I'm Never Home These Days

I'm never home these days.  And I have loads of photos to post.

I originally thought this summer was just going to involve an intense May, but it has morphed into an intense summer.

1). Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival weekend with Heather
2). AIC Annual Meeting in New Mexico
3). a visit from Mum & Auntie Rita
4). attending a wedding in Cody (Wyoming)
5). Liang & Michael coming to Philly for a few days
6). concert, friends, and research in Ottawa (Ontario) for almost a week
7). a week in Huntsville (Alabama) teaching workshops
8). a week in Bowie (Maryland) teaching workshops
9). a week in Jackson (Mississippi) teaching workshops
10). and a college roomie reunion weekend with Liang and Big Spicy (Dara)

I'm tired.  And Cordelia Cat sulks at me whenever I return.  And I'm looking forward to returning to Ordinary Time.

Farewell Marion!

Dear Marion has since left Philadelphia for Boston (specifically Cambridge, where she will be spending a year as the paper conservation fellow at the Harvard Art Museums) and we are all heart-broken.  Before she left, co-worker Keith threw a huge fete for her.  Pictured below is Marion, with her new haircut and the Jello mold.

 Keith and Marion.

 Me and the Jello.  Translucent layer with trapped fruits, creepy opaque layer.  Actually delicious.  Everyone was totally into it.

Dürer! Me! Working!

Sometimes, at work, we just get totally awesome things. Last week we had two Dürer engravings. Two! Dürers! And I got to treat one!!!

When it comes to printmaking, German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528) is The Man. Freakishly talented as a youngster, by his twenties he was noted across Europe for his mad printmaking skills, and since that time has been regarded as one of (if not the most) important artists of the Northern Renaissance.

Self Portrait, 1500 (painting, obviously)

Like most successful artists of the day, it would be highly unusual if he cut the woodblocks for the prints himself. Most likely he drew the images for his woodcuts and then had a lower-level somebody on his team actually cut them from the block.

My art history classes were years ago, and though one particular printmaking course hit Dürer really hard, I can't be certain if he made his own engraving plates... but I'm inclined to think yes, because he spent some quality time as some sort of apprentice to a goldsmith, which would have involved engraving metal.

The Four Riders of Apocalypse, 1497-98, (woodcut)

We had two engravings, belonging to a private client, which were in pretty good condition and needed only did minor treatments. How fabulous though, to spend two days six inches away from one of these! People would just drop by my bench to look at it. The photographer told me that she admired it for about ten minutes before shooting the before treatment photograph. Sometimes I just sat there and looked at it.

Dürer's works were revolutionary. And because prints are portable and so easily reproduced (compared to things like paintings), his influence was felt across Europe. You could roughly break the history of European printmaking into Before Dürer and After Dürer.

(Please note, these are examples of Dürer's work, not necessarily images of the ones we had in the lab).

Melancholia I, 1514

Saint Jerome in His Study, 1514

These last two match the tonality of the paper much better than the straight black-and-white images do. The paper is over 500 years old, so it's going to be yellow/brownish.

Adam and Eve, 1504

Saint Anthony at the City, 1513

Tape: Don't Even Think About It

I spent the entirety of last week, at work, dealing with this thing that had tape all over it. Being that I work where I do, the thing was a work of art on paper. An important 125+ year-old family document belonging to a private client. And, at sometime in the past, some genius decided to do a little self-lamination project and cover the main area of design with multiple layers of tape. Recto and verso. With like four layers in some places! I can't even imagine somebody taping this thing back together, all crooked and whatnot, and then stepping back to admire and saying, "Damn... I did a good job on that!" It blows my mind.

Ugh! The worst part is that the design liked the adhesive of the tape so so so much better than in liked the paper. What a nightmare. I generally have a 0.1% (at the most) acceptable loss policy, but I had to opt for a 10% loss on this sucker. And I have what I like to think of as mad skillz and infinite patience. (I'm pretty sure that one time I told somebody that I have a masters degree in getting tape off of things.) But - no choice. The tape had to come off. This is what they don't really get into in conservation grad school: the degree of acceptable loss.

