What we are all here for

(First off: I'm sorry for my lack of posting. The program in Italy is now over, but I will still be posting about it. We had class basically from 8:30 in the morning until 7:00 at night, with rather limited internet access in between. So forgive me and stick with me :))

Paper. That's what we're all here for. Old paper. Really really old paper.

As I introduced in my first post, our teacher's name was Konstantinos Choulis. Konstantinos is

currently an assistant professor of book and paper conservation at the Technological Educational Institute in Athens. Previously, he worked in the Vatican Library and taught conservation in Italy.

The assistant for the course in Giovanni. He was one of Konstantinos's student's and now works in a conservation lab in Rome.

The course is broken up into two parts - morning lecture and afternoon workshop. In the morning, we have a lecture on restoration theory with both programs (paintings and paper) and then split. In our program's lecture, we discuss various aspects of book and paper conservation. Book and paper conservation could really be separated into two fields, as book conservation involves the binding and other elements. In the class, we won't actually be conserving a book - at least not individually. Collectively, we are conserving a Greek liturgical book, but I'll get to that later. Some of the things we have discuss include:

- a brief history of paper making

- the differences between oriental and western paper making
- sewing systems for books
- the different structures of books

- types of damage

- and lot, lots more.

The afternoon workshops are the funnest part. We actually get to handle and work on documents from the 17th century. One of the most important principles of conservation is to make sure that everything that we do is reversible. [It relieves a little tiny bit of the pressure when working on these documents, as most anything we do can be {or should be able to be} undone]

The first document we worked on was a Greek text called ΜΗΝΟΛΟΓΙΟΝ (Menologion).

The book is the one pictured in the banner of my blog. The book is from the 18th-19th century. It was missing the covers, so the front and back pages were unprotected and therefore pretty damaged, as shown below.

A basic explanation of the structure of a book: every book is made up of signatures, or quires. Each quire is made up of folios. Folios are large sheets of paper, the same height of the book and twice the width. When the folio is folded in half, it produces a bifolium. Each bifolium has 4 sides. Each signature typically has between 3-5 bifoliums, depending on the thinckness of the paper, as well as the type of sewing to some extent. So: If you have a book that has 15 quires and each quire is made up of 4 bifoliums:

15 quires

x 4 bifoliums

60 bifoliums

60 bifoliums

x 4 pages (each bifolium)

240 pages total

Make sense?

Each person in the class got their own bifolium from the book to work on. This was mine:

The above picture shows the various steps of the process. The top left picture (labeled A) is the before picture - the condition of the paper when I started working with it. Photos B and C are during pictures at various stages during the process. Photo D is the after picture - I know it's a little bit hard to see, but you'll notice how flat it is compared to the other pictures. The crescent shaped tear in the lower left corner of the page has been repaired. In photo D, if you look closely you can see that Japanese paper has been added to all the edges to make the edges nice and straight and make the bifolium a rectangle again.

I'll dedicate an entire post on the specifics of what was done, so be looking for that soon!

The completed before-and-after picture.

The cool thing about us all getting our own individual bifoliums to work with was that we each had different damages to deal with. There are three categories of damage - chemical, biological, and mechanical. A book or paper usually doesn't have only one type of damage - there are usually at least two of the three categories of damage evident on the page. So we not only learned through dealing with the damage on our own page, we also learned through watching the other students in the class dealing with their own damage.

Coming up soon:

Fabriano paper mill

The Conservation Process

The San Gemini Documents

...and more!

Ciao, a presto!

Walking Tour of San Gemini

Hello, and welcome to San Gemini. I will be your guide on this beautiful, hot day. The temperature is an average high of the mid-eighties, sometime reaching up to the nineties, with roughly 50% humidity. The lows are in the mid-seventies.

Here we have Porta Romana, the

south-western entrance to San

Gemini. So called because it

faces Rome, it lies at the end of Via

Roma. Entering Porta Romana, we have the Hotel Duomo down a little alleyway to

the right. Next to the hotel is the

Church that Hotel Duomo is

named after. This is actually in

incorrect labeling, as the church was never a Duomo (Cathedral).

The Duomo. Photo from 2006, the scaffolding may be from an architectural restoration project by SGPS

To have a cathedral, a city must have a bishop. San Gemini never had a bishop. The name could come from the period when the near-by cities of Terni and Narni were mis-behaving according to the C

hurch, and the Pope continually threatened to appoint a bishop to San Gemini, which would make San Gemini higher in importance than the

other two cities.

Across the street from the Duomo is the first of San Gemini's three bars:

Bar Piaretti. The bars in Italy seem to stay open all the time - in the morning they are cafes, and they gradually switch over

to a typical bar atmosphere by evening. Bar Piaretti is also

one of the two gelaterias in town - they are in a competition over which has the best gelato.

A little further up Via Roma, we have 27 Via Roma.

