Collection Care blog

The Ramayana – “Rama’s journey” – is one of India’s oldest stories having first being written some two and a half thousand years ago. It follows the hero Rama from his birth and childhood in Ayodhya to his exile in the forest where his wife Sita is kidnapped by the wicked (and ten-headed!) demon king Ravana. With his valorous brother Lakshmana and helped by an army of monkeys and bears he leads the search for Sita, finally rescuing her from Ravana’s stronghold in Lanka. It is an epic story embodying the Hindu idea of dharma (duty). There are several thousand known surviving manuscripts and many different versions of the story across Asia. The Mewar Ramayana is one of the finest copies of the work, lavishly illustrated with over 450 paintings in large format. Recent digitisation by the British Library in partnership with leading Indian institutions has reunited the long-separated text and it can be viewed online featuring an introduction including links to contextual documents and high resolution images in ‘Turning the Pages’ with descriptive text and audio.

We recently examined two paintings from the Mewar Ramayana using multispectral imaging to investigate the methods and workflow of the artist. Images are captured over fourteen spectral bands from the ultraviolet (UV: 365 nm) to the infrared (IR: 1050 nm) revealing information about underdrawings and techniques that can’t be seen under normal light. The two full page paintings are illustrations from Book 6 (Yuddhakanda, Book of war) of the Mewar Ramayana manuscript.

Book 6 fol. 27r (Add. MS 15297(1), f.27r)

Book 6 fol. 27r depicting the siege of Lanka in colour, ultraviolet, infrared, and blue light with an orange filter. Rama’s army of monkeys takes control of the four gates of the city as the ten-headed Ravana leads the defence after consulting his ministers.

Book 6 fol. 27r: Rama’s army of monkeys and bears hurl stones at their enemies. White pigment, possibly added as a later touch up, is observed under ultraviolet light on the elbows, arms and tails of the attacking monkeys.

Book 6 fol. 27r: Colour, ultraviolet, infrared sequence. In front of the gates to Lanka, a man struggles with a monkey. Under ultraviolet light the rough application of paint is evident on the man's hand where no attempt is made to stay within the lines. In the infrared image, the guidelines used to initially draw the figure (chest, back, elbow) are observed.

Book 6 fol. 27r: An archer fends off the monkey army. Incorporating high levels of detail in these paintings often led to a change in design layout. In the painting the archer is shown to be sitting cross-legged on the cart, but in the infrared image he is standing. The late addition of the cart is evident by the over painting of the wheel in order to indicate its attachment to the main frame of the cart. Other alterations were made such as the size of the soldier's orange foot in the top left, and the painting over of an isolated monkey tail on the horse's body in the bottom left.

Book 6 fol. 142r (Add. MS 15297(1), f.142r)

As the battle escalates Rama’s brother Lakshmana is seriously wounded by a spear. Hanuman the monkeys’ army general is sent to the Himalayas to pick up medicinal herbs.

Book 6 fol. 142r: Colour, ultraviolet, infrared, and blue light with an orange filter sequence of the painting.

Book 6 fol. 142r: Colour, ultraviolet, infrared sequence. Rama’s loyal brother Lakshmana is seriously wounded by a spear. In the ultraviolet image we can see touch-ups on the hands, arms and legs of the two monkeys trying to take the spear off Lakshmana. Under infrared light we can see underdrawings of the far left monkey who was originally positioned higher up.

Book 6 fol. 142r: Colour, ultraviolet, infrared sequence. In the ultraviolet image alterations to Rama’s clothing and the direction of arrows is observed. Under infrared light, the boat at the top of the painting with the three figures is shown to have been altered. It may have started out as a representation of deities in the sky similar to those seen in Mughal Mahabharata (Razmnamah) Or. 12076 f.76r. Other arrow positions have also changed.

Book 6 fol. 142r: In the infrared image, a different position for the ten-headed Ravana is shown to the right, where a single face in profile is revealed adjacent to a vertical line. This is completely obscured by the green pigment which we now see.

Multispectral imaging has proven a wonderful technology in allowing us to study collection items in new and exciting ways. These are just some of the observations made and we hope to share more in the future.

Christina Duffy (Imaging Scientist) and Pasquale Manzo (Curator Sanskrit)

The valedictory symposium of this year’s Material Witness was recently held at the Art Workers' Guild, London. Material Witness is a programme for post-graduate Humanities researchers investigating the place of objects and first-hand experience in scholarship in today’s digital world. One of the papers by James Alexander Cameron, who is completing a PhD at the Courtauld Institute on sedilia in English churches, particularly brought out the importance of embracing both digital and physical study of objects, as we do at the British Library.

 Left: Cherry Hinton (Cambridgeshire)

Sedilia are the seats by the altar for the use of the priest, deacon and subdeacon celebrating Mass. In English churches they often take the form of three stone niches, built into the wall of the chancel. My research has shown they seem to be largely, but not exclusively an English phenomenon, becoming common in the thirteenth century and reaching their height of popularity in the early fourteenth century.

I have amassed a database of all the sedilia in England using the Pevsner Architectural Guides, supplemented by hyperlinked images gathered mainly from the website Flickr. There are over 1,300 items in my database, 800 being what I dub the so-called “classic” sedilia: the set of niches set in the thickness of the wall, surmounted by arches and divided by columns or shafts.

So in many ways my thesis is made possible by the new phenomenon of mass public-domain photo sharing, such as the British Library has recently begun. I also try to share my rather pedantic pictures of churches and their furnishings on Flickr as much as my time allows in the hope someone else might find something in them as useful as I found the pictures of sedilia.

