And another one gone ...

Another post, another new month. It's amazing how fast the time goes!

Since my last post, we've done quite a lot on the Books program. We went on another visit right after I last posted, to an open-air museum called Amberley after half an hour from West Dean. It's on the site of a former chalk pit facility that was last used in the forties, I think, and the whole place is done up like it would have been in the forties, with an antique telephone exchange, a woodworker's hut, and various other profession's workshops. There are also some neat displays on early electronics and on local transportation that were a lot of fun.

Me getting a tutorial from the linotype guy.

One of the coolest exhibitions we saw was on early printing. We saved it for last, as that was mainly what we'd gone to Amberley to see, and we were treated to a demonstration and short lecture on the history of the printing press, mostly dealing with presses that used individual pieces of movable metal type placed in a frame. The really cool demonstrations, though, were on the monotype and linotype machines. These worked quite differently from the movable type style in that hot metal was pushed through a small gap to fill a mold of a line of text--thus custom lines of print were created, and when a printing run was finished, they could be recycled back into the pot of molten metal. The type was laid out in the mold by pressing keys on what looks like a massive typewriter keyboard, and the letters fall into place from a case above the typewriter. We got to have a go and made lines of type with our names in them!

This is my flexible binding in progress--we sewed the
textblock on cords, which will eventually be laced into
the boards of the case.

On the program we've been finishing our first treatments--reattaching covers to leather-bound books with purpose-dyed Japanese paper. It's pretty satisfying to have a complete book on my hands instead of an object in three pieces that had to be held shut with ribbons to prevent further damage. One of things we do to help us know how to treat books is to construct models of historical bookbindings, and we've worked on two so far. The first is a case binding, where the textblock and case are constructed separately and then put together, and a flexible binding, in which the boards (covers) are attached to the textblock before the boards are covered with leather. It's quite a lot of fun to do and less stressful than treatment--mostly because if we mess up on a model we can start over, whereas a treatment might not be quite so reversible.

We've also had to do a tensile testing project, looking at the strength of various materials we have in our workshop. My project involved testing tinted Japanese paper, using different dilutions of acrylic paints for coloring, to see whether a certain ratio of acrylic to water would provide additional strength without embrittling the paper. It turned out to be quite a time-consuming project as much of the data had to be adjusted. Hopefully soon I will have some usable results!

Love my jack-o'lantern.

On the social side of life, it's a busy time of year in England for holidays! Two weekends ago was Halloween and the students held a party in one of the residences. I went as Harry Potter at the instigation of a friend, so that I'd match another girl who went as Hermione. One of my friends on the furniture program made me a wand from some spare wooden doweling and it was good fun. I didn't stay too late as I had to leave early the next morning to go visit friends in London.

Jen enjoying raclette and potatoes at
Borough Market!

Hooray for Jen Miller! She is getting her master's at the London School of Economics and we got to know each other during the last year when I was in DC. We had a lovely day sampling food at Borough Market, checking out some very interesting exhibits at the Tate Modern--including a silent film on filmmaking, and a photographic documentary of families from across the globe--and stopped over at the British Library. It was really great to see her! After that I went to visit some more friends, Richard and Hannah Holt, who live in Wandsworth. I knew Richard in the MTC and got to know Hannah over the summer when I visited. We did dinner and carved pumpkins, and enjoyed the cuteness of their daughter, Charlotte. SO cute in her Halloween costume.

And then, of course, Bonfire Night! For all my American readers, Bonfire Night commemorates the foiling of a plot to blow up Parliament in the early 1600s. It's celebrated with a huge bonfire (surprise surprise) and then fireworks. For a teeny village, West Dean sure puts on a good fireworks display. It was the closest I've ever been to where they were being set off, so the fireworks were going off literally right above us, and a few bits of unexploded firework actually hit me on the shoulder a couple of times. I must also say (without sounding traitorous, I hope) that fireworks are quite a bit more pleasant in the cold. That could be the bonfire talking, but I don't know. It was a lot of fun.

Better late than never

I think I may have warned you that I'm bad about posting on blogs ... sorry! I will try and keep this as up-to-date as possible but I will let you be the judge of whether or not I am succeeding. When I last left off it was the first weekend of term ...

The Books students at the Chichester
Cathedral library.

