Hello, my name is Alice Evans, and I'm an assistant book conservator at the Bodleian Library.
And I'm speaking to you from the Weston Library in Oxford, in the UK.
So that brings me to introducing today's talk titled Textiles and test: a collaborative approach to conserving textile covered manuscripts.
And our speakers are Jane Eagan and Maria Hayward. Today we are spread across three locations, so I'm at the Bodleian Library.
Jane is at Queen's College Library, also in Oxford, along with our colleague Andrew Honey, who is assisting with the visualiser during the talks.
And Maria is in Handover. Jane Eagan is an accredited book conservator and head of conservation at the Oxford Conservation Consortium,
providing conservation and collection care to the 16 colleges of Oxford University.
Jane's main areas of interest in research are the history of the book,
the description of historic bindings and the history and manufacture of paper. Throughout her work,
Jane has been able to explore textiles found in and around bindings, that she will share today.
Maria Hayward is an accredited textile conservator and professor of early and modern history at the University of Southampton,
with a particular interest in textiles and clothing, especially in the context of the Tudor and Stuart courts.
Plus, Maria's research focuses on textiles and clothes.
The practical conservation work has included collaboration with book conservators on a number of textile bindings,
such as the project she and Jane are talking about today and also recently with members of my own team at the Bodleian Library.
Between 2002 and 2012, Jane and Maria worked together on several manuscripts from the Queen's College Library at the University of Oxford,
which are still in their original velvet Henrician bindings. This work came to a wonderful opportunity to bring together the specialist knowledge from the
fields of book and textile conservation in order to repair these bindings collaboratively,
as well as allowing them to explore the historical context of the textiles and binding techniques used.
And it's this project that we've asked them to speak about and share with you today.
So thank you both for agreeing to speak and be part of these series. And I will pass it over to Maria to start things off.
Thank you, Alice, for that lovely introduction and for the invitation to Jane and myself to speak to you today,
Hopefully you should be able to see our first slide.
And so here we have two images of Henry the Eighth,
The portrait is probably this image that is more familiar to people showing Henry in his full Tudor magnificence.
However, in comparison, the smaller image is one that may be less familiar.
This is from Henry's own psalter. And it shows him sitting reading.
Now, Henry isn't the first English monarch to be associated with books.
For instance, if we look at Edward the fourth, he was a patron of Caxton and a major collector of early printed books in particular.
But if we think about Henry the eighth, he was a published author, a keen reader and one reader who annotated his books.
So you know exactly what his response was to what he was reading.
And most importantly, he was very well aware of the political significance of books and of print. In the 1530's the king's great matter,
promoted a search for information at the English court,
in particular information that would support the king's bid for a divorce and the annulment for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon,
and as a consequence, he actively acquired books at this point.
In addition, as a consequence of the dissolution of the monasteries, which took place during the mid-to-late 1530's,
he acquired considerably more books as the monastic libraries were emptied.
The key items were collected and brought back for the king,
and it's in the context of these acquisitions of monastic books that Jane and I are speaking to you today.
And now I'd like to hand over to Jane. Excellent.
Thank you, Maria, and thank you Alice. It's a pleasure to be speaking to you today from the Queen's College, part of the University of Oxford.
There we go. The college was founded in 1341 and is, as Alice said,
is one of the 16 colleges with historic library and archive collections that is cared for by the team at the Oxford Conservation Consortium.
Next slide. Amongst its 60 medieval manuscripts, Queen's College has seven covered in red or black velvet,
thought to have come from one of the libraries of Henry the eighth, as Maria has told us.
I'm showing here a list of the seven with the colour of the velvet, the contents, provenance and current manuscript number.
Next please. The link to the Royal Library has been made on the basis of physical similarities to books known to have been there,
and evidence such as the short title inscribed on the first page of the manuscript and the manuscript fore-edge titling piece where it survives,
which you can see, both of which you can see on the slide. I'm showing manuscript 323 with the
short title on folio one in the characteristic humanist script at the Upper Right.
