Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Having taken over the Ringle Conservation Internship from my predecessor and colleague Brendan Williams-Childs for the processing of the Hannah Scott photography collection, I have continued the necessary tasks and procedures to appropriately rehouse, organize, clean, and inventory thousands of glass plate negatives (3,821 to be exact) that comprise a mere fraction of the entire collection. These inventorying and rehousing procedures are much the same as other archival projects completed by interns and professionals in the field. Maintaining careful records and attention to detail are of paramount importance. The basic steps involve removing the old housing (acidic envelopes), notating the identifying information of each individual plate in a spreadsheet and on the new acid-free, four-flap enclosures, removing dust with a soft brush, and finally placing the completed rehoused plate into a new box.  Such processes have been discussed, in detail, in many archival projects across repository institutions.  

Rather than repeat the processing steps discussed by my predecessors, I examine the potential research opportunities and significance this collection embodies. Not only is this collection invaluable for genealogical research (Hannah’s meticulous record keeping make this collection a researchers dream) but also for women and gender studies. The uniqueness and increasing fascination I have discovered in this collection and internship lies with the photographic abilities and entrepreneurial spunk displayed by Hannah Scott as an independent businesswoman in the early 20^th century. Her distinct ability to photographically capture lively images of young children combined with her apparent business acumen make her a noteworthy example of Kansan and female ingenuity.  

It seems that Hannah’s work process encouraged taking multiple photos with different backgrounds, props, and poses. In several of the plates, elements of the studio were inadvertently captured including figures not part of the carefully crafted tableaux. Particularly with the young children, there seems to be a degree of collaboration with the mothers who attempt to gain the child’s attention and happy expression. Hannah seems to have encouraged these interactions to achieve the desired image results. Hannah’s skill with timing and attention to detail while coordinating with the parent was one of her greatest strengths as an artist-businesswoman, achieving crystal-clear, natural images. Many of her other images are conventionally posed and formatted to express family relations and pristine pseudo-intellectualism (many older children and adults stiffly hold/read books, magazines, and diplomas). Like today, these artistic choices responded to the desires of the clients and the photographic conventions witnessed in the popular media.

Later images start to appear more relaxed and natural overall. Perhaps this indicates a shift in how people understood photography not as just a formal once or twice in a lifetime event but a more commonplace fun activity in which they felt freer to express their personality with a technology they had become familiar with as children. It should also be noted that there are significantly more women who are commissioning portraits than men. Images of children make up most of the portrait subject matter but the plates and register books indicate a “Mrs.” John Smith, more often than the given name of the child or male name. The sheer number of plates and named clients attests to Hannah’s popularity as a portrait photographer. 

Hannah Scott was born in Canada in 1872 to Scottish immigrants who later settled in Kansas. She was the fifth of seven children and the only girl. Hannah chose her career path through the inspiration of an article in the Ladies Home Journal by Edward Bok. This article advised that ladies with an artistic inclination were well suited for studio photography as this was deemed suitable work for women at the time. With the approval and support of her family, Hannah pursued a photographic career. With unflagging initiative and energy Hannah apprenticed and advertised with the local photo studio, the Stone Front Studio, owned and operated by Allen Brown. Eventually Hannah bought out Allen Brown to open her own studio, “The Hannah Scott Studio,” later “Scott Photography Studio.” Starting out on her own in 1898, she rented studio space on the second floor of a local commercial building in downtown Independence KS. In 1916 she purchased a lot at 111 South 8^th street in Independence and commissioned a new studio building. The titles for this property were in Hannah’s name and over the years three mortgages were taken out and quickly paid off indicating Hannah’s autonomy and success as a businesswoman. Later she hired her younger brother Hugh to work in the development process and as a junior partner, but Hannah maintained primary control of the business until her death.  

More research is needed to fully examine Hannah Scott’s life and work. As an important example of women in business and industry, Scott’s life can expand current perceptions of women’s work in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Previous scholars have mentioned the Independence Historical Society might have more information about Hannah and her family in the local archives. Once fully indexed with a published online finding aid, this collection will prove invaluable for genealogical research for southeastern Kansas.  

