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January « 2015 « The Polar Museum: news blog

The Polar Museum: news blog

Archive for January, 2015

It’s object time!

Friday, January 23rd, 2015

IMG_4050

Nearly three months into the Antarctic Cataloguing Project and I nearly feel like I’m ready to get going properly. As well as continuing to work on our gold standard object catalogue record (a much bigger undertaking than I ever imagined!), this week we’ve been trialling the object study side of things. There are three elements to this: describing and measuring the objects (me), conditioning assessing them (Sophie and Christina, our conservators), and photographing them (Chris and Tom, two very skilled photographers). As ever, it’s about figuring out what the process is – who needs to do what and when so that we can maximise efficiency and minimise the amount of handling of each object.

For the sake of the trial phase, we’ve been looking at a representative selection of objects which vary in shape, size, material, age etc. in the hope that this will help us understand and think through some of the issues that different types of objects will present. So we’ve looked at goggles, fossils, penguin eggs, leggings made of reindeer fur, trousers and anorak, boots and liners, a knitted balaclava, a pair of skis, snowshoes, crampons, scientific equipment and a dog harness.

My task is to produce a detailed physical description of each object – what it looks like, what it’s made from, any marks or inscriptions, how big it is etc. Looking at the object and making notes and sketches is pretty easy; the difficult part comes when trying to translate what you’ve seen into a succinct description – especially as I feel that I’m lacking the necessary vocabulary most of the time to describe what I’ve seen. It’s particularly difficult when you have no idea what the object is (as with this ‘surveying instrument’ Y: 2005/9/4). With advice from Sophie and Christina I’ve also been noting down anything we might need to take into account when it comes to photographing the objects, such as how we might position them or whether they can be photographed on a mannequin etc.

Y: 2005/9/4. A 'prismatic surveying instrument' made by Kern & Co. of Aarau, Switzerland.

Y: 2005/9/4. A ‘prismatic surveying instrument’ made by Kern & Co. of Aarau, Switzerland.

While I’ve been doing this, Sophie and Christina have been carrying out a condition assessment of each object – recording the category of the object, the materials and the types of damage, and rating it for stability, need for treatment, need for repackaging, and overall condition. For me, it’s great to be working with them as they’re far more knowledgeable than I am, especially about materials, and it’s always good to have an extra pair of eyes.

A few days later, our two photographers came to the stores to have a go at photographing some of the objects. They brought along an amazing adjustable flexible table-top background (a thing of wonder!) which we just about managed to squeeze into the store (note for next time is that we can use the smaller table inside the store but are better off setting the bigger one up in a different space). This was a chance for them to see some of the material they’ll be working with, to think about where we’ll be able to take photos, what sort of background we want, and just to get a feel for how it’s all going to work. It was a great success and the pictures looked fantastic! (I should point out that all photos in this post were taken by me and, as such, are definitely not fantastic).

IMG_4051

While it’s been good to work on a range of objects, we’re all agreed that the object study­–condition assessment–photography process will be a lot simpler, smoother and quicker if we work by object type (which is what we’re planning to do from now on). Many of the objects are stored by type, so it makes them a lot easier to access. I plan to do some preliminary research on each type of object (e.g. goggles) before we even look at them so that I’m aware of the key points in goggle design and the things I need to look out for and so that I have the necessary vocabulary to describe them (is it a nose piece, a nose wire, a bridge?). Although the condition assessing is about judging against a fixed set of criteria, rather than in relation to the condition of other objects, I think it will be easier for Sophie and Christina to work on the same types of objects rather than jumping from goggles to skis to boots. It will also be quicker for Chris and Tom to photography objects of the same size as they won’t need to keep changing lenses and positions of lights, and the ease of access to the objects should mean that we can get a flow of getting objects out, photographing them and putting them away.

So, like I said, I’m very nearly ready to get going properly and I can’t wait! Just got to finish that cataloguing template…

Greta

Light relief, part 2: the case of the mysterious reflection

Wednesday, January 14th, 2015

In a previous post, I talked about some of the ways that we conservators monitor the amount of light coming into our galleries. That post showed a typical week’s light and UV data from a showcase:

light_eltek

This data comes from our Arctic clothing case and shows what we are looking for ideally: low(ish) light levels generally, no light during the two days that the museum is closed, and no UV at all.

Sometimes, however, your data looks a bit more like this:

light_riley_2012

This is a graph of light and UV data from the same Arctic clothing case in August 2012. The light levels in this case are far from perfect: the light (the green line) is too high overall and there is some UV (the purple line) registering on one of the days. The thing that really concerned me, however, was the sudden spikes that happen each day in the early evening. For half an hour only, the light levels shoot up so high that they are literally off the scale.

To see what’s going on, we can look at the data for just a single day, Sunday 5 August 2012 (click on the image below to see a larger version):

light_riley_2012_detail2

Our transmitters are set to monitor every half hour, and between 6.30pm and 7pm, you can see the light levels jump from 131 lux to 1245 lux … and then at 7.30pm drop down again to 176 lux.

After a bit of investigation, we realised the (unwitting) culprits: our neighbours on Lensfield Road! As the sun sets, it gets low enough to hit the windows of the three-storey buildings opposite the museum. One of these windows is in exactly the right position to reflect a shaft of light through the museum windows and into the Arctic clothing showcase. This only happens between late May and late August, and only in the early evenings. On 5 August (the day shown in the graph above), the sun typically sets at 7.40pm, which is why the spikes in light levels were seen about half an hour before that.

Sometimes, simple solutions are the best. I made a curtain from blackout lining material, and we put it over the showcase when the museum closes at 4pm. The reflections from the buildings opposite all happen after opening hours, so it doesn’t matter that we’ve hidden some of our nicest objects behind a curtain! We’ve been doing this for two years now: here you can see Willow taking the curtain down just before the museum opens in the morning (you can also see the transmitter that measures light at the bottom of the case).

Willow and curtain

The graphs below show data from August 2012 (left) and August 2014 (right). It’s still not perfect, but you can see that it’s a lot better than it was. However, remembering to put up and take down the curtain is not always convenient, so we’re currently looking into other ways to block light from coming into the gallery and hitting this showcase – I’ll write about some of these next time!

light_riley_aug12 light_riley_aug14

Christina