Well, the weather has continued to be more or less atypical for England--lots of sun! It's been a little bit chilly but that's alright as I have assimilated and purchased a very English sweater which I am sure will feature prominently in photographs in the future. Ha ha! It's been especially nice to have such good weather because we bookies have doing LOTS of traveling. Hurrah for field trips! We use these trips to visit lots of libraries in the area and further afield to get an idea of what sorts of conditions exist in various book repositories and how these conditions affect (or even create) the degradation issues we work with as conservators. We also frequently bring back volumes to treat. Last week we visited the Chichester Cathedral library, right in town, and among other treasures are a handful of books that once belonged to John Donne! I unfortunately can't post photos of items from this library, but fear not--other photos should hopefully make up for it.

Check out those irons! The curtain of metal can be
quite impressive, to say the least.

This week we had two visits: one to a chained library in a small town called Wimborne, about an hour and a half away from West Dean, and the second to the Admiralty Library in Portsmouth, which houses the pretty extensive collections of the Royal Navy. What is a chained library, you ask? Pretty much all reference libraries back in the day were chained--more to keep order in the shelving and remind patrons of their reading-time limits than to deter thieves--but only a handful of libraries still retain their links (he he). Most of the chains in the library we visited had been replaced by the Victorians, which is not so great, but they did at least preserve the zeitgeist of the place by retaining the chains at all. They have some really neat items there including one of Elizabeth I's great seals and a copy of the first book printed in England to contain Arabic or Hebrew script! (Interesting side note about this library: it's housed in the church where Margaret Beaufort's parents are buried, i.e. Henry VIII's great-grandparents are buried there.)

I'm totally legit. See? The lady who checked
me in had some issues with my first initial.

The Admiralty Library was also really neat for several reasons--one of which is that it's on a naval base, so we had to show our passports to get it since it's operated by the UK Ministry of Defence. We had to wear ID badges the entire time, which was kind of cool. It's Trafalgar Day soon, the celebration of the Battle of Trafalgar, and the Admiralty Library for obvious reasons is important to these festivities as it is the repository of all the naval records relating to the battle. We saw some cool atlases of the English coastline that were reclaimed from captured French ships and illegal signal books which were kept by lower-ranking sailors so they would know what was going on in battle etc. Another cool thing about the Admiralty Library is that the naval base it's on contains the oldest ship of the Royal Navy, the Mary Rose, which dates back to Tudor times, the newest ship (some destroyer or other), and the most famous, the HMS Victory.

Literally with my nose to the grindstone,
putting that dang bevel on my knife.

Hmmm ... aside from visits, we've been kept VERY busy with various things including making our own paring knives for leather! We spent an entire week using Japanese water stones to turn hacksaw blades into knives by first flattening both sides and then using a Tormec to put a bevel on the blades, followed by even more flattening of the bevel to get it perfectly sharp. It was back-breaking and tedious, but I do feel rather a sense of accomplishment. I made a knife!

Not much else of note, really. The first weekend of term was General Conference and so I got a ride into Portsmouth from a friend for that since the local chapel doesn't receive the satellite signal. It was fun to see a different bit of England and get out of West Dean! And funnily enough, this weekend I will be going back for Stake Conference.

Next weekend I have Halloween to look forward to ... my (NOT) favorite holiday, but at the very least the following weekend is Bonfire Night! A true British holiday to celebrate will be really good fun. And if I get all my bookie ducks in a row, I may also go up to London next Saturday to spend the day with another friend from the States who's also getting a master's degree. Good stuff!

Croquet and Klucel G

The last couple of days have been relatively uneventful but good.

I mentioned in my last post that we'd received our first books to treat on Tuesday and that was exciting for sure! All of our books are leather-bound with detached cover boards, so the first treatment we are learning is that of board reattachment. Of course, there are lots of other things we have to do to get them ready to return home. Yesterday we spent most of the day assessing the condition of our books (much like the condition survey I completed during my time as an intern for Preservation Research and Testing at the Library of Congress last year) and proposing treatment for them, with photographs to round out our condition and treatment report forms.

Today, in contrast, we began working on the treatments. In addition to our main tutor, David Dorning, the program also has an assistant tutor named Sonja Scholl, who is originally from Germany and worked at one time in the States with Don Etherington (a conservation bigwig). She's really sweet and she took the lead in consulting with us today on our treatment proposals and also helped us carry out the initial steps in treating the books. We all began by dry or surface cleaning our books with a chemical eraser--it looks like a sponge and it acts like one as well, sucking up dirt etc. from the surface without any water or soap. Then we did paper repairs as needed, which was a trying experience. I've done plenty of paper repair but we're using a much more delicate repair tissue than I've used in the past which was also surprisingly difficult to tear into usable strips or pieces. I eventually worked out a method and my repairs turned out alright. More to work on! The exciting part, consolidating the rotten leather with a chemical called Klucel G, was a good time as well. It's a gel-like substance that is applied with a soft brush to decaying leather and it adheres the flaky parts to the original, preventing further decay from occurring.