And a detail of the fragmentary manuscript fore-edge short title, which survives on this manuscript.
The seven Queen's books are part of a very small corpus of 24 manuscripts still in velvet Henrician coverings in UK institutions.
The Queen's group is significant as it is over a quarter of the total group of 24. Of the larger group,
which have come down to us with velvet bindings,
some have been repaired and some of these repairs we may see as more suitable and successful than others.
It is evident looking at the group as a whole that approaches to the handling of the different materials of construction,
particularly the textile component, have varied. Only one of the seven Queen's manuscripts had been treated before the project we're describing today,
most likely in the 1980s. I'm showing on this slide one of the red velvet bindings and its opening initial.
For comparison with the previous slide. Yes.
Textile bindings are relatively rare and pose a challenge for the book conservator.
We are not very used to dealing with fragile historic textiles used as covering materials.
The project at Queen's, funded by the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust,
gave me the opportunity to work with a textile conservator and historian and for us to share techniques, knowledge and skills.
I hope you can see on the slide how textiles present different problems when damaged compared to a leather covering.
Next. Between 2002 and 2012, Maria Hayward and I undertook the conservation of six of Queen's Henrician manuscripts,
that ten years period feels like quite a long time ago. And for us both, the work had to be scheduled around other activities and commitments.
The project carried out together led to opportunities for further collaborative conservation
work and raised interesting questions about the material evidence of the Queen's bindings,
both of which we'll touch on later. Next.
The Queen's manuscripts were in a variety of condition states.
Manuscript 323. The glossed Luke from Reading abbey was the most damaged of the six manuscripts treated and the first manuscript we worked on.
So I'll go into some detail about that treatment.
It is a 12th century parchment manuscript in a 16th century inboard binding covered in black velvet.
The textbook was water damaged and where the leaves are blocked together, they have been torn when the book was used.
Both wooden boards were virtually detached and connected to the textblock only by the sewing thread still in the fold of the endleaf bifolium.
Next please. The tanned sewing supports had become inflexible and had broken, resulting in losses.
The principal problems for me to address were structural instability due to mechanical damage, board detachment and blocking of the leaves through water damage.
All of this made for a very unstable object, which was difficult to use.
While these problems are alarming, they do arise in book conservation.
Next please. When considering options for the treatment of Manuscript 323,
one option would have been to dismantle and resew the book.
But this was a last resort.
In the end, I resewed the book in situ, that is without removing the previous sewing and sewing supports. To reattach the boards,
new linen braids were placed over the tanned supports and secured by the new sewing threads, which you can see at the top.
The braids extended onto the outer face of both boards where they were adhered.
The resewing in situ was possible as the manuscript was relatively small and thin,
the sewing was very loose and there was no chance of the repair materials altering the physical properties of the binding.
Importantly, this consolidated textblock, supported the broken stiff sewing supports while keeping the 16th century sewing intact.
The block corners were separated mechanically, using isopropanol where necessary, then reattached in place.
The remaining fragment of tail endband was secured in place with thread hitches,
and the unravelled threads from the headband were wound around a new core of linen cord to prevent loss.
A slotted linen spine lining was pasted to the spine and extended onto the outer face of the boards to aid reattachment.
The treatment stabilised the manuscript without major disturbance of the existing structure.
Repairs were reversible and could be removed if necessary. Next please.
However, a large loss of spine covering with fraying and curling edges was very vulnerable, and the repair materials were visible on the spine.
The next phase of the treatment was to stabilise the textile covering, and you will hear more about that from Maria.
Next please. Treatments of the other manuscripts followed, and it became obvious that Manuscript
323 was different to the others, which retained earlier binding structures and materials.
I'm showing here Manuscript 313 with its medieval sewing structure and Romanesque
lacing through channels in the board edge. A very different structure to manuscript 323.
While working on 323, there were signs of an earlier medieval binding, such as redundant sewing holes on the spine,
thread impressions within the quires,
including from the structural endband, turn-in impressions and stains which did not match the velvet covering and its turn-in.