Smashed in between the Pizzeria (one of two) and the Panetteria, you enter this door, climb several sets of stairs, and finally arrive at my apartment. 5 girls share the apartment with only one bathroom. We also have one of the only functioning ovens in the city - at least among the

apartment-pool for the program. The shower has no shower curtain, and the washing machine can only be run on "Rapido" cycle or else it will flood, but it's a lovely apartment.

Back down the steps and onto Via Roma, we continue our tour. On the left is the kind-of-sort-of restaurant- the Taverna. I say kind-of-sort-of

because I have never seen this restaurant open. Apparently, they only open three times a year for special events. They did, however, host "Cena sotto le stelle" - Dinner under the

stars. Every year during the summer, Pro Loco San Gemini, the local events council, puts on this special dinner for the locals. That will be another post in and of itself :)

Just before entering the main square, we come across the mini-market, the one and only grocery store in town. (The

other option is hiking down the hill to the Conad - a good 1/2 hour hike in the brutal heat) You can find most of your needs at the mini mar

ket. Keep in mind, if there is no fresh milk, there is boxed milk in the back, next to the cleaning products.

Enter Piazza San Francesco. This is the main square and gathering place of San Gemini. The Church of San Francesco, which gives the square it’s name, is to the left in the square. Next to the church is the restaurant Osteria. Kitty-corner to the churchis Bar Centrale, the second bar in the city. Bar Centrale is also other gelateria in competition with Bar Piaretti. You can also recharge your Italian sim card with money here at the bar. A permanent fixture of San Gemini is the old men who are always sitting outside of Bar Centrale.

Through the next gate,there is a fruit and vegetable shop on the left, another (smaller) mini-market on the right, and a barber-shop on the left.

Then we come to the Stairs of Death and Treachery. Up these stairs and to the

left is the Il Ristoro del Cabaliere, otherwise known as the Dodo. (also, if you continue along this street, you return back to Piazza San Francesco along a higher road.) Just after the Stairs of Death and Treachery is the honey shop, open only on Sundays and Festivi days. Then thebutchers shop, the dog-in-the-garage-with-a-hoarse-bark, and finally to Palazzo Vecchio.

Palazzo Vecchio used to be the town hall, until it burned down. Then the town hall was moved to it’s present position in Piaza San Francesco, and

when Palazzo Vecchio was rebuilt, it was a privately owned

building. Occasionally, art exhibitions are held in t

he main room, among the beautiful frescos on the wall. But mostly, it is

the main classroom for San Gemini Preservation Studies.

The other classrooms are further down the street, past the Torchio, another restaurant, and to the right. Straight ahead is the Dungeon, where the paper restoration workshop is. Also in the Dungeon is a music

studio, which serenades us with the beautiful strains of beginning clarinet/trumpet/other students practicing.

If instead of entering the Dungeon you take a left, you will happen upon a little courtyard with an entrance to the

Church of Giovanni Battista.

To the right of the courtyard is the entrance to the painting studio and

archeologist’s workshop. Another exit of the right of the courtyard leads to a path surrounding the church, providing a beautiful view of the

countryside, with the cities of Cesi and Terni in the distance. If you follow the path around the church, it will put you out facing the main entrance of Giovanni Battista. If you are facing Giovanni Battista, Torchio restaurant is on your right and Porta Giovanni Battista is on your left. Behind you is the local convent, with welfare and the local library and archives.

view of the country, with Cesi in the distance

Looking again at the entrance to Giovanni Battista, we see that the street leading down to the gate makes a pretty awkward intersection with the church’s patio. This is indicative that the gate was built after the church, the Church having been originally built outside of the city and then enveloped into the walls during one of San Gemini’s expansions.

Out Porta Giovanni Battista and 3km down the road and to the right and up a hill and down a dirt road is the archeological site of Carsulae. We’ll make that trek at another time. To get you excited - it’s uphill both ways, along a main road, complete with hairpin turns, with no sidewalks. For now, thank you for joining me on this tour of San Gemini! I hope you enjoyed!

Ciao, a presto!

(all pictures mine, except for the first two which belong to romergatto on flickr)

San Gemini

This is the beautiful city of San Gemini, Italy. So... I live here. In fact, that bell tower on the right? Yeah, that's my classroom. But I'll get to that later.

I'm spending the month learning about paper restoration through a program called San Gemini Preservation Studies. They also offer ceramic, architectural, and paintings conservation.

(photo credit: Amanda Enneking)

This is my teacher:

His name is Konstantinos. He worked in the Vatican conservation lab for three years, and has taught paper restoration in Italy and currently teaches in Greece. He's pretty much amazing :)

(in the picture, he is washing paper with Cassie and Nikki)

In a future post, I'll talk all about what I'm learning in my classes.

Here are some sneak peaks of the town and future posts:

Ciao, a presto!