preservation week
Mounting Andy Warhol’s Polaroids
“Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?”—Andy Warhol
Meet the Staff: Jane Boyd and the art of the paper lab
Meet the Staff is a blog post series on Cultural Compass that highlights the work, experience, and lives of staff at the Harry Ransom Center. This installment of Meet the Staff is released in conjunction with our series for the American Library Association’s Annual Preservation Week, which highlights work in the Ransom Center’s preservation and conservation division. [Read more…] about Meet the Staff: Jane Boyd and the art of the paper lab
Pforzheimer library receives proactive conservation assessment
In 1986 when the Ransom Center acquired the Carl H. Pforzheimer library of early English literature, with books dating from 1475 to 1700, the book world gasped. The Pforzheimer library was the outstanding private collection of early English books available, and the acquisition of this exceptional private library of carefully selected rare, and in some cases, unique books in extraordinary condition, represents one of the Ransom Center’s great achievements in book collecting.
The Ransom Center first acquired Pforzheimer’s copy of the Gutenberg Bible in 1978, one of the most interesting of the 49 known copies of the bible. Rich in both provenance (early annotations place our copy in a fifteenth-century Carthusian monastery) and textual variations (including unique type settings), it is one of the greatest treasures here at the Ransom Center. When the Pforzheimer library arrived eight years later, it continued to impress. It contains the first book printed in English, by William Caxton, titled Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, all four Shakespeare folios, deep holdings in Chaucer, Milton, and Spenser, three copies of the King James Bible from 1611, and the 1535 Coverdale Bible, which is the first bible printed in English, just to name some of the highlights.
The Pforzheimer books are significant bibliographically, intellectually, and culturally, thus the conservation department is proactively looking after their preservation needs. The conservation department has performed previous condition surveys on this collection, but this time we wanted to have a more comprehensive approach. The previous efforts were analyzed, the current curator of the collection was consulted, and the new survey was designed for a wider capture of information that will inform not only conservation needs but curatorial interests such as bibliographical data, bindings, provenance, and metadata. This particular survey will examine all 1,100 books in the collection, in order to address its conservation needs. The survey will be complete by the end of 2015, and the results will be shared publicly.
The Pforzheimer Library is the most frequently used early book collection at the Ransom Center, with many teaching faculty in the humanities using the collection for their classes and several visiting fellows researching within this collection. And with the arrival this year of the new curator, Gerald Cloud, the collection’s use is certain to increase and attract a broader audience.
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Here lies Gloria
One of the most unusual items in the Ransom Center’s collections resides within the Gloria Swanson archive, and it’s as challenging as it is amusing. The “sugar coffin,” as it has become known, was given to Swanson by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger, in response to a lawsuit filed by Swanson against Anger.
A little backstory: When Anger wrote his salacious tell-all-book Hollywood Babylon he included a chapter on the death of Lana Turner’s boyfriend, mobster Johnny Stompanato, who was killed by Turner’s daughter. In the chapter, Anger mistakenly quotes Swanson as saying Turner was “not even an actress… she is only a trollop.” Anger was apparently unaware that when it was first printed by Hollywood gossip columnist Walter Winchell, Swanson had the quote retracted.
When Swanson was alerted to Anger’s use of the false quote she filed a libel suit against him and his publishers, but before the verdict was handed down, Swanson began receiving hate mail from Anger, including voodoo dolls and mutilated photographs with pins stuck through them. Anger knew Swanson was a serious health fanatic (William Dufty, her sixth husband, wrote the book Sugar Blues), so he filled a green, foot-and-a-half-long coffin with sugar, writing Hic Jacet (Here Lies) Gloria Swanson on its lid.
For the Ransom Center, the challenge was how to preserve a coffin full of sugar? The Center’s Curator of Film wanted to keep the object in its original form, so the coffin was encapsulated in Mylar to prevent the sugar from spilling out. After many discussions we decided to remove the sugar and place it into several polypropylene bags.
Unbeknownst to us, Anger had another message for Swanson. As I was removing the sugar, I noticed there was a word in Hebrew printed on a piece of newsprint that translated as “shalom.” No one at the Ransom Center had seen this before or knew that it was there.
Consequently, I encapsulated the newsprint in Mylar, placed the polypropylene bags with the sugar inside the coffin, and constructed housing for the object, an amazing item to have in the Ransom Center’s care.
Read related Preservation Week 2015 posts.
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Texas insect ID flashcards go global
When boxes of collection materials arrive at the Ransom Center, conservators and archivists gather at the tables in the quarantine room in the basement to inspect the contents, looking for insects and the telltale signs of them—as well as for mold, another great enemy of archives. Leading the effort is Ransom Center Book Conservator Mary Baughman, who trains personnel to recognize signs of insect infestation. Below, Mary shares a recent department undertaking that may humanize the insects but will also make them more recognizable during inspections.
Upon the arrival of collection materials at the Ransom Center, the first order of business is for staff to inspect the collection carefully—under the diligent leadership of one of our conservators—for signs of insects or mold, or any other damage that could jeopardize our collections. These inspections are important affairs, for it’s critical that we not introduce pests or mold into our stacks.
In looking for instructional materials to educate and identify insects, I turned to MuseumPests.net, a comprehensive international resource for collection managers. Every institution has insect challenges of some sort. In fact, MuseumPests.net is the result of the efforts of the Integrated Pest Management Working Group, a group of collection managers, conservators, entomologists, and other professionals interested in issues surrounding the implementation of integrated pest management in museums and other collection-holding institutions.
While exploring the MuseumPests.net website, I located a set of amusing and informative insect identification flashcards created by students of Sir Sanford Fleming College’s Museum Management and Curatorship Program in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
Inspired, conservation department volunteer Meaghan Perry and I decided Texas should have its own flashcards depicting insects in the state that attack collection materials. I penned the text, and Meaghan created the images; MuseumPests.net entomologists vetted both.
Identifying and understanding these insects is the first step in preserving our collections. We’re pleased to depict these Texas insects during Preservation Week.
The flashcards can be downloaded from and MuseumPests.net.
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