The current binding of Manuscript 323 with its thin, doubled sewing thread,
use of tanned leather for supports, endband cores and fore-edge clasps straps,
and the blue and pink endband work for the front crossover stitch appeared to be later.
These materials and structure pointed to the removal of an earlier medieval binding and creation of a new one,
most likely at the time of recovering in velvet and possibly due to the poor condition of the manuscript.
Next. As work progressed on the other manuscripts, I began to see more of how the recovering for Henry
the Eighth had been done. Whilst the sewing and boards were in good condition.
These seem to have been left intact and the new covering textiles simply pasted onto a binding stripped of its original
covering, metal furniture and endbands. Where it was possible to see under the current paste-downs, traces of parchment,
alum tawed skin or tanned leather, plus paste layers could be seen, evidence of original materials which were removed or covered up.
In this slide, you can see the concealed remains of the earlier binding materials and the lacing of a structural endband core left in place
but covered by the velvet turn-in, and that's on the upper right of the slide.
The lower right image shows the endband core lacing of manuscript 302 alongside the 16th century blue and
pink replacement endband found in six of seven Queen's manuscripts and others in a larger group of twenty four.
Next, please. I could go on at some length describing how the original binding elements were
removed and how this was cleverly concealed and the bindings made to work.
Let's just say the binders were creative and covered their tracks by discarding
concealing and making good. I'm showing here manuscript 313 with the medieval sewing, which you saw earlier.
Parchment pastedown on the left board was once the second leave of a bifolio sewn to the textbook. The first leave has been removed,
and the second leave turned over and pasted onto the board with the spinefold intact.
The detail on the right shows a small piece of the now missing conjointly or original pastedown, I believe.
Since the end of this project, I have been measuring,
recording and comparing the binding features of the larger group of 24 manuscripts looking at covering techniques,
removal of medieval binding materials and noting the manuscript size and textile colour and their relationship to the choice of metal furniture.
Examination of the recovering for Henry the Eighth shows some care taken, but it was, for the most part, very hasty work.
It's clear that the refashioning of the bindings was carried out quickly and that certain features, board squares, blue and pink endbands,
the choice of two styles of gilt metal boss, edge and corner pieces, plus
luxurious looking velvet coverings were used to create a suitably impressive and aesthetically unified library for the king.
The underlying structure, however, tells a different story.
The binders left their mark on the manuscript through their techniques and the materials and conventions of that time.
I'll hand over to Maria now. Thank you, Jane.
And next slide, please. So as Jane has mentioned,
we were working with a combination of the objects that we had before us and the surviving documentation that remains of the Royal Collection.
So the inventory that was taken as the Palace of Whitehall and 1542 provides this with two lists of books.
Now these are alphabetical by title, and they also have a numerical system incorporated within them.
And James Cawley, who's done a huge amount of work on Henry the eighth Library,
identified the significance of this list and how to map it onto the surviving books within the Oxford Collection and elsewhere.
Now, while the list is very useful in terms of titles and has been used to be able to identify the books,
it is significant what they don't include. And one of the things that they failed to mention is anything to do with the bindings.
So in that sense, it's only when you have the objects in front of you that you can tell that they chose to
create this decorative scheme of just covering some of them in red and some of them in black.
In addition, as Jane has mentioned, they have the decorative book furniture and also a little label was placed on the front,
which included a listing of what was within the book, and it was often etched with a green ribbon.
So in that sense, the study of the object greatly enhances our knowledge beyond what we would get if we purely looked at the documents alone.
However, elsewhere in Henry's inventory, such as the list of books that you can see on the right in this slide and we are given information about the bindings.
And so in this case, much shorter in terms of what the books are about, in fact, no mention of what books are about, just a number.
But it does tell us that they were covered in purple velvet garnished with silver and gilt,
and another two books that were garnished, covered with black velvet and garnished with silver gilt.
So in that sense, it shows us also that the clarks recording the information kept different information in relation to different sets of books.
