By Nicole Dobrowolski, conservation technician
American Girl Scouts are mostly known for the cookies they sell, but their fellow scouting groups do not necessarily stock the crumbly treats. The Girl Guides of Brittany were and are cookie-free, but once upon a time, at least one troop chose to use papers for their photo albums that are currently crumbling as though they were cookies.
The photo “album,” held by the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives, arrived in the Conservation Lab as a set of loose pages in a box. The curatorial staff had indicated that the pages were not in any particular order or even from the same album. While all of the pages were black and had photos attached, they were of different sizes. There were also differences in the spacing of the holes that had previously allowed them to be attached together. Another difference was the thickness of the paper. Some pages consisted of a slightly heavier weight paper with embossed stripes. Other variables included caption ink colors and the shapes of the photo corners.
“Before” photo of pages from each of the three albums
Eventually, the pages were sorted according to the following characteristics:
ALBUM 1
◦ Page Size: 16.7cm H x 26.3cm W
◦ Holes 10.5cm apart
◦ 34 album pages
◦ Includes detached stubs
◦ Gold ink captions
◦ Black ink on white sticker captions
◦ Oval, circle, and triangle photo corners
ALBUM 2
◦ Page Size: 20.3cm H x 24.7cm W
◦ Holes 7.2cm apart
◦ 14 album pages
◦ Embossed line pattern on support
◦ Includes back cover
◦ White ink captions
◦ Triangle photo corners
ALBUM 3
◦ Page Size: 17.4cm H x 29.1cm W
◦ Holes 10.5cm apart
◦ 1 album page
◦ White ink captions
◦ Triangle photo corners
The albums were further organized by type of photo. Some of the images were commercially produced souvenirs while others were clearly taken by the Girl Guides themselves. Pages with captioned or visually similar locations were grouped together in folders by location. Other pages were grouped by a theme such as animals.
For treatment purposes, the support pages from Albums 1 and 3 were the most damaged and needed more extensive repairs. The heavier paper of Album 2 only required that the corners be consolidated with wheat starch paste.
The repair tissue that is usually used for conservation comes in the typical cream and white colors that are most associated with paper. Even some tissues that come in colors such as black are not always the quite the right shade. Because this would be particularly distracting on black paper, acrylic paint was used to tone the tissue a more suitable color.
Some of the photographs were missing entirely; others were loose but could be reunited with their intended page. The photo corners themselves were originally attached with a water activated adhesive that was not particularly strong. Loose photo corners were reattached with wheat starch paste, or when missing entirely, had sympathetic versions created from a Black Ingres paper of a similar weight.
Album construction sometimes includes a folded tab in order to help account for the added bulk of the photographs or other album inserts. In the case of Album 1, thirteen of these had broken off and were left in the box such that it would have been very time consuming to accurately reunite them with their corresponding pages. The reattachment of the broken stubs was not considered to be a priority. They were therefore enclosed together in sleeves made of polyester film in case future conservators with lots of time on their hands decide to try and match up the pieces.
Ultimately, all three albums were housed together in a print box. Inside the box they were grouped by size and content, interleaved with MicroChamberTM paper, and put into folders.
“After” photo of pages from each of the three albums
New housing
The album pages have been mended, new photo corners added, and photos securely attached. The true order and original quantity of pages of these albums is still a mystery, but the groupings based on paper size, photo corner style, and ink type seem logical. All of the stubs have been safely housed. The Girl Guides look like they had a lot of fun, but they definitely missed out on the cookies.