George. Thank you, Richard.
That was a lovely introduction. I must say that without Robert, I couldn't have written this presentation for you.
He very much embodies the history of Japanese conservation here at the Bodleian.
And you will. You will know why when I. When I start talking and.
We're all familiar with the with the most iconic buildings of the of the Bodleian Library.
And some of you probably know very well already the Western Library, which is the library for special collections.
But tucked away, like many precious things are, is one of the principal collections of Japan in the UK, the Bodleian Japanese Library.
The Academic Study of Japan was well established in Oxford University at the end of the 1970s,
when the Nissan Motor Corporation provided an endowment for the creation of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies in 1981.
The centre's strength in social science complements the focus on premodern history,
as well as Japanese language and literature that is found in the Oriental Institute.
In 1993, the new building of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies was constructed at 27 Winchester Road on St Anthony's
College premises and the Borderlands extensive holdings and Japanese of Japanese collections were transferred to it.
This is when the Pavilion's Japanese library was formed.
Later on, the Oriental Institute Library transferred their Japanese holdings to the Bodleian Japanese Library.
But it was only recently that all Japanese special collections were transferred to the Western.
So we have two spaces where collections are.
These collections are curated and managed by Dr. Gillian Evison, who is Portland's keeper of Oriental collections.
Mum Timmins, who no sooner do la head of East Asia and H.T. Chang, Chinese studies librarian, and Dr. Alexandre Alessandra Bianchi,
who is our newly appointed Portland's Japanese librarian, following Izumi Tyler's retirement in 2017.
It is with these colleagues that US conservators work very,
very closely to ensure that the preservation of Japanese collections are to meet the best standard of practice.
But let me tell you a little bit about conservation at the Bodleian.
The Bodleian had been repairing its collections long before the creation of the conservation section.
There had been a binding room since 1864.
The material was also sent out to local bookbinding firms.
There was also a spacious bindery since the new premises were opened in 1946, staffed with both book, binders and book and book.
So. So was by then there was a dedicated map mounted in the Maps Department and so-called repairers attached to the Department of Western Manuscripts.
One such repairer was Judy Segal, who began at the Bodleian in 1969.
By 1973, she had developed a conservation workshop and one had changed old fashioned repairs to techniques developed in the Florence workshop.
Flowing following the floods, using acidification, sizing and Japanese tissue repairs.
In 1978, the Bodleian hosted the annual conference of the Society of Archivists and David Vaizey,
then keeper of Western manuscripts and a keen advocate of conservation and who later became Portlaoise librarian,
gave three papers acknowledging the the start of a new era for our field.
In his own words, the British Library and the Bodleian Library have, despite their age, only just begun to see that conservation,
as opposed to what in previous generations was called binding and mending must
be a fundamental part of the organisation and not just an optional extra.
Vaizey was very much thinking along the same lines of Sir Thomas Bodley himself,
who who established preservation as one of the four pillars of Pavilion's core foundations.
Soon after, in 1979, Christopher Clarkson joined the pavilion as conservation officer, bringing a much wider remit to the conservation section,
creating facilities for book conservation alongside alongside the workshop for the Treatment of Special Collections.
Chris also redeployed bindery staff to repair post 1840s material and introduce our farcical system for rehousing loose papers which we still use.
And it is very, very successful, I must say.
He also implemented a boxing programme with a variety of enclosures for deferring collection needs and became
involved in all aspects of display of collections with a strong philosophical foundation created during that time.
Our Conservation Department has gone from strength to strength, overcoming the challenges imposed by times of change,
engaging with and supporting the digital shift, attracting and supporting philanthropy,
producing original high end research, teaching welcoming visitors and well moving out of the new Bodleian Building
to help design and return to our award building and beloved Western Library.
And all of these without losing sight of one of our most crucial as one of the most crucial aspects of our work, the conservation treatment.
So the physical treatment, the interventi treatment of our physical collections.
Today, I feel very proud to say that we are considered as one of the leading conservation teams in the world.
Within this period of the seventies and eighties of strong international growth of the conservation
field and beautifully encompassing the development of our Japanese library and collections,
the Conservation Department commenced a more systematic approach to the treatment of Japanese collections.
