Browning Love Letters Online

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Jenifer Bartle

The Associated Press has released an article detailing the new digital collection of the Browning Love Letters held by Wellesley College Special Collections. This collection was launched on Valentine’s Day 2012 as part of a collaboration between Wellesley College and Baylor University. Hundreds of news outlets–from Medicine Hat to Muscatine, Alamogordo to York–picked up the story.

You can view–and search–the digital collection of Browning letters, including those held by Baylor University, at The Browning Letters site.

Jenifer Bartle,
Digital Collections Librarian

 

 

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Type, Lettering & Calligraphy at Rare Book School

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jenifer Bartle

Here is almost all you need to know about the course I took at the the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School (RBS) last summer: the instructor designed and set the type for a 28-page supplement to his course pamphlet, a transcription and partial translation of a 1693 French text describing the type-casting process. He was not fooling around.

I learned about the Rare Book School through the happy graces of Katherine Ruffin, Book Arts Program Director, and Amanda Nelsen, a visiting artist at the Book Arts Lab in 2010 and now RBS’s Program Director (and also a member of the class I took). They encouraged me to apply for the RBS Scholarship, which allows the recipient to enroll in any RBS class in a given two-year period. So I found myself in steamy Charlottesville, Virginia, in the summer of 2011, wondering about this stuff called “grits” and taking James Mosley’s week-long seminar called Type, Lettering & Calligraphy from 1450 to 1830.

Mr. Mosley, a fearsomely erudite member of the typographical elite, walked us through the minutiae of letterforms, from Etruscan tablets and late medieval manuscripts to linotype and the advent of digital design (course title be damned). Much of the content we discussed during the week’s lectures can be found in detail on his blog–http://typefoundry.blogspot.com–which also includes many of the reproductions he used. Some aspects of the class, I regret, are untranslatable to the digital sphere, such as the afternoon we spent watching Mr. Mosley hand-cast a reproduction of an “a” from the 42-line Gutenberg Bible, casually tossing molten metal from hand to hand using a traditional wooden and wire mould.

Following documentaries on punch-carving, matrix-casting, and mould-making, the casting demonstration showed, literally, how these pieces fit together. An alloy of lead, tin, and antimony is ladled into the mould, which contains an inverse form, or “matrix,” of the desired sort; the mould is then given a few shakes, with a debonair flourish of the wrist, to encourage diplomatic relations between metal and matrix. The new sort, once cool, is ejected from the mould, ready to use once the “jet,” a vestigial metal tail, is snapped off.

As someone who claims familiarity with type anatomy, observing a piece of type cast and seeing its inverse relationships with the matrix and mould finally taught me how, and why, the architecture of nicks, grooves, and planes come together where they do. “Type,” quoth Harry Carter, “is something you can pick up and hold in your hand.” It is a physical object whose spatial history has to be physically understood before it makes any sense. My weighty silver “a”–Mr. Mosley made one for each of us–boasts the cascading undulations unique to hand-cast metal: the signature of how the molten liquid washed down the side of the mould.

A mould illustrated in Jacques Jaugeon’s ‘Description des Arts et Métiers’, 1693. Mr. Mosley’s useful description, from his blog: “The closed mould is on the left, with the bottom end of the matrix, to which a piece of leather has been tied, projecting from it. The image in the centre shows the other end of the matrix, with a piece of cast type, with its nick ‘on top’ and the projecting ‘jet’ of surplus metal, still in place.”

Other gems of the week’s intensive lectures included a précis of the distinctions between the typesetting of pioneering 15th-century printers Jensen and Aldus (the key is in the angle of the crossbar of the “e”), and a discussion of the political dimensions of typography in the French and American Revolutions. In France, opposing sides co-opted enemy type to produce misleading broadsides; American printers chose to use Scottish–rather than English–type for revolutionary documents, including the Declaration of Independence.

