Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Magic Box

A lot of what we do in Preservation Services, especially when it comes to treating the Special Collections at Rauner, is make custom housing.  This can mean a box, a wrapper, or some combination thereof.  As a conservator, I find engineering custom boxes particularly fun because I am always thinking about how the box can "explain" itself to the library patron.  Is it clear how it opens?  How to lift out the object?  Is it easy enough to put back together?  I've drawn diagrams and made labels in the past to make sure that the housing assembly is foolproof.

Recently in the lab, we had a very special "toy" that was a printed scroll depicting the coast of Rhode Island housed in a wooden box.  The box had turning knobs which move the scroll across the glass window on two sides.



 The way the wooden box was shaped, the knobs, and the glass sides made for an interesting box-making challenge!  I ended up choosing to make a box with two sides that drop down (and snap back into place with the help of some strategically placed magnets) with the whole interior lined in volara- an archival foam we use a lot in conservation.  I decided just to leave enough room for the wooden turning knobs and not do anything fancy for fear that it would be more harm than help.

The following photos show the box I constructed to house this item.  Be sure to visit the object in real life at Rauner in their Realia collection!









Written by Lizzie Curran



























No comments:

Post a Comment