While all the books, documents, and objects that we receive in the lab are interesting and exciting, artists’ books are definitely a crowd favorite, especially amongst the technicians. When Holly and Ashleigh come back from the PLCH rare books meeting and announce they’ve brought back some artists’ book we all get a little excited and know that there are probably some fun cloth covered clamshell boxes in our future. Last week when the techs met with Ashleigh, our conservator, to discuss upcoming projects there was quite a bit of oohing and ahhing when she unwrapped and assembled the two artists’ book they had brought back to the Lab for enclosures.
[Left] Spirit Book #11: Terrestrial Talisman by Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord; [Right] Any Number of Things: Being the Story of Events Leading to the Untimely Death of Captain James Cook by Rebecca Harvey
Each of these beautiful artists’ books has multiple delicate components (from a grape vine cradle to bottomless, etched, hand-blown glass bottle) that are going to require extra attention and a little creativity when it comes to housing them. Chris Voynovich, our box-maker extraordinaire, was assigned to create a clamshell box for Spirit Book #11, while I was assigned to construct one for Any Number of Things…since Ashleigh said “my eyes lit up when I saw it!” Chris and I cannot wait to start working on the enclosures for these amazing books; they are going to be very fun to work on.
I decided to kick off the fun before the box-making magic even started and created these little gifs during the photo documentation process. Enjoy!
We’ll post our enclosure solutions soon, check back!
Jessica Ebert (UCL) —- Conservation Technician