Stuff with tape comes in all the time. And all kinds of tape, even the kinds you wouldn't expect. Like duct tape. I think my least favorite is gaffers tape: its so hard to get off of things. Ugh - and then the stains and the sticky residue all those tapes leave behind.

So, the moral of the story is as follows. If you're thinking of putting tape on something that may be of value to your descendants, be prepared for a paper/photo conservator to charge like $5,000 to deal with it. And don't whine about the cost: it was your own fault.

Do I Do Any Conservation These Days?

Yes!

Check out what Paper Conservator Corine and I are doing in the project FOCUS at the Center's website.

Shoepalooza

The Centre employs mostly women: that's just how the field of conservation is these days. It can occasionally feel a little middle-schoolish, when personalities clash, but most of the time things are smooth sailing.

So it should come as no surprise that one day back in the Paper Section we ended up talking about shoes. Most of the paper conservators actually have small feet, but, mutant that I am, my feet are the smallest.

At this point in the conversation, one of the paper conservators (Sam) disappears beneath her bench, rummages around, and emerges with a pair of shoes. Turns out that she has a shoe-purchasing problem. Even if the shoes are a size too small for her, she buys them anyway, hoping that they will fit. She wears them once, is uncomfortable, and sadly pushes the shoes to the back of her closet.

Until now. Now she is pushing the shoes toward me. Which is totally awesome for me!

I came in to work on day, and these were sitting on my chair.

Sam is a serious swing dancer. Her dancing partner gave her a pair of shoes last year for a birthday present: they were too small, so he got her a second (properly fitting) pair. However, since he is a man-child, he never returned the too-small ones. A year later, he's cleaning his apartment and finds them. Too late to return them! Sam scoops them up, and they find their way to my little feet. Thanks for being irresponsible, Man-Child Paul!

In Which I'm on (Internet) TV

Ages ago, before it was a thousand degrees and 150% relative humidity outside, a film crew came to the Conservation Centre. They were from the online arts and culture Ovation network, filming an episode of the travel show "The Scenic Route" in southeast Pennsylvania. And the show's theme was basically "fixing old stuff." Somehow, they found us - the CCAHA.

So, we know the tv crew is coming, and that they're going to profile one treatment project, probably in the paper section. I'm one of like twelve people in that section.

Projects are being doled out.

Supervisor Mary says, "Jess K. You're assigned Converse Accession Number Whatever."

I say, "Cool."

Supervisor Mary says, "PS. Hope you don't mind being on TV."

It ended up being a ridiculously long day in which I was asked the craziest conservation questions since my grad school interview. At certain times, I don't exactly know when, you'll be able to watch the show. Follow this link, it will tell you. I kind of never want to see it. Unless, of course, I'm totally awesome.

Host David took a number of casual snapshots after the filming. Keep in mind that this was at like 4:30 in the afternoon. We had all arrived early, and had all been told what colors we should not wear (white, black, red, patterns). We all ended up wearing green and purple. Like all forty of us.

I'm really very professional, I promise.

J-man and Tamara roll their eyes at David's skillz.

He was entranced by how we use dental tools for non-dental purposes.

These images and a brief blurb are from David's show-centric blog.

Snow Day Tomorrow II

The headline at philly.com:
It's official. The latest snowfall total from the Philadelphia International Airport was 14 inches, bringing the seasonal total to record-setting 70.3. The previous record, 65.5, was set in 1995-96.

(an awesome shot from December's massive snowstorm)


















No work tomorrow either. I got a call from the director of conservation around 6:00-ish. Tomorrow's plan: house destruction, the BBC's new Emma, and groundhog cookies all day.

Snow Day Tomorrow

Philly, along with rest of the New York / D.C. corridor, is supposed to have a massive snowstorm tomorrow, beginning as of 8:00 this evening actually. The Philly Inquirer called it something like, "an explosive nor'easter" - which sounds exciting. Around 3:00 the Centre decided that it would be closed, which is great. Especially since I would be able to take SEPTA to work, but that it probably wouldn't be running by the evening. Nobody wants to spend the night at the lab, sleeping under their bench.