Before then, the binding and repair of some Japanese books may have been undertaken in the Libraries Bindery along with other collections.
But it wasn't until the establishment of the conservation section in 1978 and
the appointment of Izumi Tylor as curator of the Japanese collections in 1981,
that a more strategic method was taken to the conservation of Japanese special collections.
A key strength in this process has been the close links between curators and conservators.
Decisions are made jointly. Since then,
the conservation of Japanese collections at the Bodleian has been greatly enriched
by links established with Japan and in particular with the National Diet Library,
Tokyo and the Sami Shikoku Skrull Mountain and Conservation Studio in Kyoto.
The library also benefited from the advice of the Agency for Cultural Affairs Government of Japan
and received financial support from the Japan Foundation and from the Sumitomo Foundation,
respectively. Context with concert conservators of Japanese art on paper and Japanese art on paper.
Institutions have continued for many years with the Hirayama Studio, British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Freer Gallery.
And the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston may highlight a collaboration that has endured the test of time and changes.
And this is the borderlands with the National Day Library in Tokyo, which began in 1990, following discussions between Izumi Tyler Conservators,
Lucy Blanchard Blaxland and Robert Minty and Mr. Accuracy, Chief of the Conservation Division at that time in 1992.
We soon saw a very positive retort returned from these conversations when a project funded by the Japan Foundation enabled Mr. Seiji or Yama,
a conservation specialist from the National Tide Library, to spend three months at the Bodleian.
Working with Izumi Tyler, Tyler and Robert Mintel,
a survey of the Japanese collections was undertaken to identify preservation and conservation needs.
During this fruitful time, the conservation of high priority items was undertaken and conservators received
training in Japanese conservation techniques with Japanese tools and materials.
In 2001, Robert Minty received the fellowship grant awarded by the Foundation for Cultural
Heritage Tokyo to practice for a year at the prestigious Studio Museum,
Shikoku. But the body in collaboration with the National Tide Library didn't stop there.
As in 2004, Chris Clarkson and Robert Minty received the fellowship grant awarded by the Foundation for Cultural
Heritage Tokyo to practice for a year at the prestigious studio with Sammy Sugar Okuda again.
Sorry. Yes. To practice conservation and teach European techniques at the conservation studios in the National Diet Library.
There were a lot of visits and a lot of tours, and there was a great exchange situation that was created at that time, which has now continued.
But I will explain that at a later stage. The visit also gave an opportunity for our team to see the conservation and storage of Japanese
collections and to visit other conservation studios and materials suppliers in Tokyo and Kyoto,
as well as Pebble paper makers in Gifu. Furthermore, our Conservatives have attended very prominent Japanese paper conservation courses held in Japan,
organised jointly by the Ikram and the Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties.
And more recently, in December 2016,
the National Diet Library held the 27th Preservation Forum at the Tokyo Main Library under the theme of preservation in digital age.
I had the privilege to be their keynote speaker and gave a lecture on the role of the conservator
in the digital era with a special focus on our borderlands digitisation programs such as Polonsky.
The lecturer also stressed that despite the emphasis placed on the virtual library, physical collections are the subject of the digital world.
Ultimately, they are important to the people because they define our identity.
Therefore, we have a duty to continue meeting high standards of preservation and to maintain and enhance the resources to make this happen.
Also during that trip, I had a very successful meeting with Professor.
He took us to Hawaii, former president of the Japanese Friends of the Berkelium,
Dr. Larnaca Makoto, who is the current President, and Mr. Junichi Soma, Secretary and Treasurer.
This was a great opportunity to discuss future possibilities,
to continue enhancing our links with overseas friends who are keen to support the Bodleian.
We are very thankful for their loyalty and continuous effort to be part of the Bodleian
family and this presentation is very much an acknowledgement to their support.
One wonderful outcome of my visit to Tokyo was the setup of an exchange program
for conservators at Berkeley and the National Diet Lab Library of Japan,
which is aimed to share their expertise in various areas of conservation.
We expect this program to be mutually beneficial for conservators at both institutions,
widening their skill base on Western and Japanese collections and preservation methods.
As a result, Portland hosted the first exchange conservator in this program, Ms.
Kana Yamaguchi, preventive conservator who worked closely with her preventive conservation team,
learning about our environmental monitoring system and digitisation workflows.
