The Monkey Photograph, Before and After

The treatments are finished!  This is the eighth in a 12-part series on selected conservation treatments of artwork and photographs.  "Preserving a Family Collection" concludes on August 31.

Front of photo, before.

Of all the items we brought in for treatment, I think this tiny photograph may have been in the saddest state of all.  Only slightly larger than a postage stamp, the photo was thoroughly crumpled and a corner had been ripped off, only to be pasted back on by Scotch tape – the bane of conservators everywhere.

Back of photo, after.

Tiny though it is, this picture means a lot to my sister and I because it’s the only physical memento of a favorite family story.  When our father was stationed in Shanghai in 1945/46, he was told that it was his duty as quartermaster to care for the monkey.  Since he had his own room as quartermaster, he was expected to share it with the monkey.  My sister remembers

that he never said anything nice about the monkey – a likely indication that they never became particularly close.  When they sailed from Shanghai, the monkey stayed behind to become the charge of the next quartermaster.

Back of photo, after.

Treating this photo was a two-person job at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.  Rachel Wetzel, Photograph Conservator, used a heated spatula to remove the tape and then got rid of any remaining adhesive residue with a little organic solvent and a crepe square.

Then Barbara Lemmen, Senior Photograph Conservator, received the photograph in two pieces, no longer attached by the tape.  Barb pieced it together with some wheat starch paste, adding a layer of warm and dilute photographic gelatin over the crack to help consolidate it.  She meticulously inpainted the areas of loss, using a stipple technique of little dots that appear
                                                                 as a harmonious tone from a normal

Front of photo, after.

viewing distance. 

It’s a real thrill to recover this picture and now we even have it in two versions.  We have the original, now in better condition than we’ve ever seen it before.  And we have a digitized image by Michelle Dauberman, Manager of Digital Documentation, that enables us to view this 65+ year old picture enlarged and close up on a computer screen – or even to post it on a blog.  Our family’s legendary monkey is fully visible at last!

Art Price with monkey in Shanghai, circa 1945, before treatment.

Art Price with monkey in Shanghai, circa 1945, after treatment.

© 2011 Lee Price

Minesweepers in Shanghai, Before and After

The treatments are finished!  This is the seventh in a 12-part series on selected conservation treatments of artwork and photographs.  "Preserving a Family Collection" concludes on August 31.

Minesweepers at port in Shanghai, circa 1945.

Charcoal sketch of a
minesweeper by Art Price.

As quartermaster, my father served as the petty officer in charge of day-to-day navigation tasks on several minesweepers during his service in the Navy, 1944-1947.  When he was stationed in Shanghai, his ship was the YMS6, a Yard minesweeper.  You can see it pictured in the photograph above (the ship with the 6 on its bow) and in his own drawing on the right.

The treatment of this magnificent photo of American minesweepers at port in Shanghai, circa 1946, was assigned to Barbara Lemmen, Senior Photograph Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.  There was a large tear running across the image surface along the far right side, as well as image losses along the top.

Barb mended the tear by working on the back, adding layers of Japanese paper adhered with wheat starch paste.  This was followed by humidification and flattening.

Barb Lemmen inpainting the photo.

The final step is an aesthetic one.  On a project like this, a skilled conservator is sometimes asked to inpaint the losses.  I definitely wanted this.  Inpainting reduces the distracting appearance of the damaged area.  With a talented and experienced inpainter like Barb, inpainting can make the image appear much closer to its original appearance.

First, Barb applied a layer of methylcellulose to the areas of loss – a step that enables her to paint on an inert and water-soluble surface rather than the actual image surface.  When it comes to inpainting, old photos like this require the ability to match very subtle tonal differences.  Black and white photographs often age into muted tones of green, yellow, and brown.  Barb still uses her own favorite watercolor set on most inpainting jobs, skillfully mixing them to get the colors just
                                                                                     right.

“It was against the rules for anyone to go on liberty in Shanghai alone.  I always went with this buddy of mine and usually there were 3 or 4 more of us.  Even then we never went in the old Chinese section or even down a side street at night.  Plenty of sailors, out alone with too much to drink, ended up in the river.”

                                                                                                                                    Art Price

 

Minesweepers in Shanghai photograph, before treatment.



 Minesweepers in Shanghai photograph, after treatment.

© 2011 Lee Price

Grandpa on the Lawn, Before and After

The treatments are finished!  This is the sixth in a 12-part series on selected conservation treatments of artwork and photographs.  "Preserving a Family Collection" concludes on August 31.

  

Theodore Carl Anderson, my grandfather, in the
early 1920s.

On the “June and Art” blog, I identified this photo as Theodore Anderson at Brown University in the early 1920s.  In retrospect, I could be wrong – he could just as easily be at home in Deep River, Connecticut or down south in Luray, Virginia, where he met and fell in love with Maud Clem.  Theodore and Maud were my maternal grandparents.