This week of 9-to-5 lectures was fast-paced (a century a day?) and dedicated to obsessive nit-picking (a family tree of the hundreds of different “a”s in that 42-line Bible?!), but despite its intensity, Mr. Mosley clearly only skimmed the surface of his preparations and oceanic depth of knowledge. I think his intent was to push us off the end of the typographic dock, so to speak, so that in floundering we might learn to swim. The real intent, I fathom, was to provide us with the resources and awareness to continue exploring the 40,000 leagues under the “c” (as it were). To switch metaphors, Mr. Mosley told us that “recognizing type is like recognizing birds”: even with a field guide in hand, distinguishing the flight patterns and underwing markings of interrelated species clearly requires a lifetime of field work, study, and dissection behind it. And speaking of birds: in case any ornithologists are keen to turn orthographer, we learned that the best feathers for a quill pen are the first four flight feathers on a bird’s left side. Either a goose (Anatidae) or a turkey (Meleagridae) will do nicely.

Taking this class was a remarkable opportunity and privilege, and in addition to Mr Mosley’s exacting tutelage, I am grateful to Katherine for supporting my application, to Amanda for graciously hosting me at her home in Charlottesville for the week, and to the RBS for granting my scholarship, without each of which I should never have been able to attend.

Genevieve Goldleaf ’12 is a double major in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Environmental Studies and is a student employee in the Book Arts Lab.

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Celebrating Black History Month: Research Materials from Special Collections

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Ruth Rogers

A new exhibition, created in honor of Black History Month, was recently installed in the display cases on the second floor of Clapp Library. It is based entirely on primary research materials held by Special Collections, mostly acquired by Ella Smith Elbert, class of 1888 and Wellesley’s second black graduate, but also from our Rare Books and Book Arts Collection. The exhibition covers themes of Literature and Music, Personal Narratives, Slavery and Emancipation, the Abolitionist Movement, the Civil War, and Racism and Integration. Highlights include a life mask of Abraham Lincoln, a first edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, 1783.  Wheatley, a domestic slave in Boston, wrote poetry and prose under the tutelage and encouragement of her masters. Her intellect and ability attracted the interest of men such as Thomas Paine and George Washington. She was emancipated from slavery, and eventually gained the full rights of a free woman following the deaths of her masters in the late 1770s.

Faculty are encouraged to visit with classes, or call ahead if you or your students would like to see related items in Special Collections.  All of these materials are listed in the library’s catalog.

Exhibition Details:
Location: Clapp Library lobby cases and Reading Room cases, 2nd floor
Dates: Now through late April 2012
Questions: Ruth Rogers at x3592 or email rrogers@wellesley.edu

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Career Path: From Clapp to Gorgas

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Jenifer Bartle

Letterpress broadside printed by Claire Bateman '07 at the MFA in the Book Arts Program, University of Alabama.

It’s nine in the evening the Sunday after exam week at The University of
Alabama. I’m in the bindery, on the top floor of the main library, making a box.
During the fall of 2011, I worked in the typographic lab and bindery during fall and
Thanksgiving breaks, clocking four hours on Thanksgiving itself, and have been
here more Friday and Saturday nights than I care to admit. I’m not the only one.
This is a common practice for students in the MFA Program in Book Arts. In any
other program, this would exhaust me, but in the book arts the work energizes
and excites me. I am delighted to be here, making a box and writing between
applications of glue.

My journey in the book arts began in workshops and classes at Wellesley.
I interrupted a year of leave in summer 2006 to return to the college to take
ARTS 222 Book Arts II with Katherine Ruffin, a graduate of the Alabama
program herself. I already knew that she was a wonderful teacher who took a
refreshing perspective on the challenges we, as students, set for ourselves. She
encouraged me to indulge my ambitions only after I had created smaller projects
that I could, in fact, finish.

Any project executed in letterpress takes on unexpected layers of complexity
and poses concrete technical challenges, especially when the work is held to
high standards. By breaking the process down into baby steps and helping guide
me toward work I could achieve, Katherine allowed me to build confidence in
my ability to take a project to completion. At the end of Book Arts II, I began a
project based on my creative writing and hand-drawn illustrations that was from
the start doomed to remain incomplete. However, in the process of setting type
and creating images for that book, I examined my writing more closely than I ever
had in my life. It had a profound impact on my poetry and prose, and letterpress
hooked me.

I discovered that in letterpress, perfectionism is constructive. What was a
debilitating focus on the details at the expense of the whole in the rest of my life
became a positive aspect of my artistic eye in this medium. I also learned that
I can spend ten hours a day, day after day, working in the medium of the book
and be neither exhausted nor bored by it. I yearned for keycard access to Clapp
Library after hours so I could spend even more time working in the Book Arts
Lab. I mourned when the class ended without the possibility of a follow-up and I
returned to my year off.