And ultimately, what's most important is when you can combine the objects with the inventories,
you get the the greatest amount of detail and the most insights into how the royal libraries worked.
Next slide, please. As Jane was mentioning, the binders,
or rather the individuals who removed the previous bindings and put these textiles onto these books clearly worked at speed.
And so in that sense, what was important was the overall visual impression that these books created,
rather than something that really bear close scrutiny for really high quality work.
So if you look closely at the fabric and you can see that they haven't taken a great amount of care to align the weave. Equally,
you can also see that where the fabric has been turned in and adhered to the boards, that these edges aren't particularly neat.
One final thing that you can tell on some of the bindings is which direction the fabric was used in.
And you would ideally expect that they would have it so that the warp, the main threads running
from the top to the bottom of the textile, would be going from the top to the bottom of the book.
And indeed, that's what you see on a number of the boards, but not in all cases, which suggests that for some items,
they used to scrap a fabric in the way that it fitted best onto the book, rather than necessarily taking the weave into account.
And of course, they didn't necessarily need to worry that much about the direction,
because of course, the textile was supported by the wooden boards that it was adhered to.
We can also learn some other things about the book, the bindings, and this was one of the main aspects of the project, was documentation.
So in that sense, we looked at examples which should be investigated, what fibres have been used.
And in that sense, the warp and the weft were linen, but the supplementary pile warp was wool.
So in that sense, we have a pile fabric and we have it with cut single height pile.
But it isn't the expensive silk velvets that we are finding in other contexts within the Royal Collection.
So in addition to discovering that these bindings were applied quite quickly,
we can also see that they were applied for visual effect while keeping costs down.
We had some dye analysis done on the warp, the pile rather, from both bindings.
So for the black, we found that these were a tannin based dye, possibly gall oak or alder black applied with an iron mordant.
And where is the red was another dye. Next slide, please.
As we went into the investigation of the dye analysis and fibre identification,
it meant that, and this actually is quite a good example, if you look at the binding on
the right, you can see how the binder didn't align the weave that carefully,
in that sense, you can see that there was sort of some quite pronounced lines on the binding and they are not straight.
And in that sense, clearly that was not an important consideration. Speed was more important and the little sample on the right.
This is a sample of the pile from 317, and it shows that again, the pile wasn't necessarily dyed that evenly or effectively.
Next slide, please.
If we concentrate on this black binding in a little more detail, we can also see the sorts of condition issues that the textiles posed.
And so Jane has run through various of the problems that she encountered.
And for me, the challenges were related very much to the types, the nature of the materials,
but also the way in which the textile have been, the textile interacts with with the book.
And so in the case of the black bindings, we found that there was more pile loss than there was on the red bindings.
And this is probably related to the black dye that was used with the combination of the tannin based dyes and the iron
mordants having a damaging effect on the wool fibres, making them brittle and ultimately resulting in loss of pile so revealing the ground weave.
We also have examples of colour change and colour loss on both the black and the red bindings.
And as this example shows, we can see that we actually have areas of loss of the textile in the areas
of the bindings that would have been handled the most, either when the book was being read or equally,
if the book was being retrieved from storage, whether that was off the shelf or if it was from within a box.
So next slide, please. As Jane mentioned,
we had a few at the outset that we needed to devise a treatment that would work for a set of books that would be undertaken over a period of time.
And so we decided that it made sense to dye a range of materials at the outset of the project that would work for both the red and the black bindings.
And so we chose a range of fabrics, in particular the range of cotton support fabrics of different weights and weaves along with
a range of silk crepeline which was dyed again in a range of colours.
The idea being that because of the way in which the colours are degraded,
it meant that we could then or I could match in the patches to suit the particular colour in a particular area on the binding.
And that overlays could be used to influence how the patches looked.
So in terms of both to make the colour match a little bit more subtle,
but also to give a suggestion of it was closer to the original woven appearance of the textile.
Next slide, please. So this is here to give you a sense of how the work was undertaken.