Hannah Johnson
Ringle Conservation Intern, 2023-2024

Becoming the Ringle Conservation Intern has been an incredible learning experience both on its own and as an expansion of the work I have been fortunate enough to do during my two years as a student employee at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library Conservation Lab. Since September of 2022, I have assessed, lightly cleaned, and re-housed over 900 individual glass plate negatives, and at least 100 flexible negatives, taken by the George Cornish Studio (based in Arkansas City, Kansas) between 1890 and 1945. With the guidance of Marcella Huggard, Charissa Pincock, Whitney Baker, and Roberta Woodrick, I have contributed 833 entries to the ongoing finding aid that include the subject of the photo (if identifiable) and the condition of each plate. My hope is that, when the collection is complete with its partner collection (the Hannah Scott Collection), history and photo enthusiasts will be able to enjoy the wide range of portraiture, landscape, and urban life photography contained within the collection.

The Ringle project began with a massive shifting project. Roberta Woodrick, Grace Awbrey, Hannah Johnson, Rory Sweedler, Sarah Jane Dahms, and I moved the Cornish, Scott, and several other glass plate negative collections in advance of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) updates in the stacks. During this shifting, we saw how both age and the heat from the old furnace, located under the floor where the glass plates had been held, had affected the collections. There were clear indicators that re-housing these collections was necessary. On some glass plates there was flaking emulsion and discoloration, and some flexible negatives were experiencing “vinegar syndrome” (the strong smell of deteriorating acetate film) and leaving liquid residue on the shelves (from the chemical separation of the emulsion on the plastic).

The Cornish Studio was located in Arkansas City, Kansas, 8 miles north of Chilocco, Oklahoma, where the Chilocco Indian School operated, and about 200 miles southwest of Lawrence. The studio was opened by George Cornish in 1905 and was run jointly from 1912 onward by Cornish and his assistant Edith Berrouth (to whom he would leave the practice in 1946 after his death.) In 1993, attorney Otis Morrow, whose practice was in the building that had once been Cornish’s studio, donated the 8 boxes of glass plates, photo registrars, and even George Cornish’s autobiography of running the studio (called “My Life on Fifth Avenue”) to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. (More about the history of the collection can be found at the Collections Overview.)

Many of the glass plates in the Cornish collection have some degree of damage – they’ve existed through a wide range of temperature and humidity fluctuations – but at over 100 years old for many of them, they generally look remarkably good. The subjects in the photos are almost all visible, and the excitement on their faces in these century old photographs endures. It’s clear that the people who went to the Cornish Studio for their portraits, or for the portraits of their young children (babies make up a significant portion of the plates from the 1910s-20s), were happy to have the opportunity to have their photos taken. They couldn’t have known that their likeness would be preserved for longer than them, but I like to think it would make them happy to know their investment in a photograph might provide returns to scholars today.

Before me, several Ringle interns worked on an impressive collection of projects over timespans of six weeks to three months. So far, I have been working with the Cornish Collection for nine months and will continue to do so for another two. Having almost a full year has been immensely valuable – each plate must be placed individually into a four-fold wrapper before being re-housed in boxes, and many plates between 1917 and 1930 have subjects that could be researched (which I did, especially when there might be the opportunity to identify the women in couples’ portraits who were usually identified as Mrs. (Man’s Name.)). Having now completed the 5 x 7 plates, I continue to work on the 8 x 10 plates which represent a shift from traditional studio portraiture and into street scenes in Ark City and the surrounding area. These images, and this collection, offer a valuable slice-of-life view of Southwest Kansas across a period of American history with rapid changes.   

Brendan Williams-Childs
2022-2023 Ringle Conservation Intern
Conservation Services

During the 2017 fall semester I had the opportunity to work as the Ringle Conservation Intern at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. My time here has focused on treating and housing the Albert T. Reid Cartoon Collection, which includes 1899 original cartoons from various artists. This collection started as a generous donation of works from Reid in the 1930s, and between 1954 and 1956 the William Allen White Foundation and the School of Journalism at the University collected around 1750 items from around 600 different cartoonists.

The process of treating this collection required me to spend time dry-cleaning and housing every cartoon; this gave me the ability to read a majority of the cartoons, which gave me insight to the nature of the world in which these artists resided. Cartoonists, especially those who were creating political or editorial cartoons, were critiquing the world they inhabited. It was often hard not to draw parallels from our current political state while viewing cartoons of Russia’s influence on the world or a dawning of nuclear war. It was also particularly interesting that at the same time as these political cartoons were being created, so were early incarnations of some of our favorite pop-culture icons.

Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros., 01/13/1954 (CS 326)
Click image to enlarge.