 Right: Westminster Abbey

But I am quite eager to use not just my hands, but my whole body in my research. Very few sedilia have as luscious sculpture as those of the 1320s in Heckington church (Lincolnshire), microarchitectural canopies as fantastic as Exeter Cathedral or painting as top-whack as Westminster Abbey. The vast majority are just niches in the wall, more common proportionally in ordinary parish churches than cathedrals. There are rarely ever any signs of use in the form of traces of fittings such as hanging fabrics or cushions. It seems that quite simply, clergy sat in them during the points of the service when they weren’t doing anything else.

 Left: Morton (Lincolnshire)

So that’s what I do: I sit in them, with a tripod on a timer for three exposures 2 seconds apart. And then I make a montage of the resulting pictures when I get home. I have around 130 of these montages, which means I have sat in around 10% of all the sedilia in England (possibly sounds slightly more impressive than it is).

 Right: Castle Hedingham (Essex) 

This isn’t just a completist mania, as from the first time I did it (to be quite honest initially as the one-off gag everyone thinks it is) at Castle Hedingham in Essex back in 2011, I realised what an extraordinarily useful way it was of recording the scale of sedilia. Because even though they generally look very similar, sedilia come in such varied shapes and decorative forms, to gather their dimensions in any meaningful way with a tape measure would be nigh-on impossible. And to see at a glance the claustrophobic niches at Castle Hedingham, made me realise that although the current carving is 1873, you can see the traces of the original twelfth-century arches that they were placed inside of, resulting in their uniquely cramped proportions. Since then, unless the sedilia are stuck behind an immovable object, I’ve done this shot.

 Left: Kirkstall Abbey (West Yorkshire)

Seeing the scale at a glance is important, particularly for some of the earliest sedilia that do not have the demarcated niches, such as the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstall near Leeds, probably built in the late 1150s. The austere Cistercians were a bit weird among the other great monastic abbeys at this time for just having chancels with blank walls around the altar: most orders would have aisles all the way round: the arches of which would be useful to put a bench between for the ministers of the high altar. When you actually visit Kirkstall, you see that the sedilia niche, one of the earliest in England, is much higher than it needs to be, and that the builders are actually creating a false bay of an arcade for the clergy to sit under, rather than the more identifiable genre of “classic” sedilia that came along later.

 Right: Heckington (Lincolnshire)

And then those sedilia at Heckington, often pictured in books on parish churches for their wonderful sculpture of everyday life and extraordinarily well-preserved Coronation of the Virgin, but if you sit in them you can demonstrate how high up this sculpture is, and how the men in the seats were not the primary audience of it. Instead, the Coronation of the Virgin represents Christ’s charge to Mary as Ecclesia, the representation of the Church, and interacts with the bodies below as a visual ensemble of the Church Militant on Earth and the Church Triumphant in Heaven.

See more about my project at my page on the Courtauld website, and how you can help by sending in my missing sedilia.

James Alexander Cameron

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Flavio Marzo ACR, Conservation Studio Manager for the British Library/Qatar Foundation digitisation project reflects on his visit to the Arab and Islamic Heritage Collection Library:

 Doha, Qatar

During a recent trip to Doha, Qatar, I was invited to speak at the ‘Past to Present: Art Conservation Conference’ at the Museum of Islamic Art, held on 28 November 2013. I was invited to visit the Arab and Islamic Heritage Collection Library by Dr Joachim Gierlichs, Associate Director for Special Collections and Archives at the Qatar National Library, and Mark T. Paul, Head of Partnerships at the Qatar National Library. As I presently manage the conservation studio that has been created for the British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership at the British Library, my trip to Doha was a chance for me to meet some of my colleagues for the first time.

I spent the morning after my arrival visiting one of the Library’s main collections, the private study library of Sheikh Hassan Bin Mohammed Bin Ali Al-Thani, founder of Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, and a prominent scholar on the history and culture of Arabia. The collection includes rare and valuable texts and manuscripts relating to Arab-Islamic civilization, as well as books, periodicals and maps from European orientalists, travellers and explorers who were fascinated by Arab-Islamic cultural heritage.

Arab and Islamic Heritage Collection Library.

One of the highlights of the visit for me was the opportunity to meet the three conservators working at the library and to visit the conservation studio. The studio, although limited in space, is well equipped for carrying out full treatments of printed and manuscript items.

Chanaca Perera, conservator in charge of the studio, with his team.

Dr Stavroula Golfomitsou and Flavio Marzo.

The afternoon was spent visiting the new facilities of the UCL Qatar Centre for the Study of Cultural Heritage in Education City, opened in partnership with the Qatar Foundation and the Qatar Museums Authority in 2012.

Main studio in the UCL Qatar Centre for the Study of Cultural Heritage.

While there, I visited the classrooms, met some of the students and spent time with Dr Stavroula Golfomitsou, who has developed and led the Conservation Studies Programme at UCL Qatar since its beginning in 2012.

My impression of Doha and the different institutions and people I met there was very positive: while there are difficulties due to bureaucracy and the nature of the sometime unbearably hot local environment in summer, these difficulties have not restrained or threatened the hope for the future and the proactive spirit that I felt. This is in no small part due to the support given by this rich and fast-developing country, which is investing so much in the field of cultural heritage and research – perhaps something we might like to learn?! I really hope so.

Flavio Marzo

Introduction

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Taylor, the Political Resident in Bussorah (Basra) in 1819 and in Baghdad in 1821, was well known for his personal interest in Arabic culture and for his remarkable collection of Arabic manuscripts and art pieces. Between 1850 and 1860, the British Museum acquired 355 books from his widow.

