Digital Concerns

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 third.

Dennis Pelley, the husband of my sister Jamie, died a year ago this week.  For the memorial services (and as a gift for his many friends and family members), Jamie made a beautiful Windows Moviemaker presentation that celebrated his life through family photographs and a soundtrack of some of the meaningful songs of his life.

Jamie saved the presentation on a bunch of DVDs.  A year later, some of the DVDs work fine but others refuse to play on any of our computers.  Some work on certain computers but not others.  Jamie wants me to investigate this situation because she wants some assurance that this particular family item can be preserved.  (This isn’t the blog entry that she’s requested.  I will get to it but not yet.  This is just an expression of concern.)

The digital world worries me.  So many people have digitized their photos, movies, and tapes with the expectation that these meaningful items will endure in their new formats.  But all I see are software programs becoming obsolete at a rapid pace and popular new formats quickly replacing old ones in the marketplace.  It wasn’t all that long ago that we transferred some old 8mm family films to video.  Now we no longer have a working VCR to play them on.

I have photographs from 100 years ago that beautifully evoke a very different time and a much slower pace.  All I have to do is take them out and look at them.  Meanwhile Jamie has a DVD of photograph images that won’t play on any of our computers.  It’s just a disk with a label scribbled by a Sharpie.  In just one year, the content is already inaccessible.

© 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

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

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 first.

When I used to give tours at a famous rare book library, I quickly learned that many people associate value with big dollar figures.  I’d show them an autographed first edition of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the most common response would be, “Wow!  How much is that worth?”

This may be a reasonable question for an appraiser, but it’s one that I’ve always struggled with.  The question is loaded with Antiques Roadshow anticipation.  It’s a request for a pricetag.  But let’s consider that first edition of  Moby Dick.  It wasn’t particularly valued during Melville’s life.  You could have picked one up fairly cheap.  Now it’s considered one of the great American books and a rare first edition would likely elicit a stratospheric bid at auction.  But value is a fickle thing and there’s no guarantee that this current standing will last.  Back in the days when Moby Dick was considered just another novel about whaling, books by Edward Bulwer-Lytton were very popular.  In the 20th century, Bulwer-Lytton’s value plunged, while Melville’s stock rose.  Very few Victorians would have seen that coming.

Conservators are asked these “value” questions all the time.  According to the profession’s ethical standards, they’re not supposed to respond.  Value questions are for appraisers, not for conservators.  Here’s why –

When you bring in an item from your family collection to be treated by a conservator, you want it to receive the same quality-level treatment that the conservator would bring to a Picasso etching or an illuminated manuscript.  The conservator simply respects that the item has value to you – possibly more value than you’d ever assign to a Picasso.  The item is important to you.

“Yeah.  Sure.  But will the treatment increase its value?”

Well, to consider an example from fiction, what’s the Maltese Falcon worth?  Is it just a black statuette or are there priceless jewels hidden beneath the enamel surface?  Kasper Gutman puts a value on the Falcon greater than human life.  As he says to one of his henchmen, “I couldn’t be fonder of you if you were my own son. But, well, if you lose a son, it’s possible to get another. There’s only one Maltese Falcon.”

Detective Sam Spade has a cannier understanding of the Falcon’s value:  It’s “the stuff that dreams are made of.”

Realistically, you can’t pin a pricetag on a dream… or on the items in a family collection.  I look around at our family letters, photos, drawings, and oil paintings and know that these are the stuff that dreams are made of, regardless of what they might ever fetch on Ebay.

© 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

Preserving a 1950 Playbill

“I hope you enjoy Shakespeare and Katharine Hepburn.  I’m sure you will.”

                                                                            Art Price

                                                                            Letter to June Anderson, Feb. 24, 1950

“From there we went to the Cort Theatre to see Kate Hepburn in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.  Art, I was really scared.  No one knows how close I came to leaving.  We were so high up – and I swear the stairs were the steepest I have ever seen.  I almost cried I was so frightened.  But I stayed – mind over matter.  My hands were just about cramped when the play was over from gripping the chair to keep from falling.  In spite of all this, the play was wonderful.  Katharine Hepburn is certainly a great actress.”

                                                                            June Anderson

                                                                            Letter to Art Price, Feb. 25, 1950

Rebecca Smyrl with
the 1950 Playbill.

Sixty-one years later, we have June’s As You Like It playbill in our family collection and, of course, we want to preserve it (as we’re big fans of both Shakespeare and Katharine Hepburn!).  Several years ago, we rescued a set of these 1950 Broadway Playbills from long-term storage in a box under a couch and I placed the Playbills in baggies for their protection.

