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Q&A: Grace White
We do a lot of reporting on scientific discovery here at Inkling, but we’re also keenly interested in the nuts and bolts of science as it works in the real world. Grace White is a paper conservator who uses scientific principles—particularly chemistry—every day. Recently, she let us interrogate her about how she restores prints, drawings, watercolors, pastels, scrapbooks, blueprints, maps, illuminated manuscripts , wallpaper, collages, documents...
Dude, your job is the coolest. What exactly is paper conservation and how did it become your career?
Yes, it is cool! Conservation in general is the treatment of artwork or artifacts to protect and repair them from damage, so paper conservation means that I specialize in treating paper items. Some people use the term “restoration,” but conservation is the preferred term these days because it involves concern for an object’s long-term stability, not just its cosmetic appearance.
I got into conservation because I always loved art and art history, and I loved working with my hands. But I knew I didn’t want to make my living as a studio artist. I wanted a career where I could use my artistic skills but also deal hands-on with museum objects: a job that would let me touch all the things that museum goers aren’t allowed to touch! Meanwhile, the Sistine Chapel restoration was going on, and I kept hearing about it in the news and it intrigued me. Eventually, I went to grad school at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, and became a paper conservator. Now I work at Etherington Conservation Services in North Carolina, my home state.
Are the oils on our fingers really as bad for paper as they say? How do you take care of paper when your hands are lethal weapons?
Yes, finger oils are bad, as are the dirt, moisture, pollution and contaminants we carry on our fingertips from other things we have touched. But in my defense, knives are also lethal weapons—but surgeons use them to heal us!
I make sure that my hands are very clean, and I am also well practiced in safe handling of paper items. When necessary, I wear gloves to protect the object, but usually it is safer to work with my bare hands so I can have a safe grip and a good feel for how the paper reacts. I do wear gloves at times, but more often to protect myself from chemicals or hazards such as mold. When I wear gloves, I have to change them frequently to keep from transferring contamination, especially from one object to another, so even gloved hands can be dangerous.
But I am a professional who has been trained on safe handling, and the object is in my hands only for a few weeks or months. It would be highly hazardous to any paper artifact if it were exposed to daily crowds of museum visitors with unwashed hands and careless handling. Even with clean hands and the best of intentions, poor handling can cause tears, creases, breaks, and punctures. Paper needs to be handled delicately. You wouldn’t let a careless person with dirty hands hold your baby!
If paper put out a hit on its five biggest enemies, what would they be?
It’s hard to choose! I would say acidity, moisture, light, bad adhesives and metals. I wanted to add people, but I don’t want the hit man to take them down.
The healthiest paper is made of long cellulose chains linked together, making it strong and flexible. But oxidation and acid hydrolysis break those long chains into smaller ones, so the paper becomes brittle and develops yellow or brown regions (like an old newspaper). Moisture, light, and heat can catalyze that process. Acidity is especially problematic because so many papers are made with acidic components built in, like wood-pulp containing lignin. That makes them almost self-destructive from the start! Additionally, paper objects are often stored or displayed in contact with acidic materials, like wood or cardboard. Plus, acidic components can be formed from pollution in the environment, and there are acidic inks and pigments that can damage paper.
Moisture is physically disruptive for a paper object, causing it to cockle and distort. It can cause even bigger problems when it encourages mold growth. Mold breaks down the cellulose and the sizing in paper and can cause things like staining, discoloration of pigments. Mold is very contagious to other artifacts, very resilient, and hazardous to humans. And in the case of extreme moisture, if something gets wet, the inks or colors can bleed, the paper can get stuck to other materials touching it, and there can be severe staining.
Light goes along with acidity and moisture in breaking down cellulose and in causing heat to build up. It can also cause colors to fade.
Bad adhesives are often applied by people with good intentions, but they can be terrible. Things like sticky tape, rubber cement, white glue - they can cause permanent damage, chemically, physically and cosmetically. They cause a lot of work for us conservators. I treated a painting by 20th century artist Eva Hesse where collage elements had been adhered to the paper with rubber cement, and it had sunk into the paper. The adhesive turned brown and brittle, and the collage pieces had fallen off. Some of them could be adhered again, but the stains were permanent.
Metals don’t usually interact with paper, but they can be introduced with things like paper clips and staples, and there are also inks and pigments made with metal components, especially iron and copper. Metal particles also find their way into poor quality paper pulps from water impurities or from the machines. When metal particles get into paper, along with acidity and moisture, they can become oxidised like any rusting material, causing brown stains. We call little brown spots like that “foxing,” though they can be caused by other things, too, like mold.
