An Unusual Support

by Susi Barbarossa

Susi Barbarossa is a Senior Conservation Technician for Special Collections. She builds and creates exhibit supports for many of the items on display in Houghton Library.   

Our team not only performs conservation treatment on Harvard Library collections going on exhibition or loan, but we also construct various supports to ensure collections are safely displayed for the duration of the exhibit.  For the current exhibit at Houghton Library, War of Words: A Citizen’s Eye View of the Revolution, Susi was faced with the challenge to create a mount for a large foldout from a book. Foldouts are pages that have maps or illustrations that are larger than the regular size leaves in the text block of a book, therefore needing to be folded out to use and then refolded to fit inside the book when it is closed.  

Below is an example of a book on display in the current Houghton Library exhibition that needed support for both the book and the large foldout of “Plan of the Siege of York town in Virginia" (in A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America. , US 4355.5.) . The page for display folds out and folds down as well. Because of this foldout, the support for this book needed to be constructed in a different way than a book that could simply be opened and placed in a more typical “V” shaped cradle. 

To accommodate the half of the book opposite the foldout, a triangle shape was constructed from black Strathmore Museum Mounting Board.  This meant that the back of the book could be supported in an upright manner while the foldout could be parallel to the deck of the exhibition case, keeping it flat. The triangle’s base was extended underneath the other half of the book to give it support. 

The support for the foldout was made the same size as the foldout. Several matboard boxes were constructed to be at the same height as the text block so that they would serve as support for the foldout. 

A piece of matboard, similar in color to the textblock, was cut slightly larger than the foldout, and placed on top of the rectangular supports to provide a smooth and even surface 

The upper half of the book is strapped to the triangular part of the support with a wide piece of polyethylene strapping (a soft but strong plastic) holding the bulk of the book open against the triangle. A smaller width of strapping will hold the open page.  The foldout will be strapped to the support board with a thin width of strapping.  

You can see the result in the exhibit case at Houghton Library through August 7!