Museum Preservation Recap

Terri asked that I provide a quick list of the materials I talked about during my super fast intro into mount making. I also think a quick recap would be useful. I zoomed through a lot of stuff, and likely forgot to tell you even more.

When making mounts or doing anything with the goal of preventive preservation, it is always a good idea to do the simplest things first. I've noticed that for beginners, there can be a tendency to over engineer mounts (I am totally guilty of this!). Your primary objective is to make sure that the object is well-supported while still making it visible. Ideally, the mount should be as unobtrusive as possible.

When you sit down to make a mount for an object, I find that it is best to start with a good analysis of the object's characteristics. For example: if it is a basket, is it twined or coiled (this will be one determination of how fragile it is)? What is it's condition? And most importantly are there any factors at play that can cause deterioration? Most of the time gravity is my biggest concern.  The use of muslin or foam "snakes" is usually enough to support most baskets and keep them from slumping or breaking over time.

If a more complex mount is needed, then the National Park Services Conserve-O-grams are an amazing resource. Often you don't need to invent a mount; someone else has already thought through the process for you.

The materials I showed you or talked about include:

Muslin

Orvus

Polyester fiberfill (cotton fluff)

Archival (food grade) gusseted bags

Tyvek

Volara

Archival Polyethylene

Backer Rod

"Blue Board" /AKA Archival corrugated board

Abaca Tissue

Buffered/Unbuffered Tissue

Hot Knife

More information can be found in this University of New Mexico publication and at the North Carolina Connecting to Collections Blog.

Alice Wellman's Travel Journal

You can find the Google Books scan of her excerpt here.

It was published in the April 1901 volume of Oakland Domestic Science Monthly. Notice in the table of contents that she was "Mrs. Beardsley" at the time of publication, but "Miss Wellman" during the writing of the journal.

Also take note that there are two excerpts: A Bit of Tent Life in Syria and A Christmas in Darjeeling. This second one I missed when I first found the publication a year ago. I can't belive what a gold mine these are! Not only does she talk about the objects she comes into contact with, but she also gives such an amazing account of how she felt during the trip. I am especially interested in the way she decribes the people (servants) she encounters. We are lucky to have a first hand account of these encounters between worlds.

The Peaks of Lyell

If you remember, I briefly talked about Mount Lyell and Beardsley's connection to it as a mining chemist and mine manager. On the recommendation of Brett Martin (the Tasmanian research I've been in contact with), I've just started reading a book, The Peaks of Lyell, written in 1954 by Geoffrey Blainey. In it, Blainey mentions GF Beardsley a handful of times; but almost more importantly he gives an account of the colonial history of Tasmania through the eyes of the gold seekers that swarmed the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Here are just a couple of contextualizing excerpts: 

"This is the history of the Mt. Lyell Mining and Railway Company--the first, the last, and the dominant company on a great Australian copperfield, a field that has yielded £174 million  at present mineral prices. In its scope, however, this story is more than a company history. It is the story of a wild region of mountains and mines--some mines rich, many poor. It is the story of men who found them, floated them, worked them, and died in them>" (preface v)

Another one on the naming of Mount Lyell: (Gould is one of the first British explorers in Tasmania)

"Gould left one lasting legacy from his expeditions; he named the peaks of the west coast range after famous British scientists of his day. He left England in 1859, the year in which Darwin published his revolutionary book on The Origin of the Species, and he seems to have opposed Darwin's theory of evolution, for he named the three massive mountains--Sedgwick, Owen, and Jukes--in honor  of bitter opponents of Darwin's theory. In stark contrast, he gave to three smaller mountains which lay between the giants the names of Darwin and his faithful disciples, Lyell and Huxley. But later prospectors unwittingly redressed the balance in favour of the Darwinians, calling the field Mt. Lyell though the first mine was nearest Mt. Owen. And so Australia's richest copperfield honours "the father of modern geology," Sir Charles Lyell, even though it was named long before evidence of mineral wealth was found." (page 10)

I have only just begun reading this fascinating book, and I'm sure I'll have more excerpts to come. I find it striking that the history of our collection, through the families of Wellman and Beardsley, are so intertwined with mining, "gold fever," and colonial exploitation of resources. Whereas Bela Wellman traveled to California at the height of the Gold Rush here, GFB did the same during the Tasmanian gold/mineral rush of at the turn of the 20th century. The Beardsleys truly tell a tangible story of colonialism! 

P.S. On a side note, the Mt. Lyell mine was in operation up until a month ago, when it was shutdown due to multiple deaths. Here is an article on the shutdown. 

Marin Show - Art of the Americas

If you are going to the Marin art show, be sure to print out the online coupon for a $5 admission discount. I will be there Saturday.

Family Trees and Correcting a Mistake

I made a BIG mistake in my presentation on Tuesday (color me embarrassed!) Ruth White (our donor) is Alice's niece. Somewhere along the line of my research I got it in my head that her husband Arthur was the relative, but upon a more careful look, Ruth is Ray's daughter. Here are some screen grabs from ancestry.com, which I hope will help clear up the confusion.

Sorry!

