(light quirky music) - [Narrator] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in the conservation lab.

And during this program, we're going to introduce you to a lot of, a lot of processes.

One, how do you wash a 180 year old paper document, or how do you, how do you restore some of these World War I posters that would appear to be beyond repair?

But first we're gonna come over here where Bonnie Parr is working on a newspaper that may be the only existent copy of Abraham Lincoln's speech to the Lyceum group.

Bonnie Parr, it's not every day that you get a Lincoln speech, and there may not be another copy of it anywhere.

In fact, there is no copy of the speech.

The only one that we're aware of is in the Sangamo journal.

Isn't that right?

- That's what I understand from our historian Christian McWhorter.

- Yeah.

- He says that there is no known written copy, handwritten copy.

So what exists is printed in this newspaper, which is the Sangamo Journal, February 3rd, 1838 issue.

- [Mark] Now at this point, and it's called the Lincoln's Lyceum Speech.

He gave it to a group of men in Springfield, the Lyceum group.

And he was in the house, I think for four years by the time he had given this speech.

They invited him to speak.

And it's a long speech, I mean, for Lincoln.

It goes on and on.

Can you show us on here where the speech is?

- Sure.

Yeah, this is just the front page, which I'm repairing at the moment, but the speech is actually on the second page.

Using blotting paper just as a support for turning over a piece because if I were just to flip the page over, I could probably - [Mark] Oh, it's on the - [Bonnie] Rip it.

opposite side, of course.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Bonnie] I don't want make any more rips than there are already.

- [Mark] This poor thing.

Look, it's seen better days, hasn't it?

- [Bonnie] Yeah.

The speech starts here, "The perpetuation of our political institutions."

And I know the print is very tiny and faint.

- [Mark] It sure is.

- [Bonnie] But, "Young Man's Lyceum resolved that the thanks of this Lyceum be presented to a Lincoln Esquire for the lecture he delivered by him this evening."

- [Mark] Okay.

Can you show us how many columns that speech takes up?

- [Bonnie] Yeah, it goes all the way down here, and column number two, and it comes down to here, so about three and two thirds columns.

- [Mark] The only copy, there were no copies in existence, except for what's in the newspaper here.

So you have to be really careful.

(laughs) - No pressure.

- No pressure, right?

(laughs) - No pressure.

- And you can see, I mean, obviously this is an 1838 newspaper.

It's very old, it's very delicate.

- Delicate.

- [Mark] But it's been kept pretty good, I mean, when you consider all the years in the archives here.

Well not the archives, but the state historic collection.

- [Bonnie] Yeah, in its life, it was...

I don't know about these losses here.

They almost looked like insect damage.

It may have been folded up, and somebody munched on it.

This hole here, and these two, those are ink spots, and the ink of the time was iron gall ink.

It's kind of a brownish color now.

It's very acidic and it actually eats into the paper.

And then when I was treating this, this piece here just kind of fell out.

I do have it.

I'm gonna put it back on, but I'm going to put a piece of tissue to cover all of it, and then it'll be also a little support for it too, so it doesn't fall off anymore.

- [Mark] So you'd be able to show us the various methods that you're going to use to try to- - [Bonnie] Yes.

- [Mark] To try to preserve this, repair it and preserve it.

- [Bonnie] Yep.

- [Mark] Just for those who are curious, Dr. McWhorter here, one of the historians, I'm gonna paraphrase something he wrote about the speech.

It's a speech about Lincoln calling against mob violence and for the rule of law and how we have to, our better selves have to get involved without lynchings and mob rule.

Anyway, that's what the Lyceum speech was about.

So now you're gonna take...

This as already in two pieces.

You're gonna try to get the edges repaired, get this, I'm not gonna say, I guess, pasted together.

- [Bonn] It's gonna be put back together, yeah.

- [Mark] Okay.

Let's go first though over here, because I want to see this, what this looked like before you even got started.

- This is another sheet.

It's page five and six of this newspaper.

And you see it's, I hope you can sort of see that it's sort of yellowed and it has some brown paper tape here, and there's kind of a tissue paper tape right here.

