UC Libraries will host a special reception to celebrate the installation of one of the most extraordinary urban maps in the Western world in the Archives & Rare Books Library. The reception will take place from 3-5 p.m., Monday, April 22, in the Reading Room of the Archives & Rare Books Library, located on the 8th floor of Blegen Library.

At first glance, you’d know this is not a map that could be folded and stored in your car’s glove compartment. Taking a closer look, it’s not only the size of the map that is stunning, but also the artwork, its history and its journey to its new, permanent home in the Reading Room of the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Books Library. “It is a valuable research tool as well as an outstanding work of the printing arts,” says Kevin Grace, head of the Archives & Rare Books (ARB) Library.

The 6-foot-10-inch by 13-foot linen map of 18th century London – all 84-and-a-half square feet of it – is a gift from Keith Stewart, professor emeritus of English, and his wife, Elizabeth. The couple first discovered the map while browsing in an Oxford, England, bookshop in the late 1950s, when Keith was on sabbatical for a year in England.

The surveyor of the map, John Rocque, began publishing in the 1730s. “From 1751, he styled himself topographer to the Prince of Wales, and from 1760 to the King,” says Stewart.

“A geographer colleague has told me that it suggests a good deal about urban land use – the locations and number of churches, for instance, the identification of spaces with other contemporary activities such as rope making, ship building, bowling, gardening and so on. For someone interested in 18th century literature, it is a Garden of Delights,” Stewart wrote, in an essay about the map.

The Stewarts described the highly detailed map of contemporary 18th century London as handsomely engraved, with a classically designed border around the edges, when they fell in love with it in that Oxford bookshop.

“It was a bit like falling in love in love with an elephant, which with the reassertion of practical realities became rather quickly transformed into an albatross which was to hang about our closets for nearly 40 years,” Stewart shared in the essay about their find.

How were they going to haul it back to London, let alone the United States? They decided to carefully cut it in half in the bookstore. It survived, in good shape, the trip to London, the trip to Cincinnati, a move to two houses in Clifton, where there wasn’t a wall large enough to show their beautiful treasure, and a move in the mid 1990s to a condominium, where they could finally showcase it on a wall.

J. Keith Stewart

But first, the map needed some restoration. Stewart first fueled his interest in preservation when he took a course on book conservation that was offered by the Library Guild (now called the Friends of the University of Cincinnati Libraries) under UC Libraries’ book conservator Virginia Wisniewski (now deceased). The workshop resulted in Stewart working more than 10 years of volunteer service at UC’s Conservation, Binding and Processing Department.

As they planned the restoration of the map, armed with encouragement and advice from that department as well as the paper conservator at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the couple built a team that could mend, restore and repair the map to its former glory, first mounting it on two stretchers that painters would use to mount their canvasses.

After the couple moved out of East Walnut Hills more recently, they decided their beloved “elephant” needed a permanent home and a permanent display area. That’s when the map made one more journey to its permanent home in the reading room of the ARB Library.

Once again, the “elephant” was divided in half to get to the ARB Library and to undergo more repairs that were supervised by the Preservation Lab. Located in Langsam Library, the Preservation Lab is a collaboration between UC Libraries and the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The formation of the lab was supported by a one-year, Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant awarded to the Public Library and the State Library of Ohio. The grant supported the purchase of equipment and supplies that have been used in the map’s restoration.

Preservation of the map was overseen by Holly Prochaska, head of the lab and preservation services and head of the UC Geology-Mathematics-Physics Library, and Kathy Lechuga, conservator for the Preservation Lab. Prochaska says that advice and guidance on framing the massive map was also provided by experts at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

The canvas was once again removed from the stretchers, and then surface-cleaned and repaired. To further preserve its condition, a massive piece of Plexiglass now covers the linen. The map is now enclosed in a massive, oak frame. The framed piece is estimated to weigh around 250 pounds. Climate control and lighting in the library will further protect the map so that it can be researched and admired by library visitors.

UC’s 18th century British literature collection is described as one of the finest in the country, and Grace says that Stewart, who passed away on April 4, was instrumental in building the collection before his retirement. “The collection includes everything from poetry and plays to biographies, fiction and homiletics – sermons in 18th century British literature – and he built a great deal of our rare book collection in that area,” says Grace. “We had this wonderful literature collection and now with this map, we can see exactly where it came from.” Stewart made an additional donation of 18th century books about London when he donated the map to the library.

“This is also an incredible urban artifact, which is why it is such a complement to our urban campus,” says Grace. “Now, it can be on display forever.”

UC Archives & Rare Books Library

UC Preservation lab

Proudly Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Libraries

This article was copied from the UC News website.  The original article is available at:  http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=17617

This volume announces the availability of the papers of Theodore M. Berry in the Archives and Rare Books Library. Berry (1905-2000) was the first African American mayor in Cincinnati, served the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential administration in civil rights programs, and was an active attorney for the NAACP. The Berry papers, acquired by the UC Libraries many years ago, were able to be fully processed through a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives. The materials are now available for research and teaching.

