The Conservation Lab is taking over the Photobook Phriday post this week to feature a Photographic process: blueprints!
Recently, the conservation lab has been working on blueprints from the Charles M. Robinson Collection. A blueprint is essentially a photographic process used to copy architectural drawings. A support (paper or piece of linen) is coated with a material that is sensitive to light. Then that support is put in contact with a photographic negative or object and exposed to light, which makes the lines of the negative or object water soluble. The now water-soluble lines are then washed off, leaving an image that is mostly blue with white lines where the negative had touched the surface. A fixing solution is usually also required, which prevents re-sensitizing of the surface.
Charles M. Robinson was an architect in the Richmond, Virginia, area who was active between the early 1900s-1930s. UVA Library’s Special Collections acquired Robinson’s archives as well as successor architectural firms in 2019 because of the wealth of information regarding the design of public buildings and schools for Black and minority citizens in Virginia.
The blueprints in the lab are designs for the Acca Temple in Richmond, at the northwest corner of Main and Laurel streets. The design for the building was inspired by Mosque Temples and opened in 1926. Today, the location is known as the Altria Theater.
The Acca Temple blueprints were working blueprints, which means they were heavily used by the architects and construction workers on site. In this set of blueprints, there are 22 individual pages 36″ x 36″ square that are bound together with brass brads between a linen cover sheet that is 72″ x 36″. They are on two different kinds of supports: paper and coated linen, and both kinds are stained and torn, showing the evidence of their use. The archivists responsible for processing, or describing, this collection identified this set of blueprints as needing help from Preservation primarily because of the large tears through the middle of page 6 of the Acca Temple blueprints, as well as other pages.
CAV Collections Conservator Brittany Murray dry cleaned the blueprints with soot erasers and cosmetic sponge erasers. The designs were so dirty that without cleaning them, it would be nearly impossible to adhere torn pieces back together. Conservator for Special Collections Sue Donovan then reached out to photograph conservators to ensure we were applying the most up-to-date information about blueprint mending to the items in the lab. The Conservators first tried applying strips of thin Japanese paper, previously coated with an even layer of wheat starch paste and then reactivated with an ultrasonic mist of deionized water. These mends were unfortunately not strong enough to hold on the paper or the linen, however. So Sue used wheat starch paste to realign the edges of jagged tears and then applied strips of a thin Japanese paper called Tengucho to the verso of the blueprints with an even layer of wheat starch paste.
These mends were dried under small stacks of non-woven polyester strips, blotter, board, and weight. Blueprints are sensitive to alkalinity and light, so the blotters were tested to make sure the pH was suitable for blueprints prior to using them for the mending process. While the blueprints were in the lab, they were covered up to protect them from light when they were not actively being worked on.
The blueprint has now been completely mended, and work will continue on the other blueprints in this collection, including blueprints made on coated linen.