- [Mark] Was this put on a long time ago?

- [Bonnie] Yes.

Yeah, and even longer before that, what causes this yellowing here is, is actually kind of a gauze lining.

It was called silking.

And the adhesive that they used was not acid-free.

It has kind of a element in it, aloe, that is very acidic.

And so what it's actually done is it has made the paper acidic and it's pretty damaging.

The silking has turned brittle, and as it tears, it's been tearing the newspaper as well, plus yellowing it.

Now, paper of this era is actually made out of rag, and it should be a pretty flexible paper for its time, and it should be kind of a whitish-grayish color.

So it shouldn't be like this kind of yellowy color.

- [Mark] Did you wash this?

- [Bonnie] I washed it, yes.

- [Mark] You washed it.

So when you say wash, I mean, you mean wet wash. - [Bonnie] Yes.

- You mean you actually put it in water.

- I gave it a bath.

Actually, I gave it four baths.

- Will you be able to show us how you do that?

- Somewhat, yes.

- Okay, all right.

- Yeah, this'll be just...

It won't be exactly like this, just because it takes, it takes about four hours just to get this prepared.

- Oh, okay.

- But I have just a sample here.

- [Mark] (laughs) I can't believe this.

You actually have a sink full of water.

(both laughing) - [Bonnie] Well, it's a tray.

- [Mark] I mean, to envision an 1838 piece of paper going in there just blows my mind.

- [Bonnie] Well now, you have to properly support these things and you have to prepare the paper.

And so what we did with the newspaper is we humidify it, and that just a very gentle procedure to raise up the humidity in a smaller space and let the paper absorb that moisture.

It doesn't get wet, wet.

It just gets more limp.

- Pliable.

- Yes.

And so I do that overnight.

Let it kind of get prepared to being used to be more humid.

And then just before, and this little sample piece, which is just a, it was pulled out of a book that was thrown away, but it's just for your interest, Illinois soldiers and Sailors Home, Quincy, - [Both] 1888.

- [Bonnie] Superintendent's Report.

Anyway, it's kind of a brittle piece of paper and I haven't humidified it.

But once I've humidified it, I also, before I wash it, I am gonna kind of mist it with just some distilled water.

- [Mark] Distilled water, okay.

- [Bonnie] Yeah, and that just kind of, again, makes the paper kind of start to- - [Mark] Relax a little.

- [Bonnie] Relax, and paper fibers expand a little bit, because then it won't be quite the shock of going into a bath.

So anyway, it is on a piece of Mylar, or polyester film.

And from now on, I am always supporting this wet piece of paper with the polyester film.

You never would handle it when it's wet because it, yes, it will tear and rip.

And that's how I would support... See, you don't do that.

- [Mark] It's a good thing it's not the Sangamo Journal.

- Sorry.

(Mark laughs) Put it into this bath, and I kind of just roll it in here, and let it sit for a bit.

- [Mark] How long did you let the Sangamo journal sit?

- [Bonnie] Oh, I think probably before I started testing it, probably about a half an hour, and I would kind of check it every once in a while.

And I used warm water because that tends to speed up the softening of the adhesive and the silking so that once I was ready, once it was ready to come off, I could just very gently, or with a spatula, kind of just gently lift it, and then I would be able to peel it right off.

When we're ready to bring it out, it comes up.

The water pressure kind of holds it on to the Mylar.

And then what we would do is we would set it aside, kind of drain it a little bit, and I put it over on a table.

But then I would put a piece of blotting paper on top, and a light weight.

And then about after five minutes, change that out.

Maybe after 15 minutes, change that out again.

After a certain point, it'll be dry enough that it will detach from the Mylar, and then I can put blotting paper on both sides.

And I'd actually let it dry for a couple of days under blotting paper and a weight to keep it flat.

And then there was still that kind of jelly-like adhesive, and so very gently I would go like this, and I actually, through these gloves, these are nitrile gloves, I could sort of feel that jelly-like stuff, and I could feel it kind of come off as I'm just very gently... And I would go over the whole surface.