And just in a month's time, our preventive conservator, Alex Walker,
and assistant book conservator Allie seven Evans will be spending two weeks with our colleagues at the MDL,
where they will be learning about environmental control methods, preservation, collaborations,
disaster planning and salvage of damaged materials, digitisation and carrying out practical training with the Western Bindings section.
We are most grateful for these fabulous programs that MDL have prepared for us,
and we hope that the relationship will continue so steadily for many years.
We have we have prepared a table full of materials today that relate relate to the work that we that we do.
And at this point, it's worth to say that some of those we cannot pass round.
But I will show them to you later on if you come closer to the desk.
And also Revit will lend me a hand in answering questions about them.
Some of them are delicate. Some some of those things can be toxic if open.
So we would prefer to keep you safe and the materials on the desk.
And that's the reason why we wouldn't be passing them.
But the papers are okay to touch, so I will be passing them around now before I start talking about my next slide.
Feel the three. Feel free to feel the three kinds of papers that I am showing you today,
because they they constitute the foundation of Japanese paper making all our collections.
All the collections that we hold here at the Bodleian are made with possibly very, very similar papers of these kind of papers themselves.
So have a feel for them in the lack of real collections today.
So before I show you some project highlights that we have worked on over the years,
I would like to point out that an essential fact in conservation the treatment of Japanese collections requires an appreciation
and understanding of the materials and techniques used in the production and the authorship of their structures and formats.
For example, Japanese papers or Washi, while being the word for Japan, Japanese or Japan and Shi for Paper,
have their own unique qualities and characteristics of strength and flexibility due to the type and length of fibres used in their manufacture.
They can be made from Kozo, can be Matsumoto shrubs, which are the ones the papers that you are handling now.
Why she Japanese paper is excellent to produce book covers and then papers or for books, leaves and boxes.
Furthermore, the strength of Washi makes it ideal as repair tissue, and therefore it has been widely adopted in Western paper conservation.
All the materials typically, typically, typically found in Japanese collections are paper dyes such as Yasha Combs,
which we will show you in a short while.
They are the natural yellow brown dye extracted from combs of the elder tree, which is used to to in Japan since the eighth century.
And it is used to tie dye papers, for example, in scroll mounting.
Traditionally, Yasha Combs would be used to tie dye some of the layers of paper that would compose the scroll black writings or sumi,
which are traditionally carbon based.
So origin from carbon, so extremely stable inks and achieving very deep blacks as well, mixed with nickel or animal glue as a binder.
Painting and printing colouring substances such as indigo.
So as you know, Indigo appears in different places in the world in a very disconnected way.
So while the Mexicans were using that, the Maya were using Indigo already in very ancient times,
the Chinese and the Asian cultures were already producing Indigo too, and that was apparently without without any connection between them.
So these are materials that are very,
very old and had been discovered at different times by different people in different cultures and are represented in our collections.
Other materials can be silk binding threads, for example, and so many others.
There is a myriad of materials that we want to learn about.
We don't know about all of them yet, and we keep building our library of materials.
We keep studying them through our collections. So each collection item is a challenge.
Each of them will be a bit different to the other.
And those are the differences we're interested in because they don't just pose a challenge for conservation treatment,
but they also pose a question about, do we have this material?
Do we have it represented in our library of materials? We purchase samples.
Sometimes we make them ourselves with Japanese experts or with other experts that would like to teach us and would be able to come and work with us.
And so we're building slowly. It's not a wonderful it's not a very big yet collection of of materials, but we are building it very, very consciously.
We're not in a hurry. Each time we add one material to those shelves,
we make sure that we understand exactly what we are adding and how that material needs to be looked after because it is
in our collections and because we must know before we put our hands at work to treat an object and to change it forever.
Even if it's for stability, we need to make sure that we understand what we are doing.
And so with that, with that fact comes the study of materials, not just the physical study,
the making of them, but also the analysis, the the ability to to identify them in, in our collections.
The majority of books in our special collections still have their original bindings, and the most frequently encountered problems are broken threads,
damaged covers, wormholes and damaged seal corner protectors at the spine edges of the books.