And for many of the areas I used support patches that were made up of several layers of textile. In particular the reason
for several layers was partly in order to create something that had enough substance to allow it to support the fabric,
but also to function as a sort of a surrogate for the binding, especially in the spine area.
And equally, the combination of layers allowed me to get a more subtle colour match and also to
suggest, to create a suggestion of the original sort of structure of the textile.
And as this slide indicates,
you can see that one of the challenges was working around the book furniture and also being able to insert the patches under
the existing binding and then being able to support what remained of the fragmentary binding on the spine.
Next slide, please. Here you can see the same book, but with the treatment further progressed.
And this gives you a sense of how it was possible to support the fragmentary remains from the spine of the book onto the support patch.
As you can see, very careful pinning was important in terms of keeping the patch aligned,
keeping it in position, and it required regular adjustment to just sort of check the tension on the support area.
And in terms of the order of the work, I started on the sort of the long edge, but in the middle,
working out, towards each ends and then a question of turning the patch under and creating a neat edge.
Next slide, please. Let's say this, the slide is designed to highlight one of the challenges with this project.
Many of the patches were in either in areas where there wasn't much space to manoeuvre
or there weren't really areas that you could anchor your support patch into easily.
So, for instance, in the bottom left corner, you can see where I'm finishing the patch off at the bottom of the spine. The area that I would
ideally like to tuck my patch under and into has that the the metal corner plate in place.
So it's a question of devising a way round that.
Equally, in the patch above, you can see that this is where the patch goes around the edge of the board.
And again, one of the challenge here is getting an effective tension on the little patch that has been inserted.
Thank you, Maria as well. It's lovely to see your photos and then think back to the, watching you do your treatments.
We're very lucky, thanks to Matthew Shaw, the Librarian at Queen's.
To have three books to show you under the visualiser. The first one is the largest of the three.
It's also obviously the one that you've seen earlier on the slides and the one in the red velvet binding.
So it's a great, I think, a nice shot of the very characteristic look of these bindings with the five sort of circular bosses.
Always in that sort of same pattern of sort of distribution across the boards.
This is a 13th century manuscript written in England.
Peter Lombard's commentary on the psalms.
The area that Maria was talking about earlier, where there would have been a sort of short title label under a probably horn can be seen on the
upper side where Andrews is pointing now.
So we have an area that is less faded. Maria,
I don't know whether you want to say anything about that, but I guess it shows the sort of full strength of the colour of these books.
Yes, absolutely, it is really. It also sort of indicates, doesn't it,
that that label was lost relatively recently in terms of the fact that we can still see that unequally.
That was the other virtue of when you were doing your work and you were able to see all of the sort of turn in areas on the other
side that often gave us a good indication of what original colour or a close indication of what the original colour had been.
Absolutely, yes. Andrew, I wonder if you can just show the, we're still staying with that view of the upper board,
but I wonder if it's possible to show the clasp straps which are pink stained
alum taw and four out of five of the red textile bindings that Queen's have
those, have that material used for the clasp strap.
And that's partly why it's interesting that manuscript 323 had the tanned clasp straps,
so obviously there's a bit of a change of treatment of them.
And you may not be able to see it and it might not be worth trying.
And in fact, that might have come through a little bit better on the slides.
But this does have a fragment of the blue and pink endband at the head, but it's very tiny, so.
Yes, you can just about see it there. Great. So, Andrew, if you would open the left board.
please. The upper endleaves were disturbed and only the paste-down remained.
If you could turn to the first folio, that would be great.
Just so that people can see what the text actually looks like. There was a rather large suction pleat vertically through the first folio, so,
that was one of the things I had to work on to make sure that was resolved during the treatment.
What you can see there is also a bifolium of new calf parchment, which was sewn through to provide some protection to that first folio,
which had been unprotected and was becoming suction pleated, as I said.
So I noticed the other day when we were looking at these that that's taking on the undulations of the textblock, so it's quite nice to see.
On that left paste-down, if you can show the detail of the paste deposit that remains where the fore-edge short title piece would have been.
