Conservation Training

On the first morning of conservation training we were tasked with cleaning and repairing dust jackets from the George Orwell collection. We used a goat hair brush and vulcanised rubber sponge (soot sponge) to remove as much dirt as possible. We then assessed the item for damage, and if the damage was fairly small we could repair it ourselves.

I flattened some creases with a bone folder, but worse creases or tears required Japanese tissue made from Kozo (mulberries) to be re-moistened like a tape and stuck on the crease or tear and then weighted down for 5-10 minutes.

Another thing to remember is to put down the special paper (Bondina) so the adhesive strip doesn’t stick to the table. We also used pure cotton blotters between the area being repaired and the weights.

Once cleaned and repaired, the dust jackets had to go into melinex pockets. I cut the melinex to size (with some difficulty maintaining straight lines at first), then rounded one of the corners so it could be opened easily.

Inside the melinex I put the item and a piece of acid free paper with the box number written on it. This is important as the items are not catalogued yet.

I asked where the books are as I found it strange the dust jackets are being kept separately. They have been removed, and the books are in the archive, or in storage at Kew, or maybe in the library. Really the dust jackets were removed because some are fragile I think, but we are not sure why all, even modern duplicate ones, have been removed. The dust jackets are now items/works of art in their own right, as well as a bit of a mystery...

We moved on to more complex paper repairs of holes and tears in the paper using Japanese tissue:

We then learned a new technique to adhere the Japanese tissue to the paper. This uses ethanol instead of water for when you want to have a drier adhesion, for example here where the ink is highly pigmented on the cover. Use a brush to apply the spirit to the tissue and then do the same as above.

For these blue covers, I have to dab with the soot sponge, as quite a lot of blue ink was coming off of the paper: