5 CONSIDERATION OF TREATMENT OPTIONS

THE DECISION to alter an original format of a valuable artifact is reached only after careful consideration of a variety of conservation and curatorial concerns. The approved proposal for the Huejotzingo Codex called for disbinding the manuscript to conserve the text, removing the Indian drawings for treatment and separate housing, and reversing the silking in order to reintegrate the loose leaves with the text in the appropriate order. Numerous scholars of early Mexican manuscripts as well as Library curators were consulted during the formulation of the proposal. Not one historian objected to the removal of the drawings from the sewn format in order to better preserve them. Conservation of the codex was always considered to be of primary importance. Interestingly, a proposal to disbind the manuscript in order to improve the condition and housing of the drawings was first made to the Library in the mid-1940s by Stella R. Clemence, the Manuscript Division historian who first studied the Harkness collection.13