Caring for a Theater of Plants: a conservation snapshot

Exhibitions are an adventure in many ways.  As satisfying as it is to watch visitors wander around the finished product – a neatly laid out selection of treasures each with a perfectly guillotined caption and a carefully crafted book cradle – it really is only the tip of a rather colossal iceberg.  Scouring the shelves for items of interest, researching, writing and editing captions, creating a clear and cohesive design and fitting this all into our somewhat eclectic variety of display cases throws up all kinds of surprising challenges.

Specimens and notes from The theater of plants (1640)

How, for example, to deal with a mammoth early modern herbal, perfect for our botanical theme (so perfect, in fact, it ended up being the “title-book” of the exhibit) but stuffed full of pressed flowers and botanical manuscript musings? When were the flowers pressed and by whom? Do they bear any relation to the herbal? And how do we conserve and display such fragile items?  Thankfully we are lucky enough to have access to a wealth of expertise to address the latter question (for the former two, visit the exhibition!).  The Cambridge Colleges Conservation Consortium (CCCC) takes many fragile items off our hands and painstakingly treats common ailments: torn pages, split bindings, mould, and even – when necessary – 18th-century plant specimens.  

The diagnosis:

The 46 individual plant specimens interleaved throughout the text block were in a precarious position.  Some were enclosed within folds of paper or manuscript notes, others were unprotected and over time had left stained outlines on the pages.  Some had been carefully described with handcrafted labels and were in remarkable condition, others were unidentified and had fallen into the gutter of the book and fragmented. 

The treatment:

Starting to sort the flowers and foliage

It was important that the original positions of the specimens were recorded.  Our copy was clearly heavily used - unusual perhaps for such an unwieldy tome - and could offer potential researchers a unique insight into the history of early printed medicinal herbals and their readers.  The CCCC photographed each specimen in situ and compiled a list of their locations along with a brief description.  Each specimen was then carefully removed and enclosed in folds of archival paper, each numbered by page.  At this stage we chose the specimens that we wanted to display alongside The theater of plants in the exhibition, and these were mounted (very carefully, using tweezers) on Heritage Cream Mountboard to support them.

The CCCC also housed the remaining specimens in an archival folder.  This is a temporary solution, until the exhibition is taken down in June.  In the meantime, specialist advice from the conservator at Kew Botanical Gardens is being sought and, at the Library, we are adhering very fastidiously to the handling advice provided by the CCCC team! 

In the exhibit: John Parkinson, author of The theater of plants alongside
numerous plant specimens

With thanks to the CCCC for providing images and conservation information for this post. Our exhibit, The theater of plants: herbs, honey and horticulture over five hundred years is free and open to public every Tuesday and Thursday 2-4pm. Find out more here.