At the University of Alabama, we do have 24-hour keycard access to the library
and our studios. We’re taught processes, and then the door is thrown open for
us to do whatever we will in the time we’re given to do it. The lesson I learned
in balancing ambition with restraint has served me well, as I’ve created exciting
challenges for myself while completing the work in the allotted time. Here, I trust
and rely on the opinions of my classmates more than ever before. I indulge
my perfectionism with abandon, and my work is better for it. All of the truths
I discovered at Wellesley about letterpress and my relationship to it hold true
five years later. Patience was critical to creating excellent work then, and it
remains critical now. Occasionally a classmate will rush through an assignment,
especially in the bindery, and the end result is often something she or he must
then redo. Done well and with patience, this work has a meditative quality, a
balance of engagement and restfulness. It demands that I slow down and pay
close attention. My life is better for it.

Claire Bateman ’07 majored in English and Creative Writing at Wellesley.

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The Rüben Broadside

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Jenifer Bartle

One of the most intense and exciting projects of the Fall 2011 semester in the Book Arts Lab was collaborating with an art history and biological studies class. This first-year seminar on the topic of the Art and Science of Food in Italy from the Renaissance to the Slow Food Movement examined herbals (essentially early encyclopedias of plants) in Special Collections. The instructors for the class, Jacki Musacchio from Art History and Kristina Jones from Biological Sciences, wanted us to create a hands-on project in the Book Arts Lab that related to these books.

Team Book Arts — that is, Katherine Ruffin, Beatrice Denham ’14 and I — began by looking through the books that the class would study in Special Collections. Ruth Rogers, Curator of Special Collections, generously supported our research. As we browsed through the books, we were looking for a variety of things; we wanted a clear image of a plant that we could replicated by making a linoleum cut, some curious and interesting text, and paper which we might be able to simulate in the Papermaking Studio.  While all of the books we examined were beautiful, one in particular stood out to us: the Kreüterbuch by Otto Brunfels.

Born in Mainz, Otto Brunfels (1488 – 1534) became a Carthusian monk, only to leave the monastery to become a Lutheran minister. He openly conflicted with Martin Luther and was dubbed the ‘first among heretics’ by the University of Leuven in 1550. In addition to books on botany, he published numerous treatises on pedagogy, entomology, Arabic, and pharmacology. He was listed by Carl Von Linne as one of the ‘Fathers of Botany,’ and the subtropical shrub Brunfelsia was named in his honor. This Kreüterbuch, literally called ‘herb book,’ was printed in 1539-1540 in Strasbourg.

The Ruben from the Kreuterbuch

The Rüben from the Kreüterbuch

We came upon the Rüben in the Kreüterbuch, and simply could not resist the clean lines of the woodcut. However, defining what a Rüben actually is proved more difficult. (Coincidentally, all of the members of Team Book Arts speak German, and it took all of our skills to tackle this text and translation.) Through extensive research, we found that this species of Rüben is actually part turnip and part beet. Beatrice began by taking a picture of the Rüben woodcut, and then transferred it to the surface of a linoleum block with the help of carbon paper. We then took turns carefully cutting around the lines with a lino cutter so that the block would print in relief.

The Linocut

The linocut

As for the paper, Katherine came up with a ratio of cotton, hemp and abaca that would look and feel like the paper in the Kreüterbuch. We prepared the paper by hydrating the cotton, hemp, and abaca half-stuff (that is, half-processed fiber), and then beating it in the Hollander Beater in the Papermaking Studio in the basement of Pendleton West. Meanwhile, Beatrice identified the watermark in the Kreüterbuch, a fleur de lis, and sketched it. I in turn bent five little pieces of copper wire into that form and sewed it onto a laid mould. Thus a watermark was made.

