Housings

Cloth- Covered Two-Flap Wrapper and Slipcase (or Girdle)
American Philosophical Society, Summer 2024
Supervisor: Renée Wolcott (Head of Conservation and Book Conservator)

This is a two part housing composed of a wrapper to enclose the book and a sturdier slipcase housing.
The design is useful for compressing books that have boards that tend to splay (i.e. parchment covered books in environments where humidity fluctuates).
Slipcases are narrow and have little give, so the wrapper protects the book from potential mechanical damage when pulling from the case, in addition to acting as a barrier from environmental fluctuations.

These are sturdy but aesthetically pleasing clamshell boxes for two books belonging to the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress.
Each wall is composed of two pieces of laminated 3-ply blue board, due to the size and weight of the tomes.
After the trays and the case were constructed, each component was covered in bookcloth.
The leather spine covering was pared and the title stamped in gilt foil using a PraGnant stamping machine.

These daguerrotype cases were constructed to emulate the style and feel of traditional cases.
Two trays were made of the same height and width, with the bottom tray deeper than the top tray.
The walls of each tray were covered in black leather, and then hinged together with a medium weight kozo tissue, followed by a leather spine piece. The interior faces were lined with western paper, and then covered with leather.
Flocked black book cloth similar in appearance to velvet was used to make a pinch plate to hold the daguerrotype in place. The book cloth was also used to make a cushion that fit into the top tray of the case.

Plexi-packs are sealed packages used to house works of art that will be in environments where temperature and relative humidity fluctuate. The drawings housed were by artist Miguel Covarrubias (1904 -1957), set to go on loan to the Palacio de Iturbide Citibanamex in Mexico City.
The plexi-packs were composed (from top to bottom) of: coroplast, a layer of matboard and artsorb patched together with Filmoplast P90 plus tape, the window-matted artwork, and a layer of plexi/optium. The back and edges of the package were covered with MarvelSeal 360 and double stick tape, and over that, clear packing tape.