Books with broken threads can usually be resolved with without this binding the book itself as
the textbooks are still held together by their not naka doji or inner binding twists and ones,
I saw someone make them. These are absolutely wonderfully made twists of Japanese paper that are that achieve well.
They have a strength and incredible strength and they are stepped through the spine edge of the book.
And they are they constitute the real spine of the book, the real skeleton that keeps it together.
So when are the sewing threads, when other when other binding materials break and fail?
Those are usually those are lasting covers and warm holes can often be repaired in situ without these binding to in
filling holes with an appropriate Japanese paper and corner protectors can be repainted or replaced just as easily.
More complex problems, though, require much more intervention.
And meanwhile, the complete is binding of a book or an album or the disassembly of a scroll.
Structures can be very complex. So not just the materials that constitute the information, not just the colours, not just things,
but the actual supporting materials can be of a complexity that needs to be understood.
We also need to understand historic repairs and value them as appropriate.
So historic repairing conservation, not just in Japanese with Japanese materials.
That is something that we need to assess and analyse as something that we might
want to keep because it forms an integral part of the history of the object.
So there is always those questions floating about when we wonder when we are when we are studying an object before we propose a conservation
treatment of the problems commonly encountered are fragile paint layers which require consolidation to stabilise them and prevent further losses.
This is the case of Nara, John, which is what you are looking at on the screen, not Asian or NARA.
Picture books are a genre of lavishly illustrated literature, hand produced in book or scroll format in Japan from the 15th to the 18th centuries.
Literature in Nara belongs predominantly to the Ottogi Sushi, the generic name for a collection of popular short stories,
which were in circulation around the more dramatic period, which is from 1336 to 1573.
The narration in the Badlands collection are 21 volumes that date from the meat end period.
So this is the 17th century which are produced with ink colour and gold leaf on paper.
Do you think you still. Acquiring those papers.
And so one of them one of those is camping.
The volumes also have leaves decorated with silver leaf and indigo dyed paper covers decorated with gold paint.
Ten out of these 21 volumes were concerned by Robert Minty, my co-writer for today's Lecture in 2017.
Thanks to the generous funding that we were given by the Sumitomo Foundation, the treatment focussed on consolidation of fragile paint layers,
which is one of the most complex treatments in conservation in particular areas of powdery or flaking.
Go from a white Japanese pigment made from crushed oyster shells.
And I've got to go from here, which you are very welcome to come and admire at the end.
But this is the box where it comes from, right where it comes in.
And so we crush it. So we crush shells and we make these beautiful.
Why Figment? Robert tested this material, so he found it with different adhesives.
And he he tested four for stability and also for different techniques, different conservation techniques for consolidation.
And that gave us an indication of what would be the best material to use for the consolidation.
So can you imagine? I'm not sure. I think there's an image later on which I will I will show you.
But can you imagine working under magnification, looking at the paint layer of these modern books, looking at something like this?
This is an area of loss and with a very, very fine brush, sometimes treble zero, which is as fine as you can go, or four zero as I think you can.
You can go as fine as that.
Only a few hairs under magnification, applying an adhesive that's been carefully selected to reinforce the edges of that loss.
So it so media doesn't come off any more.
When we are requested items for loan, sometimes they appear to be in very, very good condition.
But when we use magnification, we many times see things like that.
And that's why sometimes we would say, well, before this goes, before this is moved,
before these is handled, any further and further damage can take place.
We need to do something about these. So consolidation, that's the name of the technique.
And that was very much the central technique, the central treatment that we applied with an eye on volumes.
So for this project, samples of one which I just showed you briefly,
were prepared in a traditional way by grinding and adding an animal glue gelatine binder.
These were painted out in thick layers to replicate paint layers found in the manuscripts
and used to observe their tendency to flake and the effects of various consultants.
A number of materials were tested to find the most effective in establishing the paint layers and the
chosen consolidated AC with based adhesive called funerary was applied by fine brush under magnification.
So as I was explaining to you, these are Robert's hands.
And I think I don't know how many hours or days or how can we count this, but it was over a year.
Definitely working on these projects, some projects that will give you an indication of the scale of conservation treatments for complex problems.
Sometimes we've worked on projects that would last just over two years, three years.
Sometimes we'll work on a project that we can turn around in one day or even four a week, for example.
