only the traditional, non-chemical methods of backing, patching, paper splitting, and tissue or silk lamination remained in general use. These hands-on techniques as well as those of photographic copying or reformatting, housing, and storage — such as binding, matting and framing — were available to practitioners of document restoration.
By the late 1800s, all these traditional archival restoration methods were general knowledge; therefore, restoration shops had to distinguish their products uniquely to insure their financial viability.
The development of one such shop foreshadows the development 40 years later of Barrow's own business. Francis Walcott Reed Emery was a bookbinder and manufacturer of blank books in Taunton, Massachusetts. By 1891, Emery also laminated fragile documents with tissue. Sometime between 1891 and 1894, Emery added silk lamination or silking to his products and attempted to patent his lamination process in 1894. His attempts were initially unsuccessful because silking was not considered novel (Marwick 1964, 71). He changed his product to add uniqueness by lightly coating the silked document with paraffin wax. His was thus able to achieve a patentable product (Emery 1896, Patent No. 561503). Chapter 9 details Barrow's similar attempts to achieve novelty status for his own lamination process and product.
The Emery silking process was highly regarded by many, and was accepted as a standard restoration procedure well into the 1930s. Others rejected the Emery process altogether because of its use of potentially harmful, oily paraffin wax (Higginbotham 1990, 164). The Virginia State Library sent their deteriorated records to Taunton, Massachusetts, to be restored by the Emery Record Preserving Company (Report of the Librarian 1930). Dr. McIlwaine was unsatisfied with the process as well, not because of its ingredients, but because shipping documents out of state for treatment exposed them to the hazards of travel (Report of the Librarian 1931).
The library conservation tradition included an emphasis on hand bookbinding, binding by machine, proper storage conditions for collections, and protection of the collections from destruction and damage from fire and floods. Higginbotham concludes from her study of library conservation that, "with the exception of photoreproduction and atmospheric controls; almost all contemporary measures were practiced in libraries a hundred years ago. One could contend that local . . . [conservation] procedures have changed very little, that the similarity between modern and Victorian techniques is striking. . . ." (Higginbotham 1990, 193). By the 1930s, libraries made extensive use of photographic reproduction of fragile materials both in standard photography, in microform and Photostats. The Virginia State Library, for example, purchased a microfilm camera at about the same time that Barrow set up his restoration shop there (Report of the Librarian 1932).
Higginbotham does not mention the important dissimilarity between conservation in libraries and archives now and in the Victorian era, namely Barrow's innovation, prevention of deterioration through alkalization of acid paper. Her point though is well made: library and archives conservation today is similar as well to the practice when Barrow entered the field in the early 1930s.
When Barrow began to study restoration it was considered to be a craft. Practitioners were not required to have a foundation of scientific knowledge. Book and paper restorers acquired hand skills, learned in apprentice settings, not in formal education programs. Even though scientists at that time knew that acidity in paper increased its rate of deterioration and that an alkaline reserve in paper increased its chemical stability and therefore its permanence, library and archival restorers remained ignorant of this knowledge. Restorers thus based their choice of materials and processes not upon scientific analysis of chemical properties and tests of long-term stability, but on personal experience with the material, knowledge of its immediate practicality, present appearance, availability, and cost. Barrow's life and work opened the world of restoration to a chemical understanding of its materials (Shahani and Wilson 1987, 240-241).
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