Third floor view, circa 10:30 pm.

Groundhog Day!

Tuesday of last week was Groundhog Day. A very important day, especially since I grew up in a little town near Punxsutawney, and often use Punxsy as a landmark to illustrate that I'm from the middle of nowhere, Western Pennsylvania. (It's quite effective).
















Groundhog Day means more than just knowing whether or not spring will arrive early. It means Groundhog Cookies. No actual groundhogs are used in the making of these cookies. Do you hear that PETA? Besides, the groundhogs in Punxsy have a awesome life.












On February 1st, Supervisor Mary said something along the lines of, "Oh, tomorrow is Groundhog Day. We should do something special for it."

I said, "Don't worry Mary. I've already got the Groundhog Cookies made."

This lead into a zillion questions about Phil; where he lives, about the secret Groundhog Society, if he is lonely (no, he has Philamina and Barney, along with other unnamed groundhogs), about Punxsy in general, how do I know these things, etc.

Anyway, the big day arrives and I bring the cookies in to work. I made a ton on the Sunday before Groundhog Day: all three cookie cutters were used. They are a huge hit: I have a zillion requests for the recipe. Everyone adores the shapes. Apparently no cookie has had so much approval ever before in the entire history of the Centre.















Everyone kept asking: Where do you get groundhog cookie cutters? To which my response was: from your Mum for Christmas, and she got them in Punxsy.















No cookies made it home from the Centre, so I had to make some more this weekend. Because I love them so. Thanks for the cookie cutters Mum!

Blackboard Pear Note

The Centre is actually on the second floor of an old ice cream factory in Center City Philadelphia, and the 'staff room' is a small loft over the conference room big enough for a sink, mini-dishwasher, refrigerator, cabinets, and lunch-room-type appliances. There is also a little blackboard and corkboard, where notes about exhibitions, concerts, and notes of general interest are left.

Earlier this week one of the paper conservators left the best note I've read in a long time. Sadly, by the time I returned with a camera it was already gone. Fortunately it was so good that I can easily remember it.

I'm not 100% sure but feel the pear is mine, so I am eating it. If it is yours, let me know. -SC

Marc Chagall

To continue with my name-dropping streak, I'll share that the same person who brought in the Renoir lithograph also brought in a large color lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887-1985).

Once again, no pictures of the particular object, but several in the same spirit.

People drop by other's benches on a pretty frequent basis. There was a visitor (ie another conservator or a technician) at my bench during the examination of the lithograph. She was trying to make some sense of the imagery, then shrugged and said, "Whatever. It's Chagall. That's how he is."

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

A recent object that passed through the lab was a black-and-white lithograph by the French Impressionist artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).

He's really famous for painting nudes.

The Large Bathers, 1887, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Other works you may recognize include:

Girls at the Piano, 1892, Musee d'Orsay

Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880-1881, The Phillips Collection

I can't post any pictures of the lithograph I examined, but it is similar in style to these two (also, subject = mother and children).

Saint-Memin

I was recently assigned, and subsequently treated, a pastel portrait by the artist Saint-Memin. Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (lived 1770-1852, worked 1796-1810) was born in France and came to North America as an exile (French Revolution business). In America Saint-Memin took up engraving and eventually ended up running a highly successful portraitist. At first he was partners with Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit, but in 1797 when Valdenuit returned to France Saint-Memin carried on with the business alone.

Saint-Memin traveled up and down the Atlantic coast, working along the way and taking the likenesses of ordinary people as well as the important characters of the day. The pink background is nearly ubiquitous in his drawings: it was a ground layer, like gouache, that he applied to the paper initially. He returned to France in 1817 when his family regain their properties and ended his career as an artist, though he was a strong supporter of the arts for the rest of his life.

Alexander Hanson, 1803-1806

Paul Revere, 1800

Thomas Jefferson (TJ), 1804