So again, it's a feature that we were looking for that is of interest.
And obviously they didn't survive that well, obviously the paste having dried out and the little label disappearing.
So it's very nice to see it when it does survive. And back out to the upper board of the left board please.
There was a central split in the wooden board, probably related to the nailing on the central boss.
This was repaired with gelatine and parchment splits,
and there was also structural work to do. If you could possibly show the spine. Structural work to do for the first sewing support.
And that is covered up by Maria's beautiful infill, about which you might want to say,
Say a few words. Yes.
So one of the challenges with all of these infills to do with the spine as opposed to the edges of the board,
was ensuring that the patch was sort of substantial enough, that it sort of had its own sort of presence as it were.
And it sort of emulated the original fabric that was used for the spine,
but still needed to be flexible enough that it would sort of move with the book when the book was opened.
And so this was one of the big challenges in terms of creating these.
The other challenge, of course, was thinking about what colour to make them,
because as you can see from this angle, it's very difficult to match to any one colour.
There are a variety of different colours that are now apparent in my area,
so it was a question of choosing a compromise that sort of worked for the area in question.
But that was certainly one of the big challenges that we had when we were looking at these.
And again, why we often went for these sort of compound patches to try and also give a slight sense of the texture so
that it wasn't quite as smooth as some of just the plain cotton poplin by itself. Thank you Andrew.
We might move on to that a little bit, but that was one of the things that I found very,
very interesting in working with Maria was that that aspect of matching materials by not just colours and not just a block of colour,
but looking at texture as well and surfaces. So that was really nice
Yes, we are going to swap to the next one please. That is manuscript 317, which Maria showed during treatment.
Thank you.
So the text for this manuscript is the gospels of Matthew and Mark written in the 12th, from the 12th to 13th century, possibly at Reading Abbey.
And if it was not written at Reading, then at least it came to the Abbey after the booklist of 1190, circa 1190, was compiled.
It's absent from that list, so just a bit of pre Tudor history, and I'm obviously quoting from Peter Kidd's manuscript catalogue.
Andrew, could you open the left board and show the Reading Abbey ex libris, please.
Not exactly sure. Yes, there it is, right there. Yes.
So that is a sort of form of a curse, which brings anathema on the person who removes the book from the library.
So quite interesting in itself. You can see it's a slightly smaller manuscript.
It's sewn on slit alum tawed support. And this is one that obviously retains its medieval structure and has been recovered on entry into the library.
If you wouldn't mind shutting it, please, again, there's the same arrangement of bosses, corner and edge pieces.
But the design is different, so it is again the gilt copper alloy.
But that kind of half domed and I think much simpler than
the bosses that appear on the red velvet, which are
more complicated and have those sort of excised areas where you can see the textile through this, I think are sort of more simple.
And you can see that they're fairly crudely made.
So that, I think, is interesting as well. And there is this relationship between the metalwork and the textile covering.
So the red ones have these sort of more delicate, more decorative metalwork and the black ones have this sort of rather more,
Oh, I don't know. Rather more simple, simple type of boss.
The treatment of this was relatively similar to manuscript 323, which I described in more detail during my presentation,
but again, as is so often with the conservation, it's a question of the detachment of the boards usually.
So I did a similar sort of work to reattach the boards.
And, Andrew, could you show the fore-edge of the left board, for the detail of that. But as it turns, you'll see that, Ah yes that's quite clear,
On the sort of board edge, you can see a small fragment of paper label, which apparently had the shelfmark S13 and dates to the late 17th century.
So. In terms of the treatment, Maria and I had a discussion about this, and obviously we want to remove that,
we weren't quite sure when that might have been put on, and perhaps it had been put on after the 17th century.
But still, the edges of the damaged textile in that area were stable and we decided that we would not,
there was no need to sort of infill that area to stabilise the textile edges.
Is that correct, Maria? So that piece has been left as is,
And yeah. And in fact, we might have used a little bit of paste just to put down those edges.