The Watermark

The watermark

Two days later, students from the class came to the Papermaking Studio and we taught them to make paper. One of the things I love most about this job is the new vocabulary I have learned. To make a sheet of paper, you first ‘hog the vat’ (stir up the pulp in the vat), then dip in the deckle and mould, shake the paper pulp into place while making sure the fibers are evenly distributed across the mold and that there are no papermaker’s tears (indentions in the paper made by droplets of water). After draining off the excess water, you ‘couch’ the paper; that is, quickly and carefully transfer the pulp paper to a post made of pieces of felt. Once a large stack of paper and felts was built, we then pressed out the excess water with the hydraulic press, and then dried the sheets under pressure in the drying box over the weekend.

The Text

The text

The text for the broadside proved more problematic, not least because it was written in Old German and printed in a difficult-to-read Gothic type. However, we triumphed over the difficulty posed by the text. I translated it from the Old German, and all of us took turns setting the text. Now we assembled the woodcut and the text in the bed of press SP-15, and brought over the dry paper. All was in a state an anticipatory readiness for the class, and weeks of preparation were about to come to fruition.

Setting Type

Setting the type

The Form of Type

The form of type

Twelve students and their two professors came to the Book Arts Lab on November 7, 2011, and eagerly gathered around the press. Each student printed a copy of the Rüben broadside on handmade paper using the Vandercook No. 4 press in the Book Arts Lab. As each student left with a broadside and we began to clean the press, we all agreed that this project, challenging, consuming, and demanding as it was, was also incredibly fascinating, educational, and fun.

The final broadside

The final broadside

Valentina S. Grub ‘12 is a double major in Classical Civilization and Medieval and Renaissance Studies and a student employee in the Book Arts Lab.

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Career Path: Becoming a Book Conservator

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Jenifer Bartle

Mary Hamilton French '09 at work on a book model in the Conservation Facility during her senior year at Wellesley College

Back in 2005 when I first began my studies at Wellesley College, I thought I had
everything figured out. At the age of 18, I was convinced that I’d major in psychology,
handily fulfill all of the pre-med requirements, and then jet off to medical school
immediately after graduation. In my spare time, I’d do something noble, like rescuing
kittens or teaching calculus to small children. And, obviously, I was firm in the conviction
that I wouldn’t change my mind about any of it. If I’d been given the ability to look 6
years into the future, I would have been more than a little surprised to discover myself
attending graduate school for book conservation – in a foreign country, no less!

So, how did I end up there?

About halfway through my first semester at Wellesley, I noticed a post on Wellesley’s
electronic bulletin board regarding bookbinding and letterpress printing workshops. As
a child, I loved anything arts or crafts related and happily spent hours making dollhouses
out of recycled cardboard boxes and fashioning toys out of scraps of cloth and
yarn. When I saw the opportunity to take some really nifty looking classes in the Book
Arts Lab at Wellesley, I signed up faster than you can say “books junkie.”

From the first class, I was hooked. I started spending more and more time in the Book
Arts Lab, and by the end of the year I found myself working there. I couldn’t quite
believe my luck – here I was, binding books, setting type, and printing broadsides! All
stuff that I would happily have done all day for free, and somebody was actually paying
me to do it? In retrospect, that should have been my first clue that this was destined to
become much more than just a hobby.

During the summers, I started working in the Conservation Lab at Wellesley. Instead of
making books as I had done at the BAL, I learned how to fix them from Emily Bell,
Collections Conservator. Those two jobs fell on opposite ends of the spectrum of a
book’s life, but the skills I learned in both perfectly complemented each other. My
knowledge of bookbinding enabled me to better understand the repair work necessary
to mend a broken spine or reattach the boards on a book, while my experience with the
(many!) ways a book can break enabled me to make better, more informed decisions
about the book structures I was creating.

In addition to the work I did for the Book Arts Lab and the Conservation Facility at
Wellesley, I also spent a fair amount of time in Special Collections. Although I initially
went for specific classes, I began going there more and more as time went on, not just
for research, but also for fun. The Special Collections librarians, Ruth Rogers and
Mariana Oller, were friendly, knowledgeable and incredibly helpful every time that I
stopped by. They helped kindle my love of old and rare books and showed me how to
properly handle fragile library materials.

By the time I graduated from Wellesley in 2009, I’d made a complete 180 regarding my
future career. The idea of becoming a psychiatrist was long gone – it seemed funny to
think that I’d ever wanted to be one. Book conservation was a field that was far better
suited to my personality and was something that I really loved.