So far, 129 manuscripts from the British Library collection have been scoped and condition assessed by conservators working for the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership. This is so they can be digitised for a new digital portal that will be launched at the end of this year as part of the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership.

Ownership stamp

Amongst those manuscripts, there was a group of eight that particularly attracted my attention. The content of these manuscripts, all part of the Taylor collection, date from between 1248 to 1605, and have probably been bound or rebound after being acquired by him. Certain features of the bindings point to the same binder having been used, but some of the differences between their constructions are intriguing too. The following is a collection of observations I have made during my assessment of these fascinating items.  This printed annotation was added by the British Museum on each of the manuscripts recording the provenance and the date of the acquisition.

Covers

Starting with the most obvious similarity between these eight items, we shall look at the covers, which are all bound in full red goat leather (see images below). The boards have also been decorated with blind tooling. The tools used are often the same and used in similar patterns, for example, single tools repeated and combined to create the patterns that make the central decorations and the frames that you can see in the following images.

Add Ms 23393

Add Ms 23391

 Left board Add. Ms 23393                  Left board Add. Ms 23391

Add Ms 23390

Add Ms 23430

 Left board Add Ms. 23390                        Left board Add. Ms 23430

Add Ms 1523

Add Ms 23407

 Central decoration on left board of Add. Ms 1523 vs decoration of Add Ms 23393

Right board of Add Ms 1523

Right board of Add Ms 23407

 Decorated frame on right board of Add Ms 1523 vs decoration on right board of Add Ms 23407

The bindings also present other similarities within the structural features such as end band style and the style of sewing which I will discuss in the following sections.

Sewing

The sewing of Islamic style bindings, the style these bindings largely correlate to, is commonly characterised by the absence of supports. This means that the book block is not sewn around supports, which in Western bindings consist, in the main, of strips of leather or linen cord. The book block is held together with the thread alone. Strangely, in this case, four of these eight manuscripts would appear to be have been sewn on supports as visible on the following image. This does not correspond to the ‘rules’ of binding styles, creating a type of hybrid.

Leather cover

 The rows are pointing to the protruding areas on the spine where the supports, possibly strips of leather, bulge under the leather cover

Sewing diagram

Diagram indicating the sewing structures of four of the books, with three sewing stations sewn around supports, a traditionally Western feature.

This diagram, drawn after careful examination of the sewing only accessible from the inside of the book-blocks, shows a possible description of this unusual sewing technique. The head and tail chain-stitches (A) are most certainly supported with the sewing thread passing around the support. The sewing on the central support (B) has been done like it is normally, on tape with the sewing thread passing behind the support.

Cover leather overlapping on the spine

Three of these eight manuscripts exhibit the peculiar feature of overlapped cover leather on the spine. This feature consists of the leather covering the boards left longer at the inner joint. The extending parts of the leather are attached to the spine of the book block by overlapping them. This can be seen clearly in the following image that shows the detail, at the head edge, of the overlapping of the two layers of leather on the spine of manuscript Add.23387.

Cover construction

 The following drawing shows the construction of the cover where the two boards are prepared separately and attached to the spine of the book block by overlapping the two extensions of the covering leather.

Overlapping spine

In another manuscript, Add. Ms 23393, this feature initially appears identical, but is in fact the result of a completely different technique. By looking at the book carefully it is possible to see that the two pieces of leather, even if overlapping (see image below) on the spine, are not attached to the spine one on top of the other, but they have been attached together separately to create a fully formed case cover. Once formed, it was attached to the spine of the book-block.

Overlapping spine layers in raking light

 In the picture, taken in raking light, the line of the overlapping layers of leather is highlighted by the black arrows.

The shadow, indicated by arrows in the image below, shows that the piece of leather covering the right board is actually extending under the piece of leather covering the left board. The two separate pieces of leather are not only overlapping on the spine as previously recorded for this specific style, but they are used here to form a cover that had to be fully prepared separately before being attached to the book. This is an interesting twist on a well-documented style.

Shadow on overlapping covers

 The cover of Add. Ms 23393 was fully prepared before being attached to the book.

Further evidence that the cover was completed separately is that the leather from the left board at head and tail, where it forms the caps, has been turned in on top of the other piece. This can only be done before the cover was attached to the spine of the book because the folded leather is now pinched between the spine of the book and the spine leather of the cover.

Tail cap

 The arrow indicates the overlapping of the leather disappearing in the turn to form the tail cap.

End bands

In manuscript Add.Ms 23390 the end band (only the one at the head has survived) is actually made in a western style (see image below) whereas the other 7 manuscripts have end bands executed following techniques and aesthetics of ‘Islamic style’ bindings.

End band

 In this image of manuscript Add.Ms 23390 the technique used to make the end band is ‘western’ with the coloured silk threads (Pink, Yellow and Green) passed around a cylindrical core possibly made of cord.

Head band

 In this image showing the head of Ms Add. 23407 we can see a detail of a typical Islamic style end band. The secondary, extremely elaborated sewing has been created with cream and blue silk threads.

Conclusions

These manuscripts, all with contents dating from different periods (from 1248 until 1610) appear to have been bound or re-bound when acquired by Mr Taylor. If this is the case it would justify the very striking similarities and the consistency in the materials used for their construction and their appearance.

