How A Book Moves: Photograph Album Structures in the Department of Photographs

This past spring, I was fortunate to work with Associate Conservator Georgia Southworth in the Photograph Conservation Department at The Met, who specializes in photograph album conservation. Together with Catherine E. Stephens, Annette de la Renta Fellow in Book and Photograph Conservation, Southworth has put in motion an ambitious item-level preventive conservation survey of the over a thousand photograph albums and photographically illustrated books held in the Department of Photographs. The three of us have made significant progress collecting data in this item-level survey of the collection.

Goals of The Collection Book Survey

Preventive conservation surveys are an important tool in collections care, and may be implemented for a variety of reasons. In order for a survey to be efficient, and the data gathered to be effective, precise goals should be outlined ahead of time. In the case of the Department of Photographs Collection Book Survey, the first to be conducted for this particular collection at The Met, three main goals were prioritized:

1. Gather information on the bindings themselves, to be included in the collection database alongside information about the photographs contained therein, which are typically more well researched.
2. Characterize the condition of the objects, including the photographs, to assess rehousing needs and prioritize item-level conservation treatments.
3. Use the data gathered as general research about photograph albums and photographically-illustrated books, and identify any correlation or trends between their construction and condition.

Each of these goals was chosen for a different purpose, respectively:

1. Broaden the scope of The Met's catalog to consider these items' bound state, in addition to their photographic elements.
2. Allow for accurate and appropriate allocation of funds and environmental monitoring to provide for the ongoing preservation and conservation of the collection.
3. Add to the growing body of academic knowledge about these types of bound structures, and illuminate how collections care professionals may best advocate for their preservation and care, including by designing and implementing surveys.

In order to meet these ambitious goals, an item-level survey was required; sometimes, particularly in library collections with much greater numbers of more homogenous items, sampling is used instead, which saves on staff time and avoids repetitive and unnecessary work. However, for a collection such as this, looking at each book individually makes the most sense, and is feasible and appropriate for the value of the collection.

Methodology: An Item-Level Survey

As I complete my graduate studies in library and archive conservation at the NYU Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, specializing in the conservation of bound materials, a key part of my education is gaining familiarity with the great variety of items I may come across in my professional career. One important category that I am eager to learn more about includes photograph albums and photographically-illustrated books. In tandem with the rise of photography in the 19th century, innovative binding structures were developed to allow albums that contain photographs to function, and the creative nature of these designs can make it difficult to generalize what one might encounter in a discrete collection such as this. Therefore, an item-level survey is an excellent tool - one that benefits the collection and also adds to my understanding of book structures more broadly.

The survey data collection tool succinctly captures the information necessary to describe the collection and to gather more information about how these books were constructed. Data points such as covering material, leaf material, hinge construction, sewing or other leaf attachment, and manner of photograph attachment allow for an overview of each bound object’s origin. For example, one query in the survey tool is manufacture; the possible answers include: stationer’s or commercial album; commercial publication; limited edition; and bespoke or one-off. Just one of a great many recorded data points about each volume, the characterization about the origin of each binding informs a broader understanding about the collection as a whole, and whether there are condition concerns that trend with the type of manufacture.

Our survey team is also collecting data on the condition of each volume, and assessing its current housing, degree of damage, and priority for treatment. These data will allow the stewards of the collection to advocate accurately for its ongoing care. All of the collected data will help conservators and collections managers make the best decisions about the preservation care of the collection. The resulting survey data will also be shared with a wider conservation and scholarly audience, to shed light on this common, yet still under-studied category of book.

There were a variety of reasons for the proliferation of photograph album binding structures in the second half of the 19th century: accommodation for the increased thickness of the textblock due to the addition of photographs; joining board-weight leaves that have cutouts for photographs mounted on cards (as in carte-de-visite albums); and/or the addition of secondary hinges to enable bindings to open flat without the pages flexing. Commercial innovations also included developments new to book construction, for example, the addition of a piano hinge mechanism to allow leaves with interlocking tabs to swing on metal rods along the spine.

With new book designs came new areas of physical stress in the function of the bindings. The more traditionally sewn book had already undergone centuries of production, trial-and-error, innovation, and in the 19th century, industrialization. The new album structures had not been so thoroughly tested. In addition, the 19th century saw the introduction of wood pulp into the manufacture of machine-made paper and board. While this innovation allowed for an increase in production and a decrease in production costs, the new paper fibers did not always age as well, or maintain the strength of, papers made from cotton, hemp, or flax fibers. New designs combined with less durable material have resulted in many condition issues in photograph album structures, especially weakness near areas that must flex repeatedly and maintain fold endurance. Identifying these areas of weakness is an important part of a book conservator’s job.