After graduation, I landed an internship at the conservation lab in the Boston
Athenaeum. On one particularly memorable day there, I was handed a stack of books
to clean and label. When I popped the first one open, I noticed that it was signed by
George Washington himself. I quickly checked the rest of the stack. They were all
signed by George Washington. Without my work experience at Wellesley’s Book Arts
Lab and Conservation Facility, I would never have been able to get within a 3-mile radius
of those books, let alone land that internship!

And now here I am, already several months into my MA program. I am so thankful for
all of the skills I gained during my time at Wellesley – instead of having to learn
everything completely from scratch, I’ve been able to hit the ground running. Unlike
college, a lot of MA work is very self-directed. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I
weren’t able to draw on my Wellesley experiences. How would I know what questions
to ask, what repairs to suggest, and what to write in my condition and treatment
reports? I wouldn’t even know where to begin! Years of conservation and bookbinding
built up my handwork skills and expanded my knowledge base, enabling me to
maximize my learning time here.

Working at the Book Arts Lab and the Conservation Facility, as well as spending a
significant amount of time in Special Collections, was crucial to my decision to become a
book conservator. Back in 2005, I had definite ideas about the directions in which my
life was headed, and I probably wouldn’t have responded kindly to the suggestion that
I’d ever want to do anything else. Six years and 3,300 miles later, I’m forever thankful
for the day I accidentally stumbled upon my future career in one life-changing email. I
feel so lucky to have found my dream career and I cannot thank Wellesley enough for
making that a possibility.

Mary Hamilton French ’09 majored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She is
in her first year in the MA in Conservation Studies for Books and Library Materials
at West Dean College in the United Kingdom.

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Eye of the Storm

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Jenifer Bartle
During the final weeks of the Fall 2011 semester, students in ARTS 317, a seminar on the topic of collaboration taught by Assistant Professor of Studio Art David Teng Olsen, spent some time in the Book Arts Lab. Each student in the class designed and printed 400 copies of a double-sided piece of currency. The students then installed the bills in an exhibit in the Jewett Gallery.

Wood Block

The wood block for printing that Yun Chi ’13 created using the Engineering Studio’s laser cutter locked up for printing in the bed of the Vandercook SP-15.

Printing

Yun Chi ’13 printed her bills on the pages of a disbound book.

Drying bills

Bills printed by Allison Li ‘13 drying on a table in the Book Arts Lab.

Here is the artist statement that accompanies the exhibition:

As a studio art course focused on collaboration, we as the class of ARTS 317 explored various modes of collaborative working practices using both traditional and new media techniques. Eye of the Storm is the cumulative effort of a semester’s worth of teamwork between our seven class members. The core idea originally stemmed from the a desire to (re)create a natural environment through artificial means. As individuals, we all had differing opinions on this approach; as a class, we worked to integrate our separate ideas into one collective project. The decision to work with money was drawn directly from our current economic situations—with various Occupy movements voicing financial disquietude cross-country and around the globe, money was seen as a theme that pertains to everyone’s lives. Integrated with the umbrellas, the financial turmoil turned into a storm. Individually, we each designed our own form of currency and hand-printed each bill on a Vandercook press with various papers and color inks. This allowed each person to express her own individual artistic license while cohesively unifying the piece under on central motif. This leaves us wishing: if only money was really raining from the heavens.

The bills were hung from umbrellas suspended from the ceiling of the Jewett Gallery.

A bill printed by Jeung-Mi Takeda ’12.

The students are selling single umbrellas with bills attached for $10 each. To reserve an umbrella, email Katherine Obermeyer ’14 at kobermey(at)wellesley.edu.

Katherine McCanless Ruffin,
 Book Arts Program Director

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Papers of Emma DeLong Mills Open for Research

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Jenifer Bartle

Emma DeLong Mills, second from left, and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, center, Wellesley College, March 20, 1953

A spirit of adventure, though not mandatory for completion of an archives project, certainly enhances the journey of collection processing.  Here at the Wellesley College Archives, I was afforded the opportunity explore the paper trail left by a life of communication, passion, activism and philanthropy—that of the fascinating Emma DeLong Mills, class of 1917.   On behalf of the Wellesley College Archives, I would like to announce the successful processing of the Papers of Emma DeLong Mills, and the completion of the finding aid for the collection.