- Okay, Bonnie, the paper's been washed.

We saw the process of washing.

Now the tricky part.

You've repaired some of this.

You've actually used your magic paste here, we're gonna show, when you've actually...

Some of the tears, you've been able to fix, and now you're gonna work.

You're not gonna work on the speech side.

You're gonna turn it over and work on the other side, so you don't lose any of the speech.

- Yeah.

I have to make a decision on what, especially... We try to mend over the least amount of printing.

But this newspaper, because there's print all over the pages, I have to decide which is the better side to put my tissue.

And really the most important side is, in this case is Lincoln's speech.

So I'm actually gonna do it on the, I don't know what you call it, the title page, the first page.

So anyway, using a blotting paper as a support for these too.

What I'm using is a tissue.

Generically, it's called Japanese tissue.

It's a long fibered soft tissue paper.

It's acid free.

There's many kinds of Japanese tissue.

This one is called Kizukishi, which I understand, and I apologize for pronunciation, it's just how it's Anglicized, I understand it means tissue paper in Japanese.

Anyway, I like this one because it's, it's not too bad for being able to read through texts.

However, this print is so small that I still think this is very...

It is too intrusive.

And typically when we do repairs, we do little strips of paper, and we use wheat starch paste, which is a water reversible paste.

However for this, I am actually using a fiber of this tissue rather than a strip.

So I'm gonna put a piece of, it's a non-woven polyester fabric, it's called Hollytex, and that helps prevent the men from sticking to the blotting paper.

And I will do it over here, so you can see.

So what I've got here is a mix of, it's wheat paste and methylcellulose, which is another cellulose type paste.

They're both water reversible, but they have two different properties, and it makes it, it bonds to the paper, but it's also kind of sticky, but it helps.

And it also is not so wet.

And I need this to see through what I'm doing.

So what I'm gonna do, first of all, I'm just making sure my tears are lined as much as possible, and I'm just gonna put this down so it holds it.

It just holds it in place.

It doesn't shift while I'm working on it.

So it's from here to about there.

So with my tweezers, I have a piece of this tissue paper sitting on this paste, and it's been absorbing the paste over a little bit of time, so it's easier to kind of pull off a small fiber laden with paste.

- [Mark] Wow, that is small.

- [Bonnie] And then I'm going to start just a little bit beyond the tear.

Using my spatula to kind of hold it down, I'm gonna pull a little bit with my tweezers.

- [Mark] Wow.

- [Bonnie] And you'd be surprised how far these little... - [Mark] Those fibers stretch, don't they?

- [Bonnie] Fibers stretch.

Little goes a long way.

And our idea of this is you're minimizing the modern materials going on the old paper, and also minimizing covering up print.

Actually, I can kind of almost tuck it a little bit under the paste there or under the tear, so it kind of gets on an overlap.

And then I just have to kind of smooth out paste a little bit very gently, and take another piece of paper towel.

Just kind of blot it on the sides, not on top, otherwise I just pick up that fiber.

- [Mark] My goodness, you have to be very patient.

- And then put another piece.

This is like a drying sandwich.

Just move this out of the way.

Put another piece of the Hollytex there, piece of blotting paper.

Now we wait, and let it dry.

(Mark laughs) And there you go.

- [Mark] Let it dry.

- Now, the nice thing about this- - And that's gonna happen here too, isn't it?

- Yeah.

- You're gonna hit this big tear here.

- Yeah, I will have to.

- [Mark] And then all the way across.

- [Bonnie] Line it up first, and I'll have to kind of get it up here, and then check and see if there's any torn areas that are overlapped.

So I'll make sure that it lines up right, and I want to make sure the words are evened out, and line up as much as possible.

Especially, I'm thinking about those three columns, two and three quarters columns - of speech.

- of speech.

- That I really want that lined up.

- Yeah.

- This actually, this paper was in three pieces, and I did start repairing the tear.

- [Mark] Yeah, I see where it's all the way across.

- [Bonnie] Yeah.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Bonnie] I haven't quite got - [Mark] Nice job though.

You almost can't see it.