Video Documentation and Findings

We chose to document our work using video in order to capture what book conservators visualize whenever they encounter a bound object: how is this volume going to move? The Collection Book Survey has revealed many examples, a few of which I share here.

An album of albumen photographs by photographer Francis Frith was one of the first albums we encountered during the survey (figure 1). I noticed that the leaves, while not stiff boards, were a bit thicker than the average leaf of a traditionally sewn volume. Along the spine are thick board stubs (or guards), with two paper textblock leaves individually hinged to each compensation stub with cloth, allowing the leaves to open smoothly.

Figure 1: Francis Frith album: semi-stiff paper leaves with secondary hinges, two attached to each thicker guard. Francis Frith (British,1822–1898). “[Travel Album of 38 Views of Greece, Turkey & Egypt],” 1870s-1880s. Albumen silver prints. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1973, (1973.608.1)

Another fascinating structural binding feature is known as the piano hinge, as mentioned above. In this design, stiff leaves are assembled into a textblock by joining alternating loops along the spine of adjacent leaves with a metal rod that is inserted through the centers of the loops. This arrangement could be used either at the spine for a primary hinge (Figure 2), or with a stub as a secondary hinge (Figure 3). Both of these examples are found in albums with stiff leaves; it is difficult to imagine the technique being as successful with thin flexible paper leaves. Further, encountered frequently in the survey are examples of photographically illustrated books, which usually have binding structures similar to traditionally printed books: leaves folded into bifolios, which are then sewn through the folds to create a textblock (Figure 4).

Figure 2: Photograph Conservation Study Collection, carte-de-visite album, with stiff leaves with pre-cut windows, and primary piano hinges. The hinges alternate red and green from leaf to leaf, making the construction easier to see and understand.

Figure 3: Photograph Conservation Study Collection “Metal Back” album, with stiff leaves with pre-cut windows, and secondary metal cabinet hinges. This metal-back type of album enabled the addition and removal of leaves.

The mounting of photographs to the textblock leaves justified the use of innovative binding structures for photograph albums, but has in some cases complicated the care of these volumes. For example, photographs mounted onto pages of a book may stiffen the leaves, changing the flexibility and the movement of the rest of the book. In addition, cockling of the textblock leaves from the moisture introduced during the mounting of a photograph is a common issue encountered in the photographically illustrated books surveyed thus far. Sometimes, with photograph album structures, prior conservation treatments leave the spine of a volume immobile, which then limits the opening needs of a textblock with stiff leaves (Figure 5). These examples show the importance of understanding the mechanics of the movement of a book, which then allows the book conservator to determine a treatment specific to those needs.

Figure 4: This particular example shows how if the pages have sufficient drape, even an immobile spine will allow the book to be read.

Figure 5: A photographically illustrated book that is virtually inaccessible, due in part to the rigid, heavily lined textblock spine which does not accommodate the opening needs of a textblock, an unfortunate side effect of a conservation treatment that was undertaken before the volume entered The Met’s collection.

Despite the carefully designed survey form, the binding structures of some objects in the collection still defy simple categorization; an example would be a hybrid structure including flexible paper leaves attached at the spine which are interspersed with thick paper-faced card leaves attached with secondary hinges to board-weight stubs in the gutter (Figure 6). While difficult to describe in the searchable data fields, this unconventional design has served the book well as it allows the printed text to alternate with the photographs that illustrate it, all while resisting the common cockling issue, due to the rigid support of the cards onto which the photographs are mounted. The paper leaves flex easily on their own, and the cards have a secondary hinge near the gutter, which allows them to follow the motion of the rest of the book smoothly.

Figure 6: Photographically illustrated book with a hybrid binding structure that includes flexible leaves with printed text, interspersed between thick card leaves adhered with secondary hinges to stubs/guards near the gutter.

I’ve shared here just a few of the structures that artists and bookbinders used to allow albums and photographically illustrated books to function. As the survey continues, more interesting structures are sure to come to light, and we look forward to sharing these discoveries with The Met’s audience of photograph album enthusiasts. Stay tuned!