Normally a lot of my school assignments revolve around research and creating bibliographies. This past semester I compiled an annotated bibliography on stained leather bindings (think marbled leather, tree marbles, cat’s paw, etc.) and instead of just keeping it stored on my hard drive, I thought others in the future may find it useful. You…
I’ve attended too-many-to-count online courses and online events over the past year and I often found myself becoming easily distracted. One of the things I did to prevent this from happening was working on small, repetitive tasks with my hands while I was listening. One of the very practical projects I took on was making…
I am missing Saskatchewan a little bit these days, especially now that classes are over and spring is here. I have been busy completing unfinished projects (I have a whole list of them), many of which are bookbinding related. There is a great community of book makers in Saskatchewan, including Susan Mills who is the…
Well I haven’t posted since just after Christmas, but I’m not going to beat myself up over that. I’ve been studying hard and life is full of priorities. I have been starting to do some research into nanocellulose though and have a great website update today as I have now added the nanocellulose calculator! Richard…
I finished my parchment stationary binding from the workshop I took with Ann-Marie Miller of Codex Conservation. In the workshop we made models of 18th century bindings. Originally, they would have been purchased as ready-made bindings with blank pages, so they could be used for a variety of purposes. She has a great online presentation…
Well, my first semester at Queen’s University in the Master of Art Conservation program is finally wrapping up. I will be handing in my last assignment very soon. Then I get to breathe a great sigh of relief and give a toast to myself for a semester well completed. I feel like I started off…
One weekend back in November, I was able to get a head on my homework and readings so I was able to take a Sunday off as an actual rest day. It was a beautiful day out (+15C!) and we went to Lemoine Point Conservation Area to feed the birds. I had hoped to see…
Over the last couple of weeks, I needed to use paste in the lab as I have begun some tear repairs on the WWII poster. I wanted to share my class notes on this because I think some of my friends back home will enjoy this very methodical method of making conservation grade wheat paste….
This past week I’ve made use of the Foster Freeman VSC 8000 (pictured above) quite a bit. I’m lucky to have access to this machine and I really enjoyed learning how to use it. It’s marketed for use in forensics, but we have one in our conservation lab for investigating heritage objects. Here are some…
I had another busy week at school, but I think I am finally starting to get a good handle on everything that is expected of me. I felt more prepared for classes and I have a good grasp now of how I need to approach all of the readings and homework. We learned some cool…