A systematic assessment of this group of manuscripts to collect more information about their bindings would be necessary to draw a better picture of the collection and of the similarities and unexpected differences between their physical features. This could lead us to identify the binder who executed them, giving an insight into the rich history of bookbinding. Further research about Lieutenant Colonel Taylor’s activity during his work as Political Resident could also be carried out within the India Office Records to find records relating to payments made during the acquisition process and possibly the re-binding of these manuscripts. The digitised images will become available online later this year, along with a short article on Taylor, researched by Jo Wright, Content Development Curator for the Qatar Partnership.

Flavio Marzo

Update (July 2017): See this Royal Asiatic Society blog post describing a bookplate suspected to be owned by Col. Robert Taylor. It depicts thirteen different renderings of "Robert Taylor" suggesting he had at least some knowledge of a variety of Indian and other languages.

A watermark of a post horn surrounded by a shield was recently discovered on the rear pastedown of the St Cuthbert Gospel (Add. MS 89000). The finding has just been published in the Electronic British Library Journal. The St Cuthbert Gospel is a late seventh century parchment volume and is the oldest intact European book. This Anglo-Saxon pocket gospel belonged to St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (c. 635–687) and was discovered in 1104 in his tomb.

The pastedown, which is the endpaper attached to the inside cover board of a book, records the donation of the St Cuthbert Gospel (then known as the Stonyhurst Gospel) to the British Province of the Society of Jesus from the Reverend Thomas Philips, S. J. in 1769.

St Cuthbert Gospel

Rear pastedown

Watermark location

 Left: Front cover of the St Cuthbert Gospel. Centre: The rear pastedown showing a record of the donation: ‘Hunc Evangelii Codicem dono accepit ab Henrico Comite de Litchfield, et dono dedit Patribus Societatis Iesu, Collegii Anglicani, Leodii, Anno 1769; rectore eiusdem Collegii Ioanne Howard: Thomas Phillips Sac. Can. Ton.’ which translates to: ‘This Gospel Book was received as a gift from Henry, Earl of Litchfield, and given to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, of the English College, Liège, in the year 1769, the rector of the college, John Howard, Thomas Phillips Canon of Tongres.’ Right: The watermark is located in the lower right hand corner

What are watermarks?

Watermarks are created by manipulating a piece of wire into a recognisable shape and fixing it to a paper mould such as the Japanese papermaking bamboo screen below.  Here the bamboo has been cut into strips and arranged into parallel lines called laid lines. The bamboo strips are held together by sewing thread at one inch intervals, which form the chain lines on a sheet of paper. Chain lines, laid lines and watermarks are visible when held up to a light source. Light can pass through watermarks easily because the paper thickness is reduced where wire is present in the mould.

Paper mould

 A Japanese papermaking bamboo screen

We typically notice watermarks on paper when they are held up to the light revealing a motif, initials or a date relating to the original paper mill. Watermarks are therefore useful in determining the provenance of paper and can help to identify its intended function. Watermarks can be difficult to image because they are often obscured by print on the page, or are located in the gutter (the space between the printed area and the binding).

An example of a partial watermark from a woodblock reprint dating to about 1476 is shown below. The reprint is of the Astronomical Calendar first published by Johann Müller (Regiomontanus) in Nuremberg in 1474 (British Library shelfmark IA.7). The watermark is found in the gutter with the other half located several folios later due to the ordering and cutting of the folios.

Partial watermark in book gutter

 Watermark in the gutter of BL IA.7 when viewed through a light sheet 

When the page is adhered to a board on one side, such as the rear pastedown of the St Cuthbert Gospel, it is impossible for light to transmit and watermarks can remain undetected. A pastedown conceals the raw edges of the covering material and forms a hinge between the board and the text block.

Pastedown example

 An example of a front pastedown where one side of the endpaper is adhered to the front cover. Since the endpaper is fixed to the board it is difficult for light to penetrate and illuminate potential watermarks

The St Cuthbert Gospel watermark

A high resolution digital image of the pastedown was processed using ImageJ, an open source image processing software package. An image is comprised of a variety of layers or textures which can be separated. This allows pixels of interest to be isolated which may include faded writing, obscured text or watermarks. The watermark was revealed by converting the image from the standard RGB (red green blue) colour space into another space where tiny contrast differences were enhanced. The process of colour space analysis is fully explained in the publication: The Discovery of a Watermark on the St Cuthbert Gospel using Colour Space Analysis

No watermark observed

Watermark visible

 Left: An image of the rear pastedown of the St Cuthbert Gospel where no watermark is observed. Right: The same image reveals a watermark in the lower right hand corner of the pastedown when processed into another colour space

Non-destructive science

Colour space analysis is being used at the British Library to enhance faded designs on binding covers, disclose watermarks and hidden inscriptions and to reveal text which has been chemically treated or erased. In many cases applying colour space analysis to certain multispectral images has proven successful.

Digitisation projects generate large amounts of high-resolution images which can be manipulated to discover hidden information without the need to access the item. This has significant implications for the long-term study and preservation of cultural heritage collection items. The rear pastedown in the St Cuthbert Gospel was formerly numbered f. 91 and is available to view on the internet as part of the Digitised Manuscripts website.

Christina Duffy (@DuffyChristina)

The Lindisfarne Gospels is one of the most magnificent manuscripts of the early Middle Ages. It was written and decorated at the end of the 7th century by a monk named Eadfrith who would go on to become Bishop of Lindisfarne and serve from 698 until his death in 721. An Old English gloss between the lines translates the Latin text of the Gospel and is the earliest surviving example of the Gospel text in any form of the English language. This translation was a late (mid-10th century) addition by Aldred, Provost of Chester-le-Street.