When working with this collection I was particularly drawn to the comic strips, especially the strips that were science fiction oriented, i.e. Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Brick Bradford. There’s something wonderful about the worlds these artists developed with little knowledge of where we would find ourselves. Looking at these today is like looking at a nostalgic future. I also found it fascinating that many of these same tropes and design ascetics are used by contemporary science fiction creators. I wonder if contemporary creators were influenced by these characters and cartoonists as I was.

Flash Gordon, by Dan Berry, 09/01/1954 (CS-312)
Click image to enlarge.

Buck Rogers, by Rick Yager, 02/27/1956 (CS-308)
Click image to enlarge.

The Reid Cartoon Collection is a fantastic resource. It brings me great satisfaction that this collection will soon be accessible.

Matthew Willie Garcia
2017 Ringle Conservation Intern
Conservation Services

I have spent this summer as the second Ringle Summer Intern in the Stannard Conservation Lab at the University of Kansas. My internship focused on a collection of 41 scrapbooks held by the University Archives. The project involved developing a survey tool, surveying the collection, identifying items for treatment, treating some items, and rehousing/housing modification all of the scrapbooks. Most of the books dated from the early 1900’s. They showcase student life leading up to and in the early stages of World War One. This insight into student life at a very interesting and volatile time, especially as we come to the 100 year anniversary of the United States entering the war, is why the Archives uses these materials as teaching tools with undergraduate students. The scrapbooks also include very interesting objects, like firecrackers with the line written next to them, “We shot up the house.” I was unable to discover which house they were talking about but I have no doubt they would have been in serious trouble for doing that today! From a conservation perspective these firecrackers required some consolidation and I discovered one of the fuses is still in place!

 

Firecrackers in a scrapbook compiled by Emery McIntire, after treatment.
Call Number: SB 71/99 McIntire. Click image to enlarge.

For more information about the project please see the story published in the Lawrence Journal-World in July: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2016/jul/04/century-old-ku-student-scrapbooks-pose-preservatio/.

And for some video footage of the treatments please see the coverage from 41 Action News: http://www.kshb.com/news/region-kansas/ku-working-to-preserve-former-students-scrapbooks.

I came into the project most excited about the problem-solving aspects of working with scrapbooks and I was not disappointed. Many conservators greatly enjoy the problem-solving we get to do every day to determine the correct treatment for objects. For conservation purposes scrapbooks are exceedingly complex and complicated objects. Usually they are made of cheap materials and contain a variety of attachment methods. This means that once they make it to a conservator’s bench they are normally quite fragile. The binding may be failing, the support paper is usually brittle, and the various types of attachment—glue, tape, staples, pins—may have partially or completely failed. Given all of this, determining the most appropriate treatment is not always an easy task.

For the scrapbooks I treated I came across two main problems: What is the most efficient way to mend the innumerable tears to the support pages? What is the best way to conserve objects found in the scrapbooks? Some of these objects include firecrackers, a Red Cross bandage, and a 100 year old piece of hardtack.

Red Cross bandage in a scrapbook compiled by Florence Harkrader,
before (top) and after (bottom) treatment. Call Number: SB 71/99 Harkrader.
Click images to enlarge.

I found that the most efficient way to repair all the tears—averaging around 10 tears per page—was to use a remoistenable repair paper. I made this using a 10gsm tengujo Japanese paper and a 50/50 mix of wheat starch paste and methyl cellulose. Once this was dry I was able to score it into many different sized strips to fit the various sized tears I was repairing.

Of the two objects mentioned the bandage was the easier to conserve. It is pinned to the support page and can swivel a bit on the pin allowing it to extend beyond the edge of the book. This means that there are some creases and frayed areas that have developed over time. To conserve it I repositioned it to sit inside the edges of the book and flattened out the creases.

The hardtack required creative problem-solving. It had a number of problems. It was coming unstuck from the support paper, had a number of cracks, and has writing on it. The ink means that any organic solvent-based consolidant could not be used. Additionally, it was desirable to keep the hardtack on the page, rather than removing it and storing it separately. In the end it was decided to remove the page from the scrapbook (the book was already disbound and is not being rebound) and to store it in its own enclosure within the same box as the scrapbook. The hardtack was re-secured to the page using a very dry wheat starch paste. The page was put in a float mount and support pieces were made with cutouts for the hardtack on one side and a dance book on the other. All of this was then sandwiched between pieces of corrugated board with ties attached. This created a housing that will both protect the page and aid in flipping the page from one side to the other.