Mills was born in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1894.  She was educated at St. Agatha School in New York before beginning her Wellesley career in 1914.  An outspoken woman, Mills wrote frequently to friends and family, conveying opinions about college life, school work, social idiosyncrasies, and political issues.  At Wellesley she befriended one of Wellesley’s most illustrious alumnae, May-ling Soong, who would later become the “First Lady of China,” Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

The Archives’ holdings reveal her enduring friendship with May-ling Soong, with whom she corresponded for nearly seven decades.  These fascinating and valuable trans-global letters, along with Mills’ prolific journals, provide a unique glimpse into the relationship between the two women and the personal insights of each regarding international relations, politics, popular culture, and social work through much of the twentieth century.

After graduating from Wellesley in 1917, Mills embarked upon a remarkable series of endeavors. She was deployed as a student nurse in the Army School of Nursing at Camp Meade, Maryland, held a stint as a “farmerette” in rural New York, and journeyed to China, where she remained for three years.  Her international adventure resulted in a position teaching English to the young woman betrothed to the brother of the last emperor of China, Pu Yi. Upon returning to the United States, she began a sporadic graduate education that would continue for decades. Among her studies was an intensive sub-engineering course through Columbia University.  This program resulted in Mills contributing to the infamous Manhattan Project, originator of the atomic bomb.  Also notable was a writing course that Mills took in the 1930s.  During this course, she met the young Carson McCullers, who later went on to write The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The Wellesley College Archives houses both the certificate of appreciation from the Manhattan Project and copies of letters to Mills from McCullers.

Emma Mills, ignited by a passion for the Chinese Nationalist cause headed by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, worked fervently to assemble resources for it during her adult life.  She began extensive work with the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China (ABMAC), later the American Bureau for Medical Advancement in China, in 1937.  Mills would go on to become the Executive Secretary, journeying to Taiwan in 1950 on the organization’s behalf.  After World War II, Mills became involved with the True Light Foundation, which supported the True Light Foundation Middle School in Hong Kong. She was a founding member of the Chinatown Planning Council (CPC), a non-profit organization providing educational, social, and occupational services to the Chinese community in New York City.  She served on the CPC Executive Board for over two decades, including as president in 1968.  She was the only westerner to have been so elected.  Mills was rewarded for her tireless work for Chinese causes, receiving a Medal of Honor from the Chinese government.  The College Archives is fortunate to have many materials pertaining to Mills’ service in each of these organizations, as well as the certificate bestowed upon her by the Chinese government.

From the perspective of the Archives, perhaps the most beneficial of Mills’ tendencies was her impetus to write. Among the most revealing and comprehensive of Mills’ papers are her journals and correspondence, which span nearly her entire lifetime.  Included in these journals and letters to friends, family members, colleagues, and political or public figures are Mills’ passionate views on a vast array of subjects, from literature to travel to Communism.

The collection in the Archives, encompassing nearly the entirety of Mills’ life and works, offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman of international renown. Researchers, students, and visitors interested in Chinese history, Chinese-American relations, 20th-century Chinese politics, Wellesley College, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, non-profit organizations, or American personal accounts of twentieth-century history will benefit from an examination of this wealth of materials.

I was matched with this collection as part of an Archives Field Study required for the completion of my Masters of Library and Information Science degree with an Archives Management Concentration.  The experience of bringing the collection from a literal pile of papers into an organized, foldered, neatly housed, accessible collection with a finding aid has been an informative, rewarding one.  I have had the opportunity to delve deeply into the life of a fascinating figure in Emma DeLong Mills.  I hope that the collection will prove equally stimulating for users.  Thank you to Jane Callahan, Assistant Archivist, for guiding me through processing and writing the finding aid, which is available here: http://www.wellesley.edu/Library/Archives/mss.2.html.

See also the finding aid for the Papers of May-Ling Soong Chiang: http://www.wellesley.edu/Library/Archives/mss.1.html.

Sarah Wetherbee is a student in The Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and completed an internship in the Wellesley College Archives in the Fall of 2011.