As one of the Treasures of the British Library the Lindisfarne Gospels undergoes strict condition assessments to ensure it is kept at ideal environmental conditions. Part of this assessment involves using microscopy to take a detailed look at the pigment behaviour. We posted some images in a previous post: Under the microscope with the Lindisfarne Gospels, and here we share some of the exceptional exuberance found on folio 3r.

Folio 3r

 Folio 3r of the Lindisfarne Gospels, Cotton MS Nero D IV. Examine in full detail here

The abstracted decoration found throughout the Lindisfarne Gospels is a spectacular example of Anglo-Saxon art. There are five major decorated openings in the manuscript, the first of which is found on ff. 2v – 3 and introduces the letter which St Jerome addressed to Pope Damasus. It was Pope Damasus who requested a revision of the Latin Bible text during the late 4th century. Folio 2v consists of an elaborate cross-carpet page and faces Jerome’s letter to Damasus in Latin with the opening Novum opus (New work). The intricate detail on this page has been interpreted as an act of personal spirituality and devotion. A few examples are shown below. Enjoy!

Top of folio 3r

Top of folio 3r

Folio 3r letter 50x

Folio 3r 150x

Folio 3r detail 50x

 Top: Upper section of folio 3r. Centre: Crackled pigment of lettering reading incipit prologus at 50x and 150x magnification. Bottom: Celtic-influenced spiral motif at 50x magnification

Centre of folio 3r

Tiny drops of red lead are also observed in early Irish manuscripts which heavily influenced the Lindisfarne Gospels. The Germanic zoomorphic style is evident with interlacing animal and bird patterns.

Centre of folio 3r

Folio 3r 20x

Folio 3r pigment 50x

Folio 3r red lead 20x

  Top: Central section of folio 3r from the British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts with creature detail at 20x and 50x magnification. Bottom: Drops of red lead in a geometric pattern at 20x magnification

Bottom of folio 3r

Decorated initials exhibit yellow pigment (orpiment) bordered with drops of red lead. Craquelure is a network of tiny cracks caused by pigment shrinking due to age. When the disruption consists of perpendicular lines it is referred to as crackling.

Bottom of folio 3r

Folio 3r 30x

Folio 3r 100x

Folio 3r pigment loss 20x

Folio 3r 50x

 Top: Lower section of folio 3r. Detail of decorated initals at 30x and 100x magnification. Bottom: evidence of loss of green pigment (verdigris or vergaut) from a decorated initial at 20x and 50x magnification. Text from the reverse (f. 3v) is shown through the parchment

For more details on the pigments used in the Lindisfarne Gospels see our previous post. The entire manuscript is digitised and available online here.

Christina Duffy (Twitter: @DuffyChristina)

The Macbeth ColorChecker^(R) is often observed in digitised images adjacent to the subject being imaged. It is a colour calibration target used widely by photographers to achieve consistent colour within a studio environment. Good colour management allows the photographer to have continuity to achieve the same result with any camera. The rectangular cardboard target consists of a grid of 24 squares of colour samples, each with a measurable spectral reflectance. Reflectance refers to the fraction of incident light reflected at an interface. The spectral reflectance of these patches does not change under different lighting conditions in the visible spectrum (this is not the case in the ultra-violet and infra-red – see footnote* below), so are reliable to track colour changes in this range.

Figure 1: Calibration target shown over f.86v of Cotton Nero A.x. during imaging of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. The target is set to be on the same focal plane as the folio. Targets are often cropped out of final processed images.

The idea of a colour chart came about in a 1976 paper in the Journal of Applied Photographic Engineering by C. S McCamy, H. Marcus and J.G. Davidson entitled A Color-Rendition Chart. The abstract states “A color chart has been developed to facilitate quantitative or visual evaluations of color reproduction processes employed in photography, television, and printing.” Their paper has been cited over 350 times to date. The original chart consisted of a 4 x 6 array of patches, each 5 cm square.

Figure 2: The original colour chart consisted of square patches of side 5 cm. The same size chart is still available and used today.

There are still 24 patches on modern colour calibration targets but smaller versions are now available with patches measuring 1 cm wide. The X-Rite ColorChecker^(R) Classic target used in our lab is shown below with a scale, focusing target, and reference number that we attached.

Figure 3: The ColorChecker^(R) Classic target has 24 colours in a 6 x 4 grid. The colours are painted in matte on smooth paper and surrounded by a black cardboard border. 

The colours are roughly divided into four kinds. The top row is composed of colours which approximate natural objects such as human skin (dark and light), blue sky, the green colour of a leaf, and a blue chicory flower. The second row is made of miscellaneous colours encompassing a good range of test colours. The third row is comprised of the primary (blue, green, red) and secondary (yellow, magenta, cyan) colours, and the fourth row represents a uniform gray lightness scale ranging from brilliant white to black.

Figure 4: Colours in the calibration target. These colours are precisely measured and can be described in terms of the Munsell color system (a colour space describing colours in terms of their hue, lightness and chroma).

Larger colour calibration targets do exist such as the ColorChecker^(R) Digital SG which boasts a gamut of 140 colours.

Figure 5: ColourChecker^(R) Digital SG boasts the widest colour gamut available. Its design is based on the original ColorChecker^(R) target but is enhanced for digital photography. Image copyright X-Rite, from X-Rite website.

For consistent colour, photographers can take a shot of the calibration target with the camera set to capture raw files. Shooting raw is the only way the camera chip can capture all of the information available in the scene. The image is opened in image processing software such as Photoshop, and a script is run on the image which opens it multiple times with different settings. Results are measured and a status is generated with values which can be used to fine-tune the camera’s colour calibration and get processed colour to match the original scene (or alternatively to distort the colour for special effects!).

