Thursday, June 21, 2012

Preservation and restoration of your family treasures


Let’s talk a little bit of conservation of your family heirlooms!

If you read my profile you probably noticed that I’m also an artist, besides my background in Museology and Art History. I love to express my inner self through acrylics and, specially, watercolors.

Before

At certain point in my life I decided to work in the preservation and restoration field. It was easy to decide that I want to work with books as I love them since I was a little girl. Also, I could use my artist skills of over 20 years and my academic background to help people preserve their precious family treasures and books for the generations to come.

After







The last 30 years of my life was dedicated to study arts, art history, preservation and conservation. A few years ago I started using my art background to restore old books, family bibles and documents. Working with these family gems provides me with a great deal of gratification, challenge and excitement since it invites me to participate in the history portrayed by each book or manuscript, and the techniques utilized by that specific time period and culture.




The book restoration process depends on a series of characteristics presented by the book. First of all, is the thorough analysis of the book’s history and structure for this will determine which methods will be utilized when putting the book pieces together at the end.

Below a graphic, made by my daughter, explaining the steps I use in book restoration and a little bit of my work:


 Before                                                                                                    After




Last but not least, through my lenses, book restoration and conservation goes beyond the techniques utilized and the process of taking a book apart and placing it back together, it gives me the opportunity to immerse in a different time and experience the stories told by people all over the world!









Below you have two links where you can buy archival materials to store your documents, books and photos. If you need any help in a custom project, just let me know I will be more than happy to help you:

Archival Inc.

University Products

5 comments:

  1. Wow! This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing and for your work in preserving historical books.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love what I do, Jana. It's a work of love!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Finally, I found your site and love what I've read about so far, Isabella! Also love that you have found a place to highlight your own artwork, painting, and restoration! Great site!

    Laurie

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting my My Portuguese Gen website. I wish you an exciting experience finding out more about your Portuguese ancestors in United States, Azores, Madeira, Portugal, Brazil through the resources I provide. They are so many and I try always to keep them updated.

If you want to share your thoughts about your experience here, or want to learn more about how to expand your Portuguese ancestry, you can leave me a message.

If you left a message and it does not show yet, be sure, it was received and soon will appear on the comments.

Again, thank you.

Isabella Baltar