My grandfather mastered the dark room at an early age so it’s a very real possibility that this 8 x 10 enlargement may have been developed by him.  The image itself has held up fairly nicely over the past 80 years.

But I’m betting that he didn’t do the very sloppy framing job.  The print was mounted on a board and then the board was apparently cracked, possibly against the edge of a table, in order to tear it down to frame size.  Pen lines were drawn directly on the image surface to indicate the edges of the mat.  Then a polyvinyl acetate (PVA) white (or school) glue was smeared all over the portions of the image that would be covered by

the mat.  Finally, the mat was adhered directly to the image surface.

Eighty years later, the task of rescuing this poor, mistreated silver gelatin print fell to Barbara Lemmen, Senior Photograph Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art

Barb Lemmen using a heated
spatula to remove mat
fragments.

and Historic Artifacts.  Sometime in its history, the print had been removed from its frame and mat, leaving fragments of mat board and PVA residue along all four sides of the photo.  Barb pointed out that removing PVA can be a challenge since it is not easily softened.  She used a heated spatula to lift off many pieces of the mat board but had to leave some pieces where removal would have meant taking off some of the silver gelatin of the image.

Barb commented that the image itself has changed over time – but not necessarily in a bad way.  Originally, she said, it would have been a crisply detailed black-and-white image.  However, partly because of the acidic board it was mounted on, the colors have deteriorated to these sepia and greenish-yellow tones.  Details have been lost in the face and hands, and Barb ventured that the background has probably lost clarity, as well.  But we both agreed that these changes have added a certain degree of charm, creating an effect as if we are looking at the photo across the mists of time.

Photograph of Theodore Carl Anderson, before treatment.

Photograph of Theodore Carl Anderson, after treatment.

© 2011 Lee Price

The Dinosaur Murals

To celebrate Preservation Week, I’ll be offering three blog entries this week that offer a personal perspective on some general preservation issues.  This is the second.

Ever since I posted the Stylish Blogger Award entry, I’ve been thinking about the dinosaur murals.

In the mid-1960s, my family moved into a new house on Leo’s Lane in Southampton, NY.  I was only four or five at the time but already in the grips of a dinosaur obsession that, truthfully, exists to this day.  At that time, my favorite book was a Giant Golden Book called Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles by Jane Werner Watson.  The magnificent color illustrations were by Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Rudolph F. Zallinger.

Inspired by the book’s pictures, my father painted large murals of dinosaurs on the concrete walls of our basement.  He created these murals soon after we moved into the house and they were still there when the house was sold in the 1980s.

During the twenty years we lived in the house, we took hundreds of photographs.  Earlier this year, I went through every single one of those photos and didn’t find a single one that included the dinosaur murals – not even visible in the distant background of a shot.

It’s only natural to take pictures of the big events – the birthdays, weddings, parties, and vacation.  But forty years later, these aren’t necessarily the things that matter most.

Fast forward forty years from now…  At some future point, someone will look back with nostalgia at our lives.  And they won’t just be interested in those splashy special occasions.  They’ll have realized that the ordinary times were special, too.  I wish we had pictures of the trees in my grandparents’ backyard in Riverhead, of my grandfather’s basement workshop in Southampton, and of my childhood bedroom (with its Aurora monster models, the King Kong poster on the wall, and microscopes and chemistry sets strewn across the desk).

I’m glad I have my memories of the dinosaur murals, but, above all, I wish I had one single Polaroid of them.

© 2011 Lee Price

Focusing on Photographs

Happy Preservation Week!  Officially, Preservation Week 2011 begins this Sunday, but why not start planning your Preservation Week schedule now?

Here in Philadelphia, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts is presenting a free program:

"Focusing on Photographs:  Preserving Your Family Legacy"

This program will be offered on Tuesday, April 26, at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, 3420 Walnut Street.  If you’re interested in attending, please RSVP to Abby Eron at 215-545-0613.  (And please bring a photo ID because it’s required for access to the library.)

Barbara Lemmen, CCAHA Senior
Photograph Conservator.

Presenter Barbara Lemmen is a star at “Preserving a Family Collection.”  She helped me with the blog series on preserving photo albums, which included the single most popular entry we’ve ever run:  “The Magnetic Photo Album.”  Barb is Senior Photograph Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.

Focusing on Photographs will cover the preservation of photographic materials from 19th century daguerreotypes to contemporary digital images, with helpful tips on how to handle, store, and display your photographs.  There will be time to view samples of various photographic processes as well as to inspect currently available storage systems.

This program is just one activity among dozens that will take place in all regions of the United States during Preservation Week.  Check out this handy Google map for preservation activities near you.

Pass it on.  (Note:  “Pass it on” is the official slogan for this year’s Preservation Week activities.)