Unlike the newspapers that we’ve been looking at recently, a Playbill is printed on glossy paper.  With their shiny paper, these 1950 Playbills look much fresher than the 1980 newspapers that we’ve been examining.  However looks can be deceiving, cautions Rebecca Smyrl, Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.

Rebecca points out that glossy paper can present a whole series of challenges to a paper conservator.  “Usually a tear in newsprint can be mended more easily than one on glossy paper.”  And glossy paper can pose major problems when it gets wet.  “Don’t store these anywhere near pipes that might leak or cellars that might flood,” she warns.  “It’s very difficult to salvage water-damaged glossy paper.”

I regret to say that Rebecca does not approve of my baggie storage.  “Paper needs to breathe,” she explains.  “As the paper decays, it offgases.  This is why you want to store the paper in an environment that will allow an exchange where the offgases can dissipate back into the air.  You don’t want the gasses trapped inside the baggie with the object.”

Rebecca recommends storing each Playbill in a non-acidic folder or envelope, purchased from a reputable vendor such as University Products or Gaylord.  She suggests storing them upright in an attractive shelf file, fairly tight so they don’t flop and safely away from any damaging light exposure.

© 2011 Lee Price

Newspaper Clippings

CCAHA Conservator
Rebecca Smyrl with folded
newspaper clipping.

Nowadays we simply link to a newspaper article in an e-mail.  All you have to do is click.

But back in the old days, things were a little more complicated.  If you wanted to share a newspaper article with a friend or relative living far away, you might purchase an additional newspaper, cut out the article, fold it down to envelope size, and enclose it with a personal letter.

When rooting through old letters preserved in their original envelopes, you never know what you may find.  In our family collection, I’ve run across buttons, tickets, photographs, and clipped articles, all stashed in their original envelopes.

Rebecca Smyrl, Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, recommends extreme caution with the initial examination of a folded newspaper clipping.  “The paper degrades faster at the folds,”

she warns.  “Only unfold the clipping if you’re

Folded newsprint that had been
enclosed in an envelope from
the 1960s.

confident that the paper will hold together – without breaking at the folds.”

Once the letter is unfolded, it’s best to leave it flat rather than attempting to refold it.  “Ideally, these pieces should be stored flat in non-acidic folders and boxes,” Rebecca notes.  “The creases will flatten over time.”  While the creased areas will always remain weaker than the rest of the paper, their deterioration will be slowed.  (See the earlier blog entry “Preservation Tips for Letters” for more information on flattening paper.)

Rebecca’s recommendations for storage are the same as for the newspaper preservation discussed in last week’s blog entry “Closets and Other Storage Options.”  But this raises another problem…  This storage option separates the clipping from its original context – the envelope and the letter.  As a solution, Rebecca suggests making some sort of record of the clipping (a copy or a detailed note) to store with the original letter and envelope.  Just don’t use post-it notes, she cautions.  Keep those adhesives far away from your historic documents!

© 2011 Lee Price

Closets and Other Storage Options

According to Rebecca Smyrl, Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, I could have done far worse than storing our family collection newspapers in our home office closet.  The newspapers in question are 25-year-old Wayfarers, a Bucks County tourist newspaper that I published (with much help from my father) from 1985 to 1988.  I still have around 200 of these newspapers and they have great sentimental value.

As opposed to garages and basements, a closet on the second floor of the house isn’t really that bad of a storage environment.  Safely ensconced in the closet, the newspapers receive very little light exposure and additionally benefit from being in the main part of the house where temperatures are relatively stable and humidity under control.  Therefore, thanks to my enlightened strategy of benign neglect, the newspapers have remained in

                                                                          fairly good condition.

Inevitably the newspapers will deteriorate over time.  Their highly acidic paper will eventually result in their becoming very brittle, flaking at the touch.  Affordable preservation strategies can considerably slow this process but cannot reverse the basic chemistry.

For long-term storage, Rebecca recommends interleaving the pages of each newspaper with acid-free paper and then storing the newspapers flat in acid-free folders and boxes.  University Products, a respected vendor of archival supplies, offers “buffered acid-free interleaving tissue paper,” which should be perfect for the job.  For my one-stop shopping needs, University Products also offers newspaper storage folders and black newspaper boxes.

To reduce long-term wear caused by handling of the newspapers, Rebecca suggests digitizing at least some of them.  Digitization would create a record of the newspaper content in another medium, offering one more level of preservation and accessibility in the hopes that there will be Wayfarers for future generations to enjoy in the

22nd century and beyond.

© 2011 Lee Price