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From Curious Plants to Proto-Paper

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Jenifer Bartle

A finished piece of papyrus made from imported Egyptian papyrus fiber. Note the natural tendency of the material to curl--a demonstration of the logic inherent in making scrolls from sheets of papyrus glued together.

History is not dead or forgotten, merely past– that is, for most people. But in our work in the Book Arts Lab, we travel through time on a daily basis. One day we may replicate a woodcut from a fifteenth-century herbal; the next we might work with wood type manufactured in the nineteenth century. We may print a broadside on paper that we made according to seventeenth-century techniques, or bind books as they did in the high Middle Ages. We do occasionally foray into more modern concepts, like the recent zine workshop, but on the whole the Book Arts Lab is a bit like the Tardis– happily travelling through time.

On a recent Wednesday, though, we took a trip considerably farther back in history– to ancient Egypt via a papyrus-making workshop. During the preparation of the papyrus, I learned three facts: papyrus is acid-free, which is one reason that it survives so well; papyrus is not a paper, but a proto-paper; and papyrus is incredibly labor intensive to make.

This workshop–a collaboration between the Book Arts Program, the Classical Studies department, and the Classics Club–has been in the works since early October. That was when we placed the order for processed papyrus on the website kingtutshop.com, and when the Margaret C. Ferguson Greenhouses began fertilizing their papyrus plant. Our plan for the workshop was to use a combination of both locally grown and imported Egyptian papyrus fibers. In the first week of November, the order from Egypt was delivered, and Kristina Jones, Director of the Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, also arrived from the Greenhouses, carrying seven stalks of papyrus, each over seven-feet tall! Beatrice Denham, my co-worker, said that the stalks looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, and by the look of the decapitated tops I can’t but agree.

Though all that the Egyptian papyrus required was a long soak in cold water and some rolling, the local papyrus needed a lot more attention. First, we cut the stalks into four- and six- inch segments, stripped off the outer green rind, and then sliced the white interior into fine strips. We then rolled out the strips individually and placed them in cold water. We repeated this step over the course of two weeks to get the papyrus supple enough to work with. By the afternoon of the workshop, the countertops were covered in rolling pins, cotton cloths, towels, wooden boards, and buckets of papyrus, ready for enthusiastic participants and visitors.

To form a sheet of papyrus, we first laid out the longer strips on cotton cloth placed over a wooden board, with each strip barely overlapping its neighbor. Then we repeated that step with the shorter strips, laying them perpendicularly over the longer strips. As you can imagine, it’s quite wet and stringy work.

Next, we took another cotton sheet, covered the papyrus, and rolled out the excess water. This not only dehydrates the papyrus, but also re-enforces the bonds between the strips.

We then gently peeled off the top layer of cotton, transferred the papyrus sheet to a piece of blotting paper, and sandwiched them between pieces of acid-free cardboard.

Once there was a stack of papyrus sheets, we placed them in a standing press, which allowed the sheets to dry under pressure. We changed the soaked blotting paper every few days, and after Thanksgiving break some sheets of papyrus proto-paper were ready to write on– just in time for finals!

Valentina S. Grub ’12 is a double major in Classical Civilization and Medieval and Renaissance Studies and a student employee in the Book Arts Lab.

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A Memory in Ink

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Jenifer Bartle

… [I]t is hoped that the Courant may serve not only as literary gymnasium and as a memory in ink, but that it may become, as well, an open channel of communication between students of earlier days and the College in whose history they have borne an active part.

– The Wellesley Courant, College Edition, September 21, 1888

In the years prior to 1888, the College sent news of campus events to the local town paper, the Wellesley Courant.  The interest was so great that coverage expanded in 1888 to include an entire sheet (four pages) in the paper named the Wellesley Courant – College Edition. The College Edition editorial staff–with representatives from the faculty, the Alumnae Association, and upper class students–had complete literary control.

The Courant was issued weekly during the academic year 1888-1889. It contained news of college events, alumnae notes, literary pieces, news gleaned from publications of other colleges and universities, notes of world events, and humor items.

The Courant is the most recent collection from the Archives to be digitized and made available through the Wellesley College Digital Scholarship and Archive. The digitization was done by the Internet Archive as part of Wellesley College’s collaboration with The Boston Library Consortium.

Jane Callahan,
Assistant Archivist

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