© 2011 Lee Price

Tweaks to the Inventory Database

I liked the draft database developed by my sister.  But I had a few questions, as well as some ideas for minor tweaks, that I recently brought up with preservation specialist Jill Rawnsley.

Jill, does this database structure make sense to you?

Jill:  The database make a great deal of sense to me.  Key questions to ask when developing a database are:  Who is your audience?  Is it for the public or just the family?  What level of detail is appropriate?  The answers will depend on a combination of user needs and the collection’s depth.

When we have more than one name in the “Who” column, should each name get its own line to make it more practical to sort?

Jill:  This depends.  If the name is repeated a number of times, it should be listed in the “Who” section.  But if people are only listed once or twice, you might consider putting their name in the more descriptive subject column.

Would it make sense to group dates in larger divisions in order to make them more searchable?  For instance, “early 1920s” would become “1920-1925.”  The way that it’s currently set up, first words like “around” and “early” would defeat the possibility of sorting by date.

Jill:  Whenever possible, I think specificity with dates is best.  So, your idea of 1920-1925 is good, and further detail (“Thanksgiving, 1921”) can be added to the more descriptive subject column.

Do you think we should do the “Where” column by name of twon first, followed by more detail?  To make it more consistently sortable?

Jill:  If this is a stand-alone database, town followed by more data is helpful.  If you are going to have a small finding aid companion, you can describe the use of the database and you can even tell the location of the studio or house.  I would suggest having a finding aid.

Any ideas on how to keep the identification near the photograph (in addition to the penciled number on the photo)?  Currently, most of the photographs are in 8 ½ x 11 sleeves divided into four pockets.

Jill:  I like the idea of designating one pocket in each sleeve for information on the three photos on that page.  I have done that myself.  Remember that all of your inventory lists should be printed out and several copies made.  Copies should be kept in different locations such as various family members homes.

Special thanks to Jill Rawnsley for her continuing advice and support!

© 2010 Lee Price

First Shot at Inventory

My sister Jamie has completed an initial inventory of approximately 250 photographs.  These are the photos that were pulled as being particularly relevant to the June and Art blog.

Jamie organized a “Who-When-Where-What” system in Excel.  Theoretically, each column can be sorted to easily find photos.  If I want a photo from around 1950, I can sort the “When” column chronologically.  If I need a photo of Ada Belle Price, I can sort the “Who” column alphabetically and look up at the top.

Using this system, each photograph is labeled with a letter and number with a soft pencil.  For these photos, Jamie used “A” to designate pictures of June’s youth and family life, “B” for pictures of June alone, “C” for pictures of Art’s youth and family, “D” for Art’s Navy pictures, and “E” for pictures of June and Art as a couple.  Cataloging numbers (starting at 1, working up) are assigned after the letter.  For instance, B1 is a baby picture of June from 1929.

The system makes sense but I see some minor problems in the execution.  Over the next week, I hope to consult with a preservation specialist on possible tweaks to the system.

© 2010 Lee Price

Translating the Treatment Plans

The condition reports on our family collection items were a bit scary.  The artwork, period photos, and letters from the June and Art collection were—to varying degrees—soiled, discolored, stained, warped, rippled, and torn.

But these are problems with solutions, and the solutions are provided in the treatment plan sections.  As with the condition report, the language of the treatment plan is highly technical.  I’ll hazard a few interpretations here, pulled from the many steps involved in each treatment:

From the treatment plan for a love letter:

-- Test the support and media for stability and sensitivity prior to treatment.

The support is the paper.  The media is the ink.  So this is a test to make absolutely sure that the ink isn’t going to dissolve and spread when exposed to any water or chemicals involved in the proposed treatment.  The conservators will cautiously test first before starting the treatment.  I appreciate the caution!

Art Price with monkey on his shoulder.

 From the treatment plan for a photograph:

-- Consolidate lifting edges and areas of cracking emulsion with a gelatin solution.

-- Mend the tears and re-attach fragments with wheat starch paste and mulberry paper.

This poor beat-up photograph is obviously in need of some loving care.  The picture is cracking up and there are tears breaking the image into fragmentary pieces.  While gelatin, wheat starch, and mulberry may sound like the ingredients of a snack food, these are important tools found in the arsenals of all paper conservators.  Mulberry paper is a particular favorite among conservators—it's strong and lightweight.   Wheat starch paste does the job of scotch tape, attaching one thing to another but without the inevitable long-term damage of the tape.

Fabric textures by
June Anderson.

From the treatment plan for a drawing of fabric textures by June:

-- Realign tears and mend from the verso with wheat starch paste and narrow, torn strips of Japanese paper.

The verso is the back of the paper, so the conservator is flipping the piece over and lining up the pieces like puzzle.  The Japanese paper has extra long fibers that hold everything together for a strong repair, plus it doesn’t discolor.  Only the best for our family artwork!

© 2010 Lee Price