“Bills, Bills, Bills”: Treatment of a Collection of NYU’s Early Financial Records
Hi! I’m Lydia Aikenhead, a third-year graduate student specializing in Library and Archives Conservation at the Conservation Center at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work here in the lab as a graduate student assistant for almost three years. It’s been great to work with many of the conservators here on lots of different kinds of projects.
Last fall, I began treating a large collection of New York University’s early financial receipts, dating from the early 1830s through the 1860s. While “financial receipts” might not sound particularly exciting, the collection is, in fact, quite interesting. There are records of all sorts of curious purchases, including books (a whole pile of which could be had for just $7.00 in the mid-1800s!) and a newly-patented rubber coating for weatherizing roofs. The collection is even more interesting for the dozens of types of papers involved—calendared, embossed, lined, or joined together with wafer seals. While a few of the receipts and related documents are printed, most are manuscript records in various iron-gall and colored inks. Overall, the receipts show signs of their use and history—many were folded or torn, some checks were scored to indicate that they had been deposited or cancelled, and many were a bit soiled, especially along the edges or fold lines.
At some point in the collection’s history—likely in the early- to mid-twentieth century—the receipts were chronologically arranged and glued with a thickly applied paste into commercial scrapbooks, which feature yellow and blue puppies bounding across their red-plaid covers. The scrapbook pages are a poor-quality wood pulp paper, and had yellowed and become extremely brittle over time, shattering into pieces when handled. Contact between the acidic scrapbook pages and the historic receipts had begun to cause degradation of the nineteenth century papers—threatening their long-term preservation. Because of the poor condition of the scrapbook pages, the collection was deemed inaccessible to researchers, as any handling put the scrapbook pages, the receipts, and their carefully arranged order at risk. Based on the above considerations, we decided that the receipts should be removed from the scrapbook and housed as loose documents.
The first step involved mechanically removing the receipts from the acidic scrapbook paper. I went through the scrapbooks page by page, reducing as much of the paper as possible around the edges, and placing the receipts in folders, labeled and numbered to preserve their order and grouping. If multiple receipts were glued to a single page, they were all placed in a folder together. Curiously, in one of the scrapbooks, someone had gone through the pages with scissors and cut out small areas from the receipts, resulting in square-shaped losses and many loose pieces. Our best guess is that this scissor-wielding culprit sought to remove a stamp or signature, but their true motivation remains a mystery.
Examining the receipts while reducing the scrapbook paper revealed the interesting effects of the adhesive on the paper and ink. It appeared that some sort of alkaline filler or additive was present in the adhesive, and this had served to mitigate the effects of the acidic backing paper. Where adhesive had been applied, the receipt paper was in better condition and less discolored. The iron-gall inks were also in better condition, exhibiting less haloing, strikethrough, and fading. Ink in areas without adhesive was far more affected from contact with the acidic scrapbook paper, as can be observed in the image below. This suggests that the acidity of the scrapbook paper had a more deleterious effect on the ink than that of moisture during adhesive application. This was observed throughout the collection.
A significant amount of scrapbook paper remained on the backs of the receipts where they had been adhered, so I began testing to determine the best way of removing the paper and reducing the thickly-applied paste. Because so many of the receipts were written in iron-gall ink, we had some concerns about aqueous treatment, as this ink can be sensitive to water—but spot-testing indicated that many of the iron-gall inks were stable. Since the collection included so many documents, we needed a treatment protocol that was efficient and relatively quick. After attempting to soften the starch-based adhesive through various methods of local application of moisture to the backing paper—damp swabs, wet blotter, and even gellan gum poultices—it was determined that full immersion in warm water was necessary to reduce the heavily applied glue. In warm water, the adhesive quickly loosened, allowing the backing paper to be lifted off without damaging the paper of the receipts. Though this treatment is fairly invasive, we took many precautions to stabilize the ink, pre-washing and pre-drying each receipt in ethanol, and resizing with a 1% solution of gelatin applied with a brush through spun-polyester sheeting. Documents were briefly sandwiched between spun-polyester sheets and blotter, and then moved to a blotter stack without spun-polyester and under only very minimal pressure to dry.
Recto and verso of document before washing; removing backing in warm water; resizing in gelatin; after backing removal.
Because of the large scope of the collection, second-year conservation student Katherine Parks and first-year student Catherine Stephens were enlisted to assist with the project. With their help, treatment has progressed relatively quickly. At this point, all the receipts have been washed to remove the scrapbook paper and adhesive, except for those with very water-sensitive ink or with multiple sheets held together with soluble wafer seals. We are now in the process of mechanically reducing the scrapbook paper from those last receipts and mending tears throughout the collection with pre-coated tissues.
Mending and mechanical backing removal.
Working on this project has been a great experience for me. As a student, it is so valuable to be included in the decision-making process. It has been especially nice to have the opportunity to train other students to join the project. Their hard work has been greatly appreciated!
Lydia Aikenhead, IFA Graduate Student, Library and Archives, Class of 2019
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