Okay, you’re in your lab (do paper conservators call it a lab?). What do you see around you?
(Yes, it’s a lab.) Some of the everyday items I use might come from a home bathroom: tweezers, cotton balls, cotton swabs, emery boards, a hair dryer, a humidifier. Some less common items might seem more at home in a doctor’s office, like scalpels and syringes. And many of my tools are ordinary art supplies like brushes, palette knives and watercolors.
Some of my tools are specialized paper conservation instruments. A lot of the materials we use, such as mending papers and adhesives, have been developed specifically for paper conservation. And there also papers, brushes and other tools that have been adopted from the Japanese scroll-mounting tradition (as well as many of our practices). Many of those tools are hand-made, beautifully crafted the same way they’ve been doing for hundreds of years.
High-tech equipment is often most useful for examination and identification. Pigments and inks can often be identified by the ways they react in UV and IR light, or by their chemical spectrum, or by the microscopic appearance of the particles. Beta-radiography can produce an image of an object’s watermark if it’s obscured with ink or pigment. There are also ways to make erased or faded marks more visible. These tools can help in establishing a general date for an object, and can also reveal discrepancies or problems, such as the presence of more recent additions, or evidence of stains or mold or metal particles that can’t be seen in normal light. In some instances, identifying what materials are in an object is crucial to the treatment involved because of the different ways materials react. Treatment that is beneficial to one ink or pigment might be detrimental to another.
A 3D-microscope shows extensive flaking pigment on an old painting.
What are some of the oldest/coolest/weirdest/most awesome/most challenging objects you’ve worked on?
Some of the oldest things I’ve treated were medieval and renaissance illuminated manuscripts written and painted on vellum. They were beautiful but fragile. I had to devise storage and display methods that would keep them safe and allow both sides to be seen, because they were pages from books with writing and images on both sides. It was a delight to work with them.
One of the most challenging projects was a pair of watercolor paintings of birds, a blue jay and a redheaded woodpecker. They had an assortment of problems, particularly fragile flaking paint and acidic backing boards that they were glued to. The glue and the acidity had caused a lot of staining, but the paper and pigment were extremely fragile, so removing the boards was tricky. I had to use a microscope and spend several weeks applying a gelatin consolidant to every single little crack in the paint, and then I coated the entire front of the paper with a melted waxy substance, cyclododecane, to give the paper the additional strength and support needed so I could remove the backing. The cyclododecane also protected the pigment from moisture while I was removing the adhesive. Then, when the backing was gone, the cyclododecane was allowed to sublime, evaporating completely and leaving the paper and pigment intact. It had been a long and strenuous process, but I felt happy with the result.
Probably the most high-profile object I’ve treated was North Carolina’s original copy of the Bill of Rights. George Washington had fourteen original copies written, one for each of the thirteen colonies and one to stay in Washington, but North Carolina’s copy disappeared during the Civil War, looted by a union soldier as a souvenir. But in 2005 it showed up for sale, and after some exciting adventures with a federal sting operation, it was finally brought back to North Carolina where I had the honor of treating it.
And one of the most rewarding projects was a group of late 19th century ephemeral Mardi Gras items that had been damaged in Hurricane Katrina. They belonged to the Krewe of Rex in New Orleans and had been damaged in the flood, so they were covered in mold, silt and stains, and some were even still damp when I received them. They included posters, advertisements, dance cards, and invitations to Mardi Gras balls, some with embellishments of ribbons, tassels and metal buttons. They looked beautiful when they were done, and it felt good to be contributing to the recovery effort, even in a very small way.
Blue-jay painting, before and after.
Do you have any advice about how to make important paper objects last longer? (My parents still have their old love letters from the 70s. Awww.)
Store items in acid-free (and more importantly, lignin-free or wood-free) folders or sleeves, keeping acidic papers separate (i.e., don’t keep newspaper clippings tucked in the pages of a letter). Plastic sleeves of polyethylene or polypropylene are also acceptable. Paper likes to be in the same environment as people - not a hot, dry attic, not a damp basement, not a musty closet. Darkness is fine, but make sure it’s comfortably dry and cool with circulating air. Don’t use tape, glue, staples or paper clips. If something is torn, ask a professional conservator for help. Don’t attempt to fix it yourself!
Is there anything you can’t fix?
Fading. Usually if color is gone, it’s gone for good. I also can’t ethically make artistic changes, like painting a dress onto a nude. (Yes, I’ve been asked if that was possible!)
