Here be treasure...

I was recently given a map to conserve, when the client told me about it, all she said about it that it was very unusual. Our initial conversations about it focused on the damage and what she wanted for the object. So I was quite confused the first time I rolled it out as it appeared to be of a conurbation around the Ravenscar hotel on the Yorkshire coast. As I have walked that area on holiday and definitely would have remembered walking through a town, I couldn’t quite grasp what I was looking at. It turned out that there was a planned holiday town that "was to rival Scarborough". Previously named Peak, the developers renamed it Ravenscar. Many reproduction maps were made and distributed to local landowners and other stakeholders and what I was looking at was one of those maps. Below is one of the pictures of the map I was originally sent by the owner. (Reproduced with permission)

The pictures show some of the damage to the paper map. It was dirty, with many rips and loss especially on the outside edges and very creased and crumpled. It looks like it might have been kept somewhere dirty and dark but not damp.There was a lot more damage and dirt on one side, as if that side was at the open, upward facing end of a box. Thankfully there was no insect damage.

The client wishes were that it was conserved NOT Restored. The map had been mounted onto some low quality paper (possibly wallpaper) early in it’s life and at some point after that it was attached to a piece of canvass. The 'backing' paper was highly degraded and brittle. The canvas, to which the entire thing had been glued, had expanded and contracted at different rates to the paper map. The tensions created by this expansion and contraction paired with sections being attached to the canvass had caused ridges, creases and cockling across the surface.

Before any cleaning or remedial repairs could take place the entire thing needed to lie flat. This was achieved with flat glass weights and sand filled gloves. It was then left, carefully covered with sheets of bubble wrap and newsprint paper to protect it and checked everyday and the weights moved if need be.

Surface cleaning

After some testing of different materials to clean the surface, I settled on plastic erasure. First I tried it grated, which was nice and gentle, but also quite messy. The paper surface is less cohesive than something like parchment. With paper, the tiny pieces of erasure, needed to be carefully removed from the creases on the paper surface after each pass. By cutting the plastic erasures into specific shapes they can be used to clean small areas very effectively .

Using a small piece of erasure and magnification allowed me to get between the letters and lines of the map.

After I had cleaned as much of the surface dirt off that was safe to do so, I started in on the repairs. In the shot of the whole map above, you can see where I have used a long strand tissue paper in in fill gaps. I didn't colour the paper as the owner wanted it to stay authentic. This was not a reconstruction or restoration, it was a conservation. I used isinglass with a non-stick paper, weighted with glass and the sand filled gloves over the top to create pressure while it adhered.