A sweet little video put together for Vassar College’s Special Collections by Lucas Corley, VC ‘14 & Baynard Bailey in connection with a retrospective exhibition Hand, Voice & Vision currently on view at Vassar in the Thompson Library (right next to the Lehman Loeb Art Museum) through March 9th.
Take a video tour of the Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW) in Rosendale, NY. The video was produced in connection with a retrospective exhibition of artists’ books created and published by the WSW over the last 30 years. Mounted by the Archives and Special Collections of the Vassar College Libraries, the exhibition includes works by some of the most influential contemporary book artists in America.
Adhesives, part 1.
This one’s not just for the bookbinders! I recommend starting with this bit on what makes something archival for a little background. When I began trying to lay out something simple about adhesives per a request we had from a printmaking class (ages ago, they’ve probably figured it all out by now), I realized just how much is involved. What follows is, I hope, a simplification of a huge amount of information, but something that might help you choose the right adhesive for your project.
A little vocabulary: traditional adhesives are either vegetable-based (pastes) or animal-based (glues). Synthetics eventually replaced the animal adhesives in many applications sometime in the 20th century, so those are called glues too. And bookbinders, you’ll want to pay close attention to whether an operation calls for paste or glue or a mixture thereof (and hope the author was paying attention to that too). “Paste out the board” means something very different than “glue out the board” when all parties agree to that distinction. The family tree above gives you a vague classification of the adhesives—methyl cellulose being the outlier as a vegetable-based adhesive but a relatively modern one compared to wheat and other pastes. More on that later.
In the conservation (and industry) literature, tape is often referred to as pressure-sensitive adhesive, which referrs to the idea of applying it by pressing it onto a surface rather than, as in the case of liquid glue, brushing. Tape consists of one of the above kinds of adhesive plus a carrier–-the plastic or paper part.
Down to business: animal glue. Here we’re talking about bone glue, hide glue, and gelatin, as well as some you might not have thought about: fish glues (isinglass), rabbit skin glue, egg white (albumin), milk (casein), etc. In your basic animal glue, the collagen (proteins) in the skins and bones of horses is extracted through a cooking and liming process, resulting in a transparent brown liquid when hot, and solid (pellets, usually) at room temperature. Gelatin is a more refined version of the same thing, closer to clear when liquid. You might have heard of egg whites, another protein, being used in tempera or other paints as the binder, or for gold tooling as a (weak) adhesive. Rabbit skin glue, processed in the same way as horse hide, has been a traditional adhesive for instrument making and sizing canvases. Isinglass is made by soaking the swim bladder of an appropriate fish (often sturgeon) in water, then heating it to release the proteins, and straining the solids away. Casein is one of the components of milk; to turn it into an adhesive the milk is curdled, and the curds treated with an acid to precipitate the casein, which is then purified and dried. It’s been used as a size in papermaking, as a stiffener of textiles, and as the binder in paints for a long time.
Protein is complex enough to keep the chemists occupied for a while, but for our purposes what’s interesting is that it can be super sticky. These glues make strong but brittle bonds: look at a falling-apart old case-bound book and you’re sure to see the yellow-brown animal glue on the spine cracking apart from itself and the paper. As conservators we like the stuff, compared to synthetic glues, when we need to remove it, because it swells (gets soft) easily in water. It is possible for some of these protein adhesives, particularly casein, to cross-link (form more and more chemical bonds to itself over time) and thus be less responsive to water or other attempts to soften and remove it. When would we use it? The more purified gelatin or isinglass would usually be used instead of generic animal glue in conservation, although bookbinders still slap bone and hide glue all over the place, and we’d choose to use it where we need a water-reversible adhesive (i.e. not PVA) that’s stronger than paste (also water-reversible). Examples might be where a particularly stiff spine is required, or in the repair of parchment, or, diluted a bit more, to re-adhere pigments flaking off an old manuscript.
We are experiencing an almost record deficit of snow this year on the Binne. I never thought I would say it, but I miss it. Perhaps my putting that in writing will turn our luck around, or maybe this is just balance to the unbelievably soggy summer we had and will continue until the rains begin again in the spring.
