VENICE, Fla. (AP) - There are perhaps three dozen people in the world today who possess a high degree of skill in conserving rare books, manuscripts and works of art on paper. And two of those conservators, a husband-wife team, live in Venice. With combined experience of more than seven decades, they serve a variety of clients worldwide and restore everything from medieval manuscripts to worn children’s books passed down to grateful grandchildren.
“These documents are the tapestry of our lives, and it’s tangible history,” said Sonja Jordan-Mowery.
“This is history that you acquire by reading and learning and telling of stories. But tangible history, it’s something that you also are touching that was here maybe hundreds of years ago. It’s a visceral understanding of history. It’s tactile and emotional and engages all of your senses.”
“A history of the world passes through this workshop,” added Frank Mowery. “Just last week, for example, a woman stopped by with photos of Che Guevara that were taken in Cuba and signed by Fidel Castro’s photographer.”
Born in Budapest, Jordan-Mowery immigrated with her family to Canada during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. They came to the United States in 1967 and moved to Texas where she attended high school and college. She earned a graduate degree in philosophy, but eventually abandoned work on her doctorate in order to attend the University of Chicago where she earned another graduate degree in library science.
After graduation, she established and headed the conservation programs at the University of Notre Dame. She later directed conservation programs at the Sheridan Libraries & Museums at Johns Hopkins University.
Mowery’s father served as librarian at schools such as Stetson and Wittenberg Universities. With a love for books and an aptitude for working with his hands and fixing things, his father encouraged young Mowery to consider book binding as a profession. Prior to his retirement two years ago, he spent 35 years as the head of conservation at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. He spent the last two years of that tenure as the library’s rare bindings specialist, establishing its bindings database.
Growing popularity
Jordan-Mowery compares being a conservator to being a surgeon. You first have to understand the organs, how they work and their composition, she said. Only then can you decide if an artificial heart composed of one material is compatible with the organic material.
“In much the same way, you can’t restore a 16 th Century book in the way you would a 20 th Century book,” she added. “They weren’t made the same way. Not only is it not the same materials, but the techniques that were used are not the same. A properly-trained conservator will not only know how to do it, but will know what is historically sympathetic to the material.”
Conserving printed material in America grew in popularity during the 1980s, Jordan-Mowery said, and schools began doing scientific exploration such as what pigments were used in the materials and what minerals were the sources of the color blue?
“At the beginning of this century, as digitization sort of reared its head, many libraries and schools closed. Directors shut them down because they believed that digital would replace books. Consequently, the two or three programs that were teaching conservation also closed. Today, there is only one school in America that focuses on training individuals in the traditional bench skills of a bookbinder with an understanding of conservation and it is not a college. The North Bennett Street School in Boston offers a three-year certificate program that helps students develop hand skills. They learn by making. That’s very much the European model.”
Although the material they work on can date back hundreds of years, they do not lose sight of the context of the documents they handle, Mowery said, holding up a document signed by Abraham Lincoln.
“To know, for example, that Lincoln held this document in his hands. To hold documents once held by Washington and Jefferson. Or a roster of the men who served at the Alamo. I’ve worked with dozens of Adolf Hitler’s watercolors, as disgusting as he was, but restoring them is still cool.”
The couple serve clients worldwide, ranging from individuals with family treasures and book collectors to museums, galleries, and libraries. They also both continue to teach courses and demonstrate techniques at schools worldwide.
Working magic on manuscripts
Costs for the restoration work, of course, depend on the complexity of the work to be performed.
“There’s a lot of patience required in this field for several reasons. Some of it is just meticulous detailed nuances that require you work slowly. For example, I was working on a 1924 architectural plat for the Palmer Ranch Corporation, all hand sketched with India ink. The drawing had Scotch tape everywhere.
Over a hundred pieces of tape. Heating the tape carrier and using solvents to move the adhesive is a slow process. You must take your time, not hurry it, or you will tear it. Patience is required for the process to do its job.
“Book and paper is made from material which all degrades over time,” Jordan-Mowery added. “Material that is poor quality will degrade faster than that made with good material. A medieval manuscript, for example, will outlive any contemporary book by thousands of years. The greatest enemy to them all, though, is the environment. If you do not have control of your temperature, relative humidity, your water and your insects, they’re all doomed. We can correct for a lot of things like yellowing paper. We can’t really correct much for mold and mildew because once mold blooms and turns purple and green, it’s hard to remove that color.”
Jordan-Mowery said one of the most fun projects she ever worked on was a 1453 manuscript from a Benedictine monastery. The fact that it had never been rebound over the previous five-and-a-half centuries allowed her to handle it in the format in which it was created. Another project that she enjoyed was restoring a children’s book a woman had enjoyed as a child and wanted to give to her grandchildren. The binding was gone and the book was held together by scotch tape, but it was fun restoring it, she said, because it was recent history.
So how did these dual conservators end up in Venice? When Jordan-Mowery retired last year, they went in search of a warmer climate that would offer a small-town feel, yet provide enough culture to keep them entertained. “I stumbled upon Venice on the Internet, she replied. “When I came down to explore and walked down Venice Avenue, I told myself, ’That’s it. I’m” done.’ It was the historic feel that did it for me. Venice reminds me of Europe.”
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Information from: Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, https://www.heraldtribune.com
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