- [Bonnie] Yeah, the only part that's not, and I think because the paper stretched over time, is this part here.

I still have to work with that a little bit, and make sure the overlap is correct.

- [Mark] After you get this hole, after you find all the missing pieces, and paste all that on and put all the... What happens after that, after you get it complete?

- What I'm going to do is encapsulate it, and that is sandwiching it between two pieces of polyester film, seal around the edges, and then that becomes its protective enclosure, and that will... People can then look at it without worrying about tearing the edges or any more holes.

- Yeah.

And how long do you think that process, the whole process till you get finished?

You've got a couple of weeks, three weeks, a month?

- Well, I got... Well, (laughs) it goes onto, it gets installed in April 31st or August 34th.

August 31st.

So I have until August 31st.

- You've got some pressure.

You've got some pressure, yeah.

- But no, I think that probably this week I'll work on all the repairs and there's some loose pieces to put back on.

They'll be done, and then by next week I can probably encapsulate it and cut a mat for it before it's gonna go on display in a political life section of the museum.

It's time to change out the displays in that particular section, which we try to do once a year.

So this is...

It's gonna be highlighted, Lincoln's speech.

- Well, thank you for showing us.

- Sure, you're very welcome.

One little other little thing is there is an ad for- - Oh, there is?

- Let's see.

Here it is, Stuart and Lincoln, so his law practice there.

- [Mark] Look how little that ad is.

Isn't that amazing?

Stuart and Lincoln.

(laughs) Okay.

- [Bonnie] Yeah.

- [Mark] Well, Ginny Lee, you get, every once in a while, you get a real colorful project come your way.

- [Ginny] Yes.

- [Mark] And these World War I posters are a good example.

- [Ginny] Yes.

- [Mark] Do you like it when they come your way?

- [Ginny] Oh my goodness.

(Mark laughs) It's one of my favorite things to do in this department.

- [Mark] Is it?

- Yes.

I am always intrigued by the artwork, as well as the message, and the US department, the governmental department that produced it.

And one of the things we really like is that the color has remained so bright and dark.

- [Mark] Yeah, because these come from- - [Ginny] It's 100 years old.

- [Mark] Yeah, these are World War I era, so some of them are as old as 1917.

I think this one might be 1920 or thereabout.

- [Ginny] Yes.

- [Mark] But yeah, and looks very good.

Now you still have to work on them though, even though they look pretty good.

And one of the things you do is clean them up first, right?

- Yes.

- How do you do that?

- This is our cleaning area, and we use eraser crumbs that we order.

- Eraser crumbs.

- Yes, we don't grind them up, but they are made from Staedtler Eraser.

- [Mark] Okay, and some company grinds them up and sends them to you.

- Yes.

- Okay, so how do you, how does that work?

You just sprinkle it on there?

- Yes, we do.

I need to turn this over because that part has been cleaned, and I saved a dirty section to show you how we do that.

And here is our dirty section.

- [Mark] The background color is different, yeah.

- I've cleaned most of it, but I left this to show you how we do it.

- [Mark] Sprinkle a little salt on there.

- [Ginny] Yeah.

And it's a nice, calming, relaxing thing to do.

You want to be careful.

The paper is thick, but it's still prone to rips, but the circular motion is the best way to do it.

And so when enough, when I feel like enough dirt has been removed, I will take my brush here and brush the crumbs aside, and then use the vacuum.

- [Mark] (laughs) Okay.

All right.

(vacuum whirring) And you will know when you can't get this any cleaner, won't you?

- [Ginny] Yeah.

- [Mark] You'll just know from having done it enough times that you've got all the dirt off of it.

- [Ginny] Yes.

When the crumbs do not get dirty, (laughs) you're pretty sure it's as clean as it's going to be.

- Now that one's in good shape, but over here... - Yes.

- [Mark] Sometimes they come in and they're, they can be a little rough, tattered or pieces missing or anything, right?

- [Ginny] Right.

- [Mark] This is 1920, you can see that.

- [Ginny] Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

When Bonnie was writing up the condition report, this fell off or was loose, and so she saved it and it goes right here.