This issue also includes stories about the Preservation Lab jointly run by the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the UC Libraries; the “Life of the Mind” lecture series; a donor profile of Milton Orchin, UC distinguished professor emeritus of chemistry, on why he came to love the library; and much more. 

Source is available in print around the various libraries and online.

Missy Lodge (center), Associate State Librarian for Library Development, State Library of Ohio, awarding the grant to Jason Buydos, Assistant Director - Support Services, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County; and Holly Prochaska, Head, Preservation Services and of the Geology-Mathematics-Physics Library, University of Cincinnati Libraries

The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County was awarded a $81,012 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the State Library of Ohio to establish a joint Conservation Lab with the University of Cincinnati Libraries for the preservation and protection of rare and heavily used materials.

UC Libraries and the Public Library will jointly manage and equip the expanded Conservation Lab housed in UC’s Walter C. Langsam Library. It will be staffed with well-trained individuals from both institutions. The joint model will allow the organizations to pool their resources to expand their capacity to conserve materials, to provide staff training, and to seek innovative collaborative solutions to address their preservation needs.  

“By partnering to conserve our rare holdings and heavily used collections, both institutions are ensuring future access to our materials in the most cost-effective and innovative way,” said Kimber L. Fender, executive director of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

In addition to preserving materials from the collections of the Public Library and UC Libraries, the Conservation Lab will provide consultation and conservation treatments to other organizations that lack the ability to operate their own lab. This outreach will support the conservation needs of other cultural heritage institutions in Ohio, thus helping to guarantee that their collections will also remain available for the future.

“The Conservation Lab offers a creative and collaborative solution to the conservation challenges faced by the Public Library and UC Libraries to preserve our valuable print collections,” said Victoria A. Montavon, dean and university librarian, University of Cincinnati Libraries.

The collaboration will begin this month with Public Library staff training in general collection maintenance and repair techniques at UC Libraries. Concurrently, the Public Library will hire a full-time conservator to manage the treatment and repair of unique and rare book holdings and to train staff on advanced repair techniques. Plans are to have the joint lab facility open and fully operational by January 2012.

For more information about the Conservation Lab, contact Holly Prochaska at (513)556-1389 or holly.prochaska@uc.edu or Jason Buydos at (513) 369-3193 or  jason.buydos@cincinnatilibrary.org.

The LSTA program is funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and administered through the State Library of Ohio.

An engraving showing the city of Cork from Smith's history of Cork

The four books that are back in ARB’s stacks include work by conservator Amanda Buck on a 17^th c. book and an 18^th c. two-volume title.  The Present State of Ireland (SpecCol RB DA925.P7) was published in London in 1673 and contains a history of ancient Ireland, along with a contemporary description of its principal towns.  It also includes a fold-out map.  The book’s original binding was dismantled and then re-backed with calf.  The crushed corners were restored, along with some minor repair on the text block, and new handmade endpapers were added.  The new work on the binding was dyed to match the original.  Buck also restored The Ancient and Present State of County and City of Cork, published in Dublin in 1774 (SpecCol RB DA990.C79S6). She removed the original bindings and then rebound the volumes with full calf over raised bands.  Buck did hand gold-tooling on the spines and added French handmade endpapers.  The result is an absolutely beautiful pair of books.  This important history of Cork, one of Ireland’s main ports in the 18^th c., contains many fold-out views of the county and city, including the one illustrated here of Cork City.

For Thomas Leland’s three-volume History of Ireland (SpecCol DA910.L532), a London publication from 1773, Anna Radford of Etherington Conservation Services in North Carolina, repaired the deteriorated corners, re-attached loose endpapers, and repaired the binding that had suffered severe abrasion of the leather.  Using Japanese tissue and paste, along with colorants, Radford made these volumes come alive while still retaining the 18^th c. original bindings.

The Chronicles of Eri, being the History of the Gaal Sciot Iber: or, the Irish People by Roger O’Connor in London in 1822 (SpecCol RB DA930.O18), was conserved by Frank Lehmann.  Lehmann laced new linen cords through the text block into boards, used handmade endpapers, sewed new headbands, and bound the two volumes in calfskin binding and marbled papers.  The spine is gold-tooled and the original UC bookplates that indicate the volumes were part of the seminal Robert Clarke collection that formed the UC Libraries in the 19^th c., were soaked off and re-attached to the new bindings.  His work is extraordinary, and the volumes look almost exactly as they would have been in 1822.

It is great to have these books back home and to have the beautiful conservation work done on them, but most importantly it is gratifying to know these books are physically fit again and that they will continue to be used for teaching and study for a very long time to come.

-     Kevin Grace