But in fact. Yes, thanks, the next one please. Got my eye on the time I think we might need to speed up a bit.
And the last one is the Manuscript 323, the gloss Luke, written in the 12th century, again with the Reading Abbey ex libris.
This book is in the Reading Abbey booklist, so was in the library during the 12th century or in the Abbey anyway.
The list actually mentions two glossed Luke manuscripts,
one described as in corio presso meaning in a stamped leather binding,
and the other one has no binding description.
And if you, Andrew, open the left board, I'm hoping that you will see the impression and staining from an earlier leather covering.
Oh, so if you could turn the paste down as well?
Can you see that? Anyway, there is a leather impressions and staining,
so I am wondering, I was wondering whether 323 might be the Reading manuscript in a 12th century blind stamped leather binding.
Yes, thanks. All along. You can see how badly water damaged it was. And also how, as Maria was saying, how
relatively little care was taken with the alignment of the fabric, and making the turn in sort of neat and equal in size.
Andrew you could close that now. Maria mentioned quite a bit about the problem of loss of pile and in this manuscript, Maria,
we talked a lot about at one point whether there would be a kind of overlay or something to try to keep the pile
more closely associated with the book. But in the end, I think you felt, is that right, that that would not be
a good way to go for this. I think it was that sense that,
the reason it's losing its pile, so, you know, being predominantly the impact of the dye that was used.
I don't think that putting the overlay on would stop it losing pile, and it would actually be quite sort of disfiguring,
it would sort of obscure the appearance of the book and there would be the question
of how to sort of trim it around all of the book furniture and the sort of fabrics
the textile conservators tend to use for overlays, especially silk crepeline, wouldn't be very easy to hem around these,
and it wouldn't be possible necessarily to tuck it under these.
So I felt it was better to leave it without the overlay and that we would suggest sort of
guidance to readers on how to handle this and how to be sort of careful with it when using it,
rather than to just sort of obscure that detail. And as you say,
one of the other things that we had quite a lot of conversation about was the whole
question of when we were thinking about the colour match, were we going to colour
matched to the colour of the pile, so a blacker shade, or, although in some
cases that had sort of changed, or whether we were going to go with the ground weave,
which had taken the dye considerably less well as it was, you know,
the cellulosic fibres didn't dye as well with the dye that was intended for the woolen pile as it was all dyed in a piece.
And so we ended up with something that was paler. And because we did try out a sort of a much stronger black, and it,
it was very jarring because it was just too intense compared to the sort of discoloured and rather faded, and then sort of, and the areas without pile.
Thank you, yes. I just wanted to point out one last thing on this. Andrew
if you tilt the book up and we look at the spine, you can see that Maria has put some very small stitches around the sewing supports.
When we first looked at the book after her treatment, the infill, because it was so large had a tendency to sort of gape.
And it just worked really well that we both thought, oh,
we can use the slotted spine lining of aerolinen underneath, to kind of, as
an anchoring point for those around the supports. Also gives quite a nice, I think,
Maria said, I remember, gives quite a nice indication of the underlying structure, makes it look a little bit more book-like, you know.
Exactly that sense of the tension of the insert on the spine is quite challenging in that it's got to be
smooth so that it can go under the edge where it's flush on the board.
But there needs to be enough sort of movement, option for movement within the
actual area that goes across the spine, so that the book can actually open.
And so this is also that sense of coming up with a treatment that actually ensures that this can function as a binding rather
than something that's just going to be sort of static where you might devise the thought of a slightly different treatment option.
So Jane and I are going to use the next couple of slides just to sort of reflect on what it was like to work together.
And Jane has already alluded to some of the things. So here,
I think this side sort of summed up two key things that struck me about our collaboration.
The first was that we used two complementary vocabularies.
You know, we both had our own terminology to do with textiles or to do with books and their bindings.
And for me, one of the pleasures was learning all of the technical terms and appreciating the
significance of the actual structure of the books and how the binding works.
And the other thing, and that's what you can see here, is the value of discussion.