While colour calibration targets are on the whole produced in the same way using the same materials, on average, every colour target is ever-so-slightly different. The colour difference may be very small and only measureable using other scientific methods. Colour difference is a metric of interest in colour science - the standard metric being Delta E (ΔE). This definition allows colour difference to be quantified in a way which is more reliable than just using adjectives, a practise which is detrimental to anyone whose work is colour critical!

Our multispectral imaging system captures images in Lab colour space, where L is lightness and a and b are colour-opponent dimensions. Lab colour space approximates human vision and is device independent. It includes all perceivable colours with RGB and CMYK spaces (see our previous post What the CMYK? Colour spaces and printing) sitting within its larger gamut, so file sizes are generally much larger. Values for L, a, and b can be tracked once the image has been white balanced using the white colour patch on our calibration target as a reference. However, Lab files don’t open in all software packages so quite often it is necessary to transform images into other spaces such as RGB, but the original Lab file is always stored.

Colour Science is a fascinating and growing area of research. For fun you can try out this Color IQ test from the X-Rite website to learn more about how you see colour, and to find out where you can get your own targets.

Christina Duffy (@DuffyChristina)

Footnote:

*While the Macbeth ColorChecker^(R) provides 24 colours with consistent spectral reflectance under typical lighting conditions in the visible spectrum, it does not behave similarly in the ultra violet or infrared parts of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. Another material such as Spectralon is required for imaging outside of the visible range. The property which defines a diffusely reflecting surface (i.e. an ideal “matte”) is called Lambertian reflectance and Spectralon exhibits highly Lambertian behaviour with a spectral reflectance of >99% from 400-1500nm and >95% from 250-2500 nm. Spectralon is a fluoropolymer - others include PVF, PVDF and PTFE (Teflon). Spectralon has the highest diffuse reflectance of any known material over IR (infra-red), VIS (visible) and NIR (near-infrared) regions of the spectrum, and is therefore very expensive, but necessary to track colour difference during multispectral imaging.

Reference

McCamy, C.S.; Marcus, H.; Davidson, J.G A, 1976, A Color-Rendition Chart, Journal of Applied Photographic Engineering Volume 2, Number 3, pp 95-99

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Flavio Marzo, Conservation Studio Manager for the British Library/Qatar Foundation digitisation project reports on the conservation of three manuscripts from the India Office Records.

A new conservation studio has been set up at the British Library to support a digitisation project as part of the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership programme. The Library’s Arabic material has been scoped for the creation of a new web portal where, in a year’s time, around 500,000 images will be made available online to the general public.

Front left board of MS IOR/R/15/1/105

The majority of material identified for digitisation comes from the India Office records. Many of the files that form this collection are related to the Gulf area, and so are deeply connected to the history of Qatar and its neighboring countries.

The India Office Records are a very large collection of documents relating to the administration of India from 1600 – 1947, the period which spans Company and British rule in India. The archive is held here at the Library and is publicly accessible.

As the formal document of British presence in the Persian Gulf, IOR/R/15 is a fascinating series within the India Office Records, giving a unique insight into a colonial encounter between European imperial power and tribal shaikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula coast.

One of the most striking features of these Records is the variety and mixture of formats and features related to different manufacturing techniques. These range from bound printed or manuscript volumes to folders containing loose leaves, folded maps, photographs, miscellaneous textile offcuts and samples of products sold in the colonies during the English occupation. In many cases these records were produced by a local workforce in the countries where the IOR officers were stationed.

This mixture of local craftsmanship and foreign taste (and in some cases even foreign materials) has produced very interesting objects which carry a fusion of western appearance and “Islamic” manufacturing techniques.

In this post I want to present some features of three bound manuscripts from the India Office Records: IOR/R/15/1/105, IOR/R/15/103 and IOR/15/1/161.

Front left board of MS IOR/R/15/1/161

Front left board of MS IOR/R/15/1/103

These manuscripts were produced in the middle of the 19th century and contain collections of letters sent from the British Political Residency in the Persian Gulf stationed at Bushire (or Bushehr) on the south western coast of Iran.

Many of the features of these volumes are traditionally considered to be Western. They were all bound in full leather and decorated with similar finishing tools without the use of gold (blind tooled decoration).

Detail of the tool used to decorate the cover of two of the manuscripts

Detail of the tool used to decorate the cover of two of the manuscripts

They are written in English on western handmade paper. The countermark in the image below indicates that the paper was produced in 1843 in Stowford Mill, which continues to make paper to this day.

Page from one of the volumes, photographed in transmitted light to reveal the countermark

Other aspects of these books have been produced using ‘Islamic’ style binding techniques. For example, the textblock sections are secured with ‘unsupported sewing’. The Western binding technique of using a material (vellum or cord) to sew around, attaching the sections to it using the thread, is absent here meaning that it is only the thread itself securing the sections together.

Another example is the execution of the endbands that you see in the images below. These are typical of Islamic bindings as commonly recognized in the field of the history book by the way they are sewn and by the final pattern and appearance.

Islamic style endband

Islamic style endband

It is clear from this mixing of binding influences that these volumes were not produced in a Western bindery! It is likely that the materials were provided by the India Office, along with specific requests regarding the appearance, which tie in with traditional Western tastes. The rest was down to the knowledge and expertise of the local binders, and what an exciting interesting fusion of styles it has resulted in!

The writing close to the gutter of the book can make it difficult for digitisation.