So this is this is one of the complex ones that I'm sure you are showing you here and this study of pigment and find their combinations.
We have that here as well. And Robert will be able to show it to you at the end when you come close to the desk.
Our team takes a scientific approach to understanding our collections, and non-destructive analysis is often involved in our projects.
In the case of Narayanan, we used X-ray fluorescence to determine the white pigment to confirm if the white pigment was calcium based.
As we as we thought, as we have guessed, discounting other pigments such as Led White, which was also used in Japanese tradition.
Each pigment has, of course, a different type kind of chemistry and configuration.
They are very different substances. So when we apply any material that is going to mix with the original materials of the manuscript,
we don't want to do that without having confirmation of what we have enhanced chemically.
Pigments and other materials will react very differently to to what we add to what we put in that manuscript that is new and alien to it.
So we need to be very careful. And sometimes scientific examination is crucial.
We wouldn't we wouldn't move without without having that scientific confirmation.
And this is an image after conservation. The one here on the left.
This is the not. I hunt volumes in their new books.
Each of them in a new folder. And this is a project that really helped us understand this manuscript much better.
This one and similar one, similar ones from the same period are one of those ones simply that have similar pigments on them, similar kinds of media.
We were also able to establish that further research would be needed,
in particular focusing on the beautifully produced and leaves a sample or an image of which you can you can see here.
Can you have a guess of how these were produced? Anyone?
I'll give you a clue. Those. Those floral motives are embossed.
We think. Well, this is we felt we thought he was quite right.
We hadn't we hadn't seen these in the collection before, had we read it.
And we felt he was as beautiful, as rare. And we know now that it was produced with silver.
So this is silver leaf and the end leaves are completely covered with it.
And then, of course, the decorations were what produced.
So with treating the manuscript, we didn't really have time to focus on this.
But this opens a new page in the research of of this particular collection.
We tried to produce original research.
We tried to produce research that is actually going to to be useful also for other conservation colleagues, curators elsewhere.
And so far in my Google searches and asking around,
I haven't really seen a project that focuses on focuses on the degradation of silver silver leaf in Japanese collection.
So there is an open question and there is a potential research project that we we might go for in the future.
Moving on. This is another manuscript. These images show the Schwinn Jo manuscript being remounted and framed for display.
Some of you perhaps have heard about this Schwinger, which is one of Pavilion's major treasures,
and it was produced in 1613 following negotiations between Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu and the East India Company.
And it has been held at the Bodleian since the 1680s.
It is the only copy in existence, and it gave English ships trading privileges in Japan.
So such is the importance and allowed Englishmen to settle there.
William Adams, the military leader on whom the main character in James Clavell 1975 novel Shogun is based,
was the first Englishman known to have visited Japan.
He made the trade agreement with John Sarris, captain of the first English voyage to Japan on board of the Globe,
and his logbook for voyages made between 1614 and 16 1619 to China and Japan is also part of our collection.
A special event was held at the Bodleian Library in 2013 to mark the 400th anniversary of the first trade agreement between England and Japan.
Precisely. A mini symposium featuring a series of talks was organised on The Stranger in particular and the subject of international relations,
and the manuscript was displayed to the public in the old library press column.
Before these, the stranger had already been conserved for its display in Japan in 1990,
and this involved bringing it to a flat format rather than rolled.
I'm sorry that I didn't have images of these. We did look for them.
But we do know that that transformation between a scroll that is sometimes very stiff and rolled take it to a flat format,
relaxed, and making sure that it displays properly.
And it's also stable and it cannot be damaged by by different agents.
That process is complex, and particularly when we have layers of adhesive or layers of supporting materials behind it that we need to remove very,
very carefully while the object is damp, so even more fragile.
Imagine a piece of dump paper with something firmly attached to it, sometimes by very thick layers of adhesive, and imagine having to remove that.
So that's what we are talking about. And as you can see, this is a pretty large size manuscript.
And another project was the Tashima Project, which is aimed at a period at hands or in my kimono,
that describes the tale of the fisherman, Rasheem Otero, who was transported to an underwater palace as the guest of queen or to him.
The story is interesting.