- [Mark] Yeah, it sure does.

And you'll paste that in?

- [Ginny] Yes.

- [Mark] Will you use the use the same paste that Bonnie was using on the newspaper?

- [Ginny] No, this is pure - [Mark] It's different.

wheat starch paint.

- Okay, paste.

- (laughs) This is pure - [Both] Wheat starch paste.

- Paste, okay.

- Will you just take that?

I mean, will you just cover it with it?

- [Ginny] Well, I will show you.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Ginny] I'm going to turn this over.

- [Mark] You always have to be careful to handle it, don't you?

- [Ginny] Yes.

- [Mark] Everything.

- [Ginny] This is how we turn things over.

And what I'm going to do is add a strip of tissue, which I prepared to cover the torn spot and this other little spot here.

So I need to paste that up and attach it.

And then I'm going to turn it back over and attach the blue triangular piece to that mend that I just made.

So patience is a good virtue to have.

- [Mark] Steady hands, too.

You've got to have steady hands.

- [Ginny] When one works in this department.

- And good tweezers.

- [Ginny] Oh yeah, good tools.

And it pretty much lined up really nicely.

- [Mark] Yes, it did.

Yes, it did.

- [Ginny] Yeah.

- [Mark] And that tissue supports it, so it won't tear off again.

It keeps it nice and firm.

- Oh yeah, it'll be fine.

- Okay.

Hey, speaking of finding little pieces that fit into the puzzle, over there, I think you had a poster, didn't you, that you got lucky on, didn't you?

- Yes.

- Let's take a look at that one.

- Yes, let's look at that.

- And another, I think this is another, what they called propaganda posters, but they were actual World War I.

They might've trying to sell bonds or trying to get people... - Yeah, right.

- to give to the red cross or anything.

- Yeah, and I have learned in the past year that a lot of them concerned food, sending food overseas to soldiers, as well as civilians in Europe.

- [Mark] Look at the colors, my goodness.

- [Ginny] Yeah, speaking of color, I mean, this is one of the most colorful ones I worked on.

A piece in the corner was missing.

- [Mark] Oh, okay.

- [Ginny] About that much of the corner was missing, and I had recently put together a notebook of fragments that had fallen off or broken off from- - [Mark] Keep that thought, I'll get that for you because I know what it is.

- [Ginny] Okay.

- [Ginny] From various posters that had been sitting in storage.

So I was studying that as I was cleaning it on the cleaning table, and I thought, by golly, that typeface looks really familiar.

I think, (both laughing) I think I saw that.

- [Mark] Oh, show us that.

Show us the whole collection of stuff that you have there.

- [Ginny] Okay.

- [Mark] That's remarkable.

This is all stuff that you don't know where it goes, but you save it.

- [Ginny] Yeah, yeah.

(Mark laughs) Things that have fallen off - [Mark] Oh my goodness.

- [Ginny] Over the years.

I don't know where some of them were kept, but this is where I found the blue type.

- [Mark] And it's Forbes.

- [Ginny] Yeah.

- [Mark] And I assume that's the same printing company that did the magazine.

We don't know of course, but Forbes made the poster.

- [Ginny] Yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

- [Mark] That's remarkable.

- [Ginny] Yeah.

- [Mark] So what kind of work did this take, besides cleaning it?

Did you have to repair a lot of it?

- [Ginny] Not much.

It was pretty straightforward.

I used that same tissue to mend these areas in the corner, both corners up there and down here, but it was pretty straightforward.

- [Mark] Well, you've got something like, I dunno, 1500 posters in the historical collection, so you'll never run out of stuff to do.

- Probably not.

(Mark laughs) Probably not.

- [Mark] When Ginny and Bonnie aren't repairing maps and other documents, and you see it's quite a process here, there's always time to do lots of things, right?

What if somebody orders a box for a book?

An order comes over like this.

You need to build this support for exhibit or this box for this precious old book.

It's all done in house.

With another Illinois story at the conservation lab at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, I'm Mark MacDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat quirky music) - [Narrator] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bells chiming)