In these specific cases, we re-housed the books in custom made archival boxes and repaired enough of the damaged paper and boards to stabilise it for future handling.

They will soon be fully digitized and available online on the Qatar National Library web site. The process of digitisation gives conservators the opportunity to assess large numbers of items in a short period of time, enabling them to more fully understand the collection. In this case, it allowed me to appreciate the fusion of binding styles that make these items so interesting. Their content will be made available and their peculiar and unique features will be preserved.

The final product!

Flavio Marzo

Purple coloured pages of vellum are sometimes found in sacred texts adorned in gold or silver lettering. They can be seen in folios 2-5 of the recently digitised Cotton Titus C XV on the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts website. Fragments of the Codex Purpureus Petrolpolitanus (a 6th century copy of the Four Gospels in Greek) demonstrate the use of purple as an indicator of wealth, power and kingship. Purple parchment was once only used for Roman or Byzantine Emperors, but later found use in Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts for the Emperors in Carolingian art and Ottonian art. The discovery of shell fragments in archaeological sites in Scotland and Ireland has pointed to the harvesting of sea snails for a gland which produces the purple colour. 

Figure 1: Fragment of the Codex Purpureus Petropolitanus, 6th century, Cotton MS Titus C XV, f. 4v. Read more about this codex on the BL Medieval blog: A Papyrus Puzzle and Some Purple Parchment. 

In 1992 marine shell remains were recovered from caves in Sutherland County in Scotland. Archaeologists used sieves to isolate shells of the whelk known scientifically as Buccinum undatum. These whelks survive in shallow water (down to about 100m) and are found in sand and mud. Their usual capture occurs using baskets or baited pots. The fragmented state of the shells dispersed around the site suggested that they had been purposely collected and broken.

Figure 2:  The sea snail Buccinum undatum.

Another type of whelk mollusc, known as Nucella lapillus (dogwhelk or Purpura lapillus) was found at the Scottish site in Wetweather Cave. Nucella lapillus are found in crevices around rocky shores and estuarine conditions. They are a species of predatory sea snail found around the coasts of Europe and in the north west Atlantic coast of North America where they feed on barnacles and mussels. The deliberately broken shells indicated to researchers that the whelks, which are not edible and were not being used as fishing bait, were being gathered for the production of purple dye.

Figure 3: Nucella lapillus feeding on barnacles. 

Nucella lapillus was also found in Connemara in the West of Ireland in 1919 by J. Wilfred Jackson. Heaps of shells (referred to as Purpura-mounds) had previously been found in 1895, but Jackson noted that the shells had deliberately broken apical whorls (a whorl being a turn of the whelk's spiral shell), but the lower whorl with the mouth had been left intact. The shells were smashed in such a way as to retain the cumella allowing the beast to be removed easily. It was clearly a serious business with one of the Irish Purpura-mounds measuring about 50 by 14 m  - over 200 whelks were found in a single square foot!

The dye is comprised of a mucous secretion from the sea snail's hypobranchial gland and is an organic compound of bromine. The secreted fluid is released by the sea snail as a defence mechanism when agitated. The secretion can be collected by "milking" the sea snails, however this is a very labour intensive process and more often than not the snails are crushed instead. It can take thousands of snails to produce a single gram of pure dye. After salting, boiling and sitting for a few days the gland fluid begins to turn from a pale cream to a purple colour. This process is accelerated by sun exposure. After about 10 days the dye is ready for use.

Figure 4: A purple parchment page of the 6th century Codex Argenteus with gold and silver lettering. 

Christina Duffy  (@DuffyChristina)

Further reading

Pollard, Tony (2005) 'The excavation of four caves in the Geodha Smoo near Durness, Sutherland'. Scottish Archaeology Internet Report 18

Jackson, J.W. (1917) 'Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture'

Henderson, George, Vision and Image in Early Christian England, Cambridge University Press, 1999, paperback edition 2010, Chapter 3, pp.122-135, 'The Colour Purple: A Late Antique Phenomenon and its Anglo-Saxon Reflexes'.

This is the second in a series of blog posts discussing the challenges of caring for the national newspaper collection - how we’ve worked to preserve it and keep it accessible in the past and how we are going to do so in the future.

The national newspaper collection is on the move. Its current home at Colindale is no longer fit for purpose – either as a repository able to offer long term sustainability to the collection; or as a facility for readers to experience the modern, dynamic newspaper and news service that we want to offer. This recent BBC News report paints a vivid picture.

We know the collection is vulnerable, and if we don’t act now to move it into better conditions, we risk more of it falling into such bad condition that we will be unable to issue it without increased damage or loss, if at all.

Our survey says…

In 2001, as part of a three year project to survey all of the Library’s collections on all of its sites, we surveyed the newspaper collections at Colindale using the PAS (Preservation Needs Assessment Survey) methodology. The results showed that the newspaper collection is the most vulnerable of all of the Library’s collections and gave us a statistically sound picture of the state of this national collection. Our results showed that 34% of the collection at Colindale was unstable – 19.4% in poor condition, 14.6% unusable.

We know that improved storage is the best way of preserving the whole collection for the long term, and our new Newspaper Storage Building (NSB) is undergoing its final testing as I type.

However, this is just the latest – and most ambitious – effort to strike a balance between the long-term preservation needs of the collection and our duty to make it available to users.