Page from Emery McIntire’s scrapbook, featuring a piece of hardtack,
before (top) and after (bottom) treatment. Call Number: SB 71/99 McIntire.
Click images to enlarge.

Detail of the hardtack. Call Number: SB 71/99 McIntire. Click image to enlarge.

This project allowed me to hone my skills in many areas of conservation. My project will allow for these scrapbooks to be accessed and stored more safely going forward. I highly recommend stopping by Spencer Research Library, calling one or two to the reading room, and losing yourself in KU’s past!

Noah Smutz
2016 Ringle Conservation Intern

Captain Dangerous, A Brother to Dragons, Romance of the Seas, and Somebody Else’s Wife: The History of a Heartless Woman! Where can one find such gripping book titles? Why at the Spencer Research Library, of course! Deep within the Spencer’s stacks is a series of shelves filled with a set of 459 volumes with eye-catching bindings of a style of book called the yellowback.

What are yellowbacks? They were a type of book printed from the 1840s through the early 1900s. They were often sold at railway stations. Much like the paperbacks we buy in the airport today, these mass-produced books were purchased by those boarding trains seeking entertainment during their travels. This cheap literature for the masses was produced in an equally cheap manner. Straw boards were covered in a glazed paper—usually, though not always, yellow in color—and the textblock constructed of roughly sewn or stapled, lower-quality paper. Although inexpensive in production, these books were not lacking in decorative creativity. Publishing companies hired artists to create tri-colored wood-block printed covers that correlated to the stories’ subject matter, and boy, are these covers spectacular. The back cover, and front and back endpapers, were often printed with advertisements, including some for the bath product Pears Soap, featuring a somewhat disturbed looking baby as the spokesmodel.

   

Left: Front Cover, From Jest to Earnest, B1505.
Right: Back cover (featuring disturbed baby), Behind Closed Doors, B1577, Special Collections

The inexpensive production methods of yellowbacks might have proved profitable for publishing companies, but in terms of longevity for the books such poor construction came at a cost. After years of use, it was determined that the majority of the yellowback collection was in need of treatment. Many had loose or detached boards and spines, split hinges, abraded and flaking covers, and detached corners. It also appeared that some of the books had undergone previous conservation treatment involving a nasty hide-glue to reattach boards and spines. Over time, this treatment had proven to be more injurious than helpful. Luckily for the books, the conservation department had just the right summer intern up for the challenge of these little fixer-uppers.

Example of detached board and extra adhesive in hinge area, Tancred, B1346, Special Collections.

After conducting an in-depth survey of the entire collection, thirty-five books were determined to be the most in need of treatment. Once treatment options were discussed with the collection’s curator, work commenced. To remedy the failing hinges, a strip of kozo Japanese tissue was adhered using wheat starch paste and then dried beneath a weight. In more severe cases where the boards and spines were detached, the textblock was cleaned of any previous lining and glue using a methylcellulose poultice. If needed, the textblock was shaped with a backing hammer to create a rounder spine. A new spine lining was adhered using kizukishi Japanese paper and wheat starch paste, cut to allow for two one-inch flanges on either side of the spine. The boards were then attached using the flanges, adhering them to the interior of the cover.

     

Left: Spine before cleaning, Moths, B1481
Right: Spine after cleaning and lining with kizukishi paper, Moths, B1481, Special Collections.

If the spine was also missing, a modified hollow was created from a rectangular piece of tinted moriki Japanese paper, cut to the length of the book, folded three times in accordance with the book’s spine width, creating a tube-like hollow. This allows for both strength and flex in the book when patrons wish to comb through the pages. The treatments performed were minimally invasive. It was important to keep in mind that the “cure” could not be more than the book could handle, and also that the treatments not be visually distracting. After treatment, a custom-fitted Mylar wrapper was made for each volume for added protection. During my internship, thirty-five books were treated in four weeks.

 

Left: Example of detached spine.
Right: Same book after spine reattachment. Moths, B1481, Special Collections.

These simple but sturdy fixes extend the life span of these books and allow for easier patron use. I implore you to go visit the Spencer Research Library, not only to view my handiwork, but to admire, and also find humor, in these wonderful books.

  

Left: Before treatment image featuring previously repaired spine, The Mariner’s Compass: a Novel, B1433.
Right: After treatment, with newly repaired spine, The Mariner’s Compass: a Novel, B1433, Special Collections.

Allison Brewer
2015 Ringle Conservation Intern
Conservation Services