Ruth Farley White's family tree. Ray is her mother, Alice is her aunt.

Alice Kate Wellman Beardsley's family tree. Notice that ancestry.com has doubled up some of her siblings. I just haven't had a chance to fix that yet.

George Fisher Beardsley's family tree

How To: Add a Blog list to your blog

I've noticed that quite a few people don't yet have a blog roll on their blogs. Is it because of confusion about how to do it? If so, watch this video:

If the video doesn't work for you, try going here: http://youtu.be/YP_59MbxIpc

Happy 151st Birthday to Mrs. Alice Beardsley!

Newly Found Items

Just when I think we've found all that we can, up pops more objects. These were found over at the Archaeological Curation Facility, where some of the Beardsley object had been stored. I love the Hershey's box!

What do all these numbers mean?!?

If you are anything like me when I first encountered the Beardsley Collection, you're probably feeling a little confused right now.  You've looked at that weird trinomal number on that itty bitty piece of paper you picked out of my son's hat and thought "oookay...now what?" That is a really good question. At this point in the game the slew of numbers thrown at you is pretty disorienting. But don't fret! It will all make (some) sense soon. 

In the hopes of easing your confusion, I've copy/pasted a bit of my prospectus (the formal statement of what I am writing my thesis on) that I think will help answer at least a couple of your questions... 

The Beardsley Collection forms a core collection of the Anthropology Museum, and as such its preservation is critical to the educational and research missions of the museum. Without good record-keeping and contextualization, it is difficult to fulfill the full educational and anthropological potential of a collection (Burcaw 1997). A detailed physical inventory will examine all objects within the collection in order to update locations, determine missing or stolen items, and identify objects in need of conservation. It will also organize the collection and determine the accuracy of registration records (Buck and Gilmore 1998, Morris 2007).

The inventory will appraise all the records associated with the collection. Familiarity with museum terminology is an essential first step when setting out to do any inventory. Burcaw’s (1997) definitions work well for a simple understanding of museum vocabulary. A collection represents a grouping of objects that have something in common, in this case all of the objects were donated by a single collector (the Beardsleys), but a collection of objects can also be defined by type (as in a collection of ceramic items).  An accession refers to the objects that make up a single transaction between the museum and a source; the objects of the Beardsley collection were donated at the same time and so they are all a part of the same accession. Accession number is the numerical identifier for the object or set of objects associated with a given donation (the Beardsley Collection accession number is 74-2). Registration is the act of assigning a permanent accession number to an accession, this usually occurs at or near the time of donation. The Beardsley Collection donation predates the implementation of accessioning protocol and so it was not assigned an accession number until 1974—eighteen years after entering the SSC collection. Cataloguing is the act of designating an object to one or more descriptive classificatory systems. The objects in the Beardsley Collection have been subjected to a variety of cataloging events and systems. For example, all the ceramic items have been assigned a catalog number that ties them typologically and comparatively to other ceramic items owned by the museum. An accession file stores all the information about the donation and care of the objects. This may include museum records of donation, registration, and cataloging, as well as any known information on the previous owners/collectors of the objects (including but not limited to ephemera, previous owner’s written records, and publications).  

The assortment of objects that have come to be known as the Beardsley Collection were donated in 1956 to the Sacramento State College Anthropology Department by a Mrs. Arthur White and were originally cataloged into the teaching collection.  Since that time, they have been cataloged in a multitude of ways. Each catalog event signifies a new methodology of classification and contextualization for the objects. An example of one object’s career through the various events will be more intelligible than an abstract discussion, and will also assist in an explanation of my intended inventory methodology. A small ceramic black bowl will work nicely as a representative example. Today this object has three numbers associated with it. A typed note of unknown origin has been placed inside of the bowl and reads “Italy—Bowl from a buried Roman Villa, Baeia, Bay of Naples.” As a part of the registration phase, the bowl was entered into the Sacramento State College Department of Anthropology’s 3x5 card catalog. No museum existed at this time so index cards created for archaeological finds were used (Castaneda 2010). A museum worker by the name of Hood (it is currently unknown if this is a student, staff, or faculty member of SSC) cataloged the collection. Each object was given a single identifying number; the bowl was cataloged as number 82 and labeled as such with a round paper tag.

In the early 1970s, a new system was established that cataloged objects by type (as previously discussed).  This system used a prefix describing the object (basket, beadwork, ceramic, lithic, etc.) followed by a sequential number. The bowl became CER-248.

In 1974, the museum adopted professional museum registration procedures, formally accessioning the Beardsley Collection using a binomial system (74-2) that allowed for the creation of trinomial catalog numbers based on the sequential identification of each object within the accession (Castaneda 2010). Under this system, the Roman bowl discussed above became 74-2-60. The first part of the trinomial denotes the date accessioned (although customarily this would be the year of acquisition), the second designates it as part of the Beardsley Collection, and the third is the object’s unique identifying number. At this time a formal inventory was produced by O’Bannon (possibly a student). This record enumerates 141 objects, photo albums, books and personal papers, and marks the last time the Beardsley Collection was inventoried.