Archive Box

West Dean Archive Work

The brief of this project was to document, treat, and rehouse documents from the West Dean Archives while working collaboratively with a partner Our object was a 1726 parchment agreement which we recieved in a very unstable state, it was folded, but the ink and parchment was deteriorating along the folds We took the decision to manually flatten the parchment by slowly increasing weight through felts We used remoistenable tissue splints to stabilise areas of damage and loss We float-mounted the object, allowing it both to be displayed, and stored flat in a plan chest