We spent a lot of time talking about the project before we started and at all of the key stages.
And certainly one of the key things was working out what needed to be done when, so that we were both able to do
the work that we needed and that we both had the access and that neither of us blocked the access to the other.
So those were certainly the things that in that planning stage,
I found very important. Were there things that you also thought at that point, Jane, I'm sure there were.
Yes. I mean, I'll just echo on your thoughts, really. It was just fantastic to rather than, you know,
trying to make your way through with material you're not very familiar with, to have someone who
is familiar with those who also understands the context so well was really fantastic.
And it was great to be able to make some baby steps, observations of the topics as well.
So it was fantastic experience. So, yes.
Next slide, please. So here you can see one of those classic photographs the conservators take when they're sort of mocking up,
looking at digging, and this is why we were experimenting with various colours and combinations.
So here you can see some of the cotton poplin fabrics,
some of which have silk crepeline overlays that I use just to sort of lift, to stop the poplin looking quite so smooth.
That sense of debating over, do we want for this, this patch here on the spine,
do we want something that matches sort of to the spine or, but then will inevitably look slightly different to what's on the front board.
You know, which area do you make your colour match to, so very
much sort of thinking about the weights of fabrics and the colours of them,
and it's at this stage where I'd initially thought that I would, you know, that the poplin would be fine.
It then became very apparent that we needed to have, or I needed to have something more robust behind it and so the these support patches,
especially for any area in the spine, sometimes might have multiple layers in order to get something that had the degree of rigidity,
but suppleness that was needed. And if we could have the next slide, please.
And so for me, it was very interesting, Jane and I were looking at this recently and in one for me,
obviously you can see where I've got the patches placed in around the edges of the binding.
But for me, what I found absolutely fascinating about this project was being able to work after Jane had done her work.
And so here we can absolutely see the wonderful job that she's done on the spine.
And as she was saying when we started with many of these volumes, they were very difficult to handle and very difficult to open.
And so very difficult to access the contents of.
And as a consequence of the work she'd done, you know, became, you know, it became a fully functional book again.
And in that sense, that was one of the things that I found was the nicest part of this
project was being able to follow on from someone's really amazingly skilled work.
So I think that's probably the last of the slides there, but we have a few more, so our next slide, please.
And these are very much Jane's. Yes.
Yes, and just to add to that last slide. Yes.
The sort of differing skills and approaches came together, but there was one vision as well so that I found very, very, very satisfying.
I think, so to be able to work with Maria and watch her very skilled work and then for us both to come together about what the the aim of treatment was.
So I think that was a very nice thing to to look back on.
But going forward, I'm happy to say that we carried on collaborating.
And since the Queen's manuscripts, we've worked on this small velvet binding for Keble College,
which you can see before treatment in the upper left and midway during treatment in the lower right.
With Maria having chosen the infill material and starting to do her very beautiful and careful stitching to support the spine piece.
And next slide. And most recently, we worked on a Hebrew manuscript for Lincoln College, Oxford.
I should really hand over to Maria, because the treatment of the stripey, narrow ribbons was really quite challenging, I think.
And in fact, it was also a challenge to.
Devise a housing solution that will actually keep those conserved ribbons intact, so Maria would you like to say a little bit about it?
I mean, I think the top slide is quite revealing. Yes,
I think probably the main thing was that when it arrived and what you can see on the left
hand side shows that how these sorts of small decorative elements can become damaged,
you know, through use and storage. And they are lovely examples of 18th century striped ribbons that you don't tend to get surviving in other contexts.
So. And it was surprising when we started, we didn't think there was not much left.
But once I untangled them and humidified them,
we found that actually there was quite a significant amount left to the point that they then posed an interesting challenge, as Jane said,
for the storage solutions. So yes, they were lovely to work on, small but fiddly.
Next slide, please. So I think it just remains for us to show some acknowledgements and thank the Bodleian library and
centre for the study of the book for asking us to contribute to this fantastic series of talks.
Thank you very much. Yes, thank you.