On his return, he finds that hundreds of years have passed in his home village and people tell him that Shima himself had disappeared at sea,
I think, 300 years ago. I think the story says he was about 300 years ago, and so would Ashima.
After opening a magic, mysterious box that was given to him by Princess of Bohemia, he is on the ice.
So it is quite a quite a sad story. And I'm pretty sure that the philosophy behind this is phenomenal.
And there is a lot of learning to to to to be acquired from the story in Japanese culture.
However,
the scroll in which you know which is of was produced within can colour on paper measuring about nine metres long was also we were also sorry for it.
It was in poor condition and it had beautiful panels full of calligraphy and illustrations due to its age and natural degradation.
It was in very, very poor condition, as I said, and the full conservation treatment was needed by a specialist scroll manta.
So this is one, another one of the complex projects that we've been working on along the years.
So we were just not a bit sorry for the poor fishermen or Ashima, but also for the manuscript.
And we we tried our best, we worked on it and the result was really stunning in order, however,
because it is a such a treasure in order to ensure that we were we were taking the most informed approach.
We contacted the Department of Arts and Crafts of the Government of Japan,
who recommended that the conservation work to be undertaken by Philip meredith at the
Far Eastern Conservation Centre in Leiden with funding from the Sumitomo Foundation.
And so we followed the advice and the hand scroll was concerned by Mr. Meredith in 1996,
97 with a cane, and that was with participation from Robert Minty at various stages of the treatment.
This was, as I said, not a very straightforward process and involved the complete disassembly of the scroll consolidation of paint layers.
Like in the narration example that I've showed you earlier on the removal of old linings with
it just described that that damp piece of paper with adhesive that wants to stick everywhere,
removing of bits of paper, all repairs, the lot,
etc. relining so lining again after the removal and the cleaning of all those old
materials reassembly and then mounting it in a in a new wooden wooden scroll box.
So there are six images, but this is also one.
This is just the very small this is the tip of the iceberg that I'm showing you here.
One final project that I would like to show you is the conservation of SAG Harbour and excuse me,
which are printed texts of the Kansas School of Note Theatre dating from the 1608 to 1615.
These three volumes are important examples of woodblock printing printing with moveable types which were unusual in Japan during that period.
Saga Bun is made with calls of paper. Another one of the samples that you've you've been handling.
And bound with a traditional thread binding of Fukuda Toshi.
It has tight paper covers decorated with powdered mica.
Powdered mica, as you can imagine, this is another another material so exotic to us.
It was not used in Western manuscripts or Western art.
Again, something that we want to explore and study.
How do we work with powdered mica? How do we treat it? And.
It. It needed complete risk. Sorry, depicting the figures of cranes and waves, which I'm not sure if you can work out from these images.
I can see the waves here and those possibly are the cranes flying over the waves.
The volumes required substantial repairs to that soft fibrous paper,
complete re sewing and the new sheets wraparound cover, a technique called Missouri,
was used to gently humidify and flatten the leaves of the book between sheets of Japanese paper and rhythm flat on a Japanese drying board,
which we called carry body. So that is something that at Japanese conservators would make themselves.
And it requires again, it involves Japanese paper, a wooden structure to build the panel.
It requires parsimony, Jews, to be painted on it over and over again until it it has enough stiffness as well
as some porosity which helps transpire and help the the collections dry on it.
And that was the last example that I wanted to show you today, that those are just as I said,
these are just a small representation of the work that the Conservation Department's been doing along these years.
However, I'm thinking about them about conservation of Japanese collections in a more strategic way and a larger scale.
Gillian. Gillian Evison Alessandra and I have already started discussions about the condition survey and digitisation of the Japanese collections.
So that is the present and the future, not only as a way to provide the best access to them,
but also as a method to update our conservation records and help as determined current and future treatment priorities for the collection.
So the story continues, and this is why I showed you an image which isn't from our collections, but it doesn't matter.
This is a crane which in Japanese tradition symbolises longevity, everything that lasts.
And I just wanted to just say simply that we hope that our collaborations with our fantastic curators, our conservators, other institutions,
the friends of the Bodleian, the Japanese friends of the Bodleian Library, will continue, as the crane predicts, forever, as long as we can.
And I will see if I can pronounce these.
But go say to Arica Togo's. I must have been thinking Japanese.