The ties that bind

Wooden sign directing to the bindery workshop on the 3rd floor in gold lettering

When reader facilities were added to the original Colindale repository in 1932, a bindery was also created on the 3rd floor. Here, new legal deposit intake was bound, and older papers were conserved – pulled down, de-acidified, repaired and re-sewn and re-bound. Treatment and binding styles varied depending on the age, type and size of newspaper - machine sewn; hand-sewn on tapes or cords, buckram and leather, half and quarter; finished in foils, mostly, but occasionally gold leaf.

As the conservation and binding of newspapers proved to be less and less cost and time effective over the years, benefiting only a small part of a vast collection, the bindery was closed in 2001. However, because of the work that was done, there are many thousands of volumes in perfectly good condition today that otherwise wouldn’t be.

Below, the bindery at Colindale in full production in the 1980s.

Image showing the binders working in the Colindale in the 1980s

 Newspapers ready for sewing, by machine and by hand

Image shows workers in the bindery preparing newspapers for sewing

 Forwarding and finishing

Lights! Camera! Microfilm!

We know that not everyone is a massive fan of microfilm. From a user point of view it has few of the advantages of digital and it’s not the real thing. But for the long term preservation of content it has proved its worth and without the large-scale microfilming programmes undertaken in the 1970s and onwards, a significant portion of our content would simply be unavailable today in any form.

A worker in Colindale microfilming a large volume. The book is on a stand and there are lights above

A worker in Colindale microfilming a newspaper

 Microfilming at Colindale began in the 1950s. In 1971 a dedicated microfilm unit was completed. At its height the unit operated 20 cameras and the BL produced (internally and externally) approximately 13 million frames of newspaper content annually

For we are living in a digital world, and I am a digital girl...(sorry, Madonna)

We still copy newspapers today, to increase access to content and to preserve the originals, but the format tends to be digital rather than microfilm. For instance the Library is working in partnership with DC Thompson Family History to digitise 40 million pages of 19th and early 20th century newspapers and make them available on the British Newspaper Archive website. Interestingly, where we can’t scan the original newspapers, the microfilm we created over the last 50 years is proving an invaluable alternative scanning source.

“What are you able to build with your blocks? Castles and palaces, temples and docks.” (from Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Image of new storage building, the building is a mixture of greys and blues, it has a yellow door and railings along the front of the building

 The new storage building, with the main void at the back and the support building in front

Well, what we’ve been able to build with our blocks is a brand new storage facility for the national newspaper collection at Boston Spa, known lovingly as NSB – Newspaper Storage Building (we love to tell it like it is!). This state-of-the-art building will secure the long term future of the collection. In a complete (improved) reversal of storage fortune for the collection, it will be stored in the dark which will protect it from the damaging light levels that were unable to be controlled at Colindale.

The temperature will be 14⁰C and relative humidity 55%, a vast improvement on what was able to be achieved at Colindale. More importantly, it will be maintained at a steady level which overall will provide an environment for the collection that will slow down the rate of deterioration. Crucially, the oxygen level is purposely low at 14-15%, eliminating the risk of fire (ignition is impossible). The ingest and retrieval of newspapers is automated, which means in turn that the storage can be high density.

Lying down on the job

Not us – the collection! If you read our first post, you’ll know that the collection varies in size enormously, from volumes no bigger than a pocket diary to volumes weighing nearly 20 kg. Storing these large and heavy volumes vertically is causing physical damage, particularly where the boards are no longer attached and providing support, so in the new building the collection will be stored horizontally in stacks which will ease the pressure on the bindings and stabilise the text block. A ‘stack’ consists of a bottom board, a stack of volumes, and a top board. The boards and the stack are secured by straps. The stacks are stored on huge carrier trays in the storage racking, each holding various permutation of stack sizes.

It all stacks up

We’ve set a maximum stack height of 400 mm for each stack. Volumes will be grouped together by condition and stacked by size, with bound volumes being alternated spine to foredge to provide a stable stack with an even weight distribution. In order to do this, we’ve undertaken a massive data gathering exercise, determining the size of every item in the collection and assigning a condition rating of good, poor, or unusable.

Size

Graph showing the seven sizes or footprints, relating to the board sizes on which items will be stacked

The collection was divided into seven sizes or footprints, relating to the board sizes on which items will be stacked. Footprint 1 is any volume up to 380 mm (h) x 310 mm (w), while footprint 7 caters for volumes between 820-1012 mm (h) x 680-770 mm (w) – we have several hundred of these. 

It’s a wrap

Knowing the condition of each item in the collection is important if we are to direct our resources appropriately and effectively. For this project, it was even more crucial because of the handling and transport logistics involved in moving from one building to the other. To protect items that are particularly vulnerable, we are shrink-wrapping those in poor and unusable condition.

A pile of shrink-wrapped volumes being tested for stability

 A stack of three shrink-wrapped volumes, being tested for stability

Three images showing the construction of the building from the beginning and throughout the building process

The installation of a giant crane inside the building

 One of the giant cranes is lifted into place. These will run up and down each aisle delivering carrier trays through a sealed air lock to the work stations in the support building

Another image of the giant crane inside the building, this image also has several site workers in it which highlights the vast size of the crane and space

Image of the light grey and yellow work stations with fencing behind them

 The workstations in the support building

Two workers building stacks inside the test facility. With many large half leather bindings with brown spines in two piles

 Stacks being built in a dedicated test facility

It’s no small undertaking to move such a large and vulnerable collection half way up the country, so in our third post on this topic we’ll spend some time with Moves Manager Sarah Jane Newbery to find out what the challenges are – and how it’s all progressing.

For more information on the newspaper moves see: www.bl.uk/newspaper-moves and follow us @BL_CollCare.

Sandy Ryan