WSW Book artist Alumnae Edie Tsong (Cut+Paste Society) sent us a little bit of winter from New Mexico to cheer up us snow deprived Rosendalians (or is it Rosendalites?). She has been working with High School students on “Snow Poems”, a collaborative installation of original poetry at New Mexico school for the Arts in Santa Fe by Edie and Dr. Monika Cassel’s poetry class. The talented arts high school students as well as faculty wrote and stenciled poems in spray snow around the entirety of the school building. The poems are visible and easily readable from the sidewalks, streets, and parking lots surrounding the building. This is a temporary project that began in mid-December. Poems will be up through the end of January 2012. “Radical Bookmaking” at its finest!
Hello Chris , Tatana , Ann, Anita and all +++
Just wanted to say hello and happy winter times + These days I am teaching full-time drawing and video-art at Grande Prairie Regional College (Very northern Alberta). For the last couple of weeks I have been teaching wood block printing and this week I am teaching artist books to the drawing class. It is so exciting to be able to share with my class images and stories from all the amazing books that artists have made thanks to WSW. I can’t thank you enough for teaching me so much about books and printmaking. My experience with you all has been so rewarding and now all the knowledge you shared with me is being passed on to lots of young artists here – so THANK-YOU ! Your website is great and so helpful – I know my students are going to love seeing images of the books and learning about the opportunities you offer. Just thought you might like to know that your amazing world at WSW will be inspiring young artists so far away ! I hope you are all enjoying gorgeous wintery Rosendale -miss you all very much and hope to see you again someday soon + I will be back in Ithaca by April so keep me posted if you happen to pass through!
All the best + big hugs,
Elisabeth.
Elisabeth Belliveau
Elisabeth Belliveau came to WSW in the fall of 2010 to make her beautiful book Academy and Estate as part of our Artist-in-Residence program. She returned this past summer to teach as part of our Summer Art Institute.
You can learn more about Elisabeth and fall in love with her for yourself on any one of her websites:
I started trying to write you a bit about adhesives but, like everything else, a little background helps: in this case, about the word “archival.” Because all of these things come up in the adhesives discussion, let’s start here. Sorry if it’s boring… it’s good for you.
Acid content is generally what people think of in relation to whether something is archival, in particular “acid free.” Acids generally cause the degradation of cellulose (paper), which is why you don’t want anything acidic involved in bookbinding or other paperwork. But acid-free now doesn’t mean acid-free later: many materials, including cellulose, produce acid over time as they degrade (which then catalyze further acid production and further degradation. For this reason a lot of paper, for example, is manufactured with a “buffer” of something basic that can react with acid as it’s produced to neutralize it. Also, a slight amount of acidity is exponentially less damaging than a larger amount (review the pH scale if you want; I won’t force it on you here). If the pH of a paper measures 6.8, sure, it’s not neutral, but it’s not that bad. (Paper isn’t really the subject here, but it’s worth mentioning that lignins also catalyze degradation, which is why you might see paper labeled as acid- and lignin-free, and why you should be wary if you don’t.)
When we talk about archival materials in conservation, we look at other factors as well. Optical properties, for example; many materials yellow as they age, and ideally we want to change the object as little as possible, even if it’s only aesthetic. It’s not, of course, only an aesthetic concern: consider a tracing paper pasted to a fragile old printed rag paper as a repair, and the legibility of the text as the tracing paper turns yellow over time. (The reason it turns yellow has to do with its bonds rearranging in a way that makes the material absorb wavelengths of light in the blue spectrum–this you can read more about elsewhere if you’re interested.) From the point of view of the artist I think you can see without me pointing out the importance of understanding this.
Removability/reversibility/retreatability: hot topic in conservation, maybe less relevant to art but a worthwhile thought anyway. With the mindset that the future might decide our treatments problematic or more skilled approaches develop, we try to only use adhesives which could be removed later, or at the very least cause the least problem to future treatment. Old animal glue on reacts to water, so we can remove it. Old PVA from a repair … much less so.
News, studio tips and techniques, profiles of our visiting artists, pot luck recipes, exhibtion announcements, zoe's walk schedule- a place to in touch with our extended family. If you have something you would like to share send it along to blogbits(at)wsworkshop.org
We are experiencing an almost record deficit of snow this year on the Binne. I never thought I would say it, but I miss it. Perhaps my putting that in writing will turn our luck around, or maybe this is just balance to the unbelievably soggy summer we had and will continue until the rains begin again in the spring.