Pretty sweet, eh? It's got two keys and needs
a dude to open it. Normally.

One thing I forgot to mention--when we're not working on our books, we lock them up in the VAULT. Yes, we have a vault. I know, awesome.

We've also been getting a lot of health and safety-type training, and this morning we also had a meeting about student representation. I've volunteered to work on the Academic Quality Committee, which means I get to be a student rep to the administration and tell them what's going well and what's not so hot. I believe I will also therefore have contact with the external examiners from the University of Sussex who validate our degrees. That should be interesting for sure.

Something else intriguing--we have Wednesday afternoons free to a certain extent. No lectures are scheduled and students can use the time as they see fit to further their education. Things like the student welfare officer's yoga classes meet Wednesday afternoons, they offer tours of the estate, and some students go into town. We did that yesterday (some friends, including one with a vehicle, and I) and did a bit of shopping for school needs etc. at the local grocery store. It was nice to get out and see a bit more of Chichester, which is a really cute place with a nice pedestrianized downtown area.

Alex and Johnny figuring out the rules.

After that, some other friends and I got together to play croquet on the school croquet lawn! It took us a while to get started as no one really knew the rules, but with the seven of us together and the help of the booklet from the croquet set, we got it sorted and had a ball. Despite the fact that only four people are supposed to play at one time. He he. We even ended up shortening the game since you apparently have to go through all the hoops TWICE before you can end the game, so we did it just the one time. I ended us as unofficial referee since I was the only one willing to read the rules out and take people to task for breaking them. Did you know there's a roquet that occurs before croquet? Neither did I until yesterday. Anyhow, there was a lot of sabotage toward the end to prevent one guy in particular from winning, to no avail. Ah well.

And today before dinner but after workshop hours, I climbed the Trundle from the bottom up with some more friends. It was a nice hike, not too exhausting but a good heart-pumper. The views are incredibly gorgeous and the weather is still nice. Hopefully this weekend's apple fair (put on by West Dean) will have a good turnout!

Where to begin?

The view from my room (Stables 32), overlooking the court-
yard which three of the four residences give on to.

It's hard to believe that I've only been here two days--and at the same time, it's hard to believe that it's already been two days! After an easy trip to London from DC via Atlanta, I caught a train to Chichester and hired a taxi to get to West Dean. The first few days so far have been a lot of administrative things and getting my bearings, like becoming accustomed to the meals schedule and attempting to find time to get registered with the local doctor and obtain a library card and a mobile phone. I've also been, understandably, getting to know my fellow students and the staff at West Dean. The other students on my program are great and I've enjoyed learning about them and spending (quite a lot of) time with them.

The weather has been amazing. Blue skies and sun.

I'll skip a detailed overview of yesterday--a lot of orientation-type meetings and how-tos. Today, though, we started out in the library getting to know the librarian and learning a bit about the collections. The college library is housed in the old billiards room; the original library is now a gathering place for various functions. Unfortunately, no photos are allowed in the house, so you'll have to visit West Dean's website if you want to see anything! After that we took group photos (I have no idea when we'll see those) and had an IT information session, where we received access to the school networks and a West Dean email address.

So this is a view from the Trundle. It's hard to see in the
photo but spread out before us is the town of Chichester;
if you look really carefully you might be able to see the spire
of the cathedral.

Following lunch we took a sort of field trip with our tutor, David Dorning, to a nearby town called Yapton, about 14 miles away from West Dean. There we patronized a local tool shop which carries secondhand equipment of all types, and in particular a carpentry tool called a spoke shave that we adapt to use for working with leather. It was absolutely gorgeous weather today, was yesterday, and is supposed to be the rest of the week, so on the way back, David suggested we stop off at the Trundle.

The Trundle is the ruin of an Iron Age hill-fort and has amazing views of the whole Chichester area. From the top we could see all the way to Portsmouth and Southampton, and from there to the sea. It was breathtaking. The countryside looks almost completely unspoiled and about as natural as it can get.

Afterward we came back to the workshop and, after a brief orientation on the structure of the academic year, we received our first books to work on! It's quite exciting. Since all the work we do is commission work from various clients, we have quite a lot of paperwork that gets filled out for each item, detailing condition of the object and the proposed treatment--which must then be approved by the client before we begin work on it. Tomorrow we will evaluate our books and propose treatments with David's assistance. It looks to be a good time!