The National Archives, 2019-2023
Prize Papers Project
The Prize Papers is a 20 year (2017-2036) collaborative project between Oldenburg University and The National Archives (UK). Oldenburg University sought to catalogue, digitise and make the collection freely accessible for public use on their Prize Papers online portal. The aim was to preserve the intactness of the collection’s historic original material, taking special interest in objects in the collection and the materiality of the textual records.
As part of an international team of historians, researchers, photographers, conservators and archivists we pooled our knowledge together to preserve, catalogue, and finally present all finds on the portal to the wider public.
As the conservator for the project from 2019 to 2023, I managed the workflow and resources for the conservation of the project, carefully documenting the physical properties of the collection. Assessing and treating each item within the minimal approach of conservation for digitisation, and performing single object treatment on collection items at risk deemed of particular value due to their rarity or historical significance. I addressed access issues for readers or archivists cataloguing the collection, and trained volunteers, conservation interns and capture specialists working on the collection. Supporting digitisation capture, with training, handling and making and providing suitable props for imaging as well as housing for long and short term storage. Advising my peers on the Health and safety risks within the collection and sampling suspicious material for analysis.
These responsibilities required that I be highly organised and motivated while effectively communicating, adapting knowledge and experiences on the project for various audiences and platforms.
The need to provide access to this material for digitisation and readers beyond that was essential, and had to be balanced with the need to preserve the intactness of items within the collection for their value as unique physical examples of socio-cultural practices. I used a variety of treatment methods to address the conservation issues in the collection. Repairs ranging from traditional pasted tissue to remoistenable gelatine tissue; Dry cleaning methods; Lining and consolidation using paste & cellulose ethers; Iron gall ink consolidation; Seal consolidation with Aquazol 500 to prevent loss of fragments; Cleaning of mould and hazardous materials found on items; Rigid gels for separation;
From left to right: Chatting with the team and peers, a letter and its coffee bean rehoused, a lined pest damaged envelope, a shellac seal, Camilla applying sewn on silk repairs to a basket.
Left to right: French Papers and an Armenian letter with a lock of hair.
Historical Context.
Prize Papers Project
The Prize Papers are a collection of papers from ships captured by the British in war time, mostly in the period 1652 to 1815, and in the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856. To establish whether the capture of any ship was lawful, a ship’s whole cargo was seized upon capture including all correspondence, personal belongings and trade goods, secured as prize papers. Papers and cargo were scoured, and the crew interrogated. The capture was deemed lawful by the High Court of Admiralty, if the ship was found to be associated with enemies of the Crown.
The collection is particularly unique due to the largely unused and unsorted papers, left uncensored, with many letters still closed or sealed for example.
Spanning across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia, the collection is both a product and testimony of international relations during the period of European expansion and nation building, colonialism, slavery, migration, wars and daily life from the perspective of the ‘average’ person in a multitude of socio-cultural contexts and dialects.
Including over 100 000 letters mostly from 1664-1817, as well as ship’s registers and logs, miscellanea such as sheet music, diaries, notebooks including slate tablets with surviving chalk notes; and artefacts of all kinds like fashion accessories (fabrics and jewellery); organic remains (seeds and dried plants, hair as ‘love tokens’).
From top to bottom and left to right: Notebooks, Almanac, playing cards, beads from West Africa intended for the slave trade, gold signet rings produced in Ghana, a notebook with slate like pages with surviving chalk inscriptions.
Object conservation.
Prize Papers Project – 2022-2023
This hand-woven basket once held a ship captain’s letters. With knotted handles bound by hair, the basket was likely made by an enslaved African woman in St Domingue (Haiti) where the ship sailed from in 1747. The craft traditions evident in the basket, notably the mud painting, could trace the maker’s origins to Senegal, Gambia or Mali. Flattened, fragmented and creased, the basket could not be viewed or handled safely due to its fragile condition. Tangible evidence of the craft of enslaved people could not be accessed or viewed properly.
The aim was to clean and relax the basket enough to gain visual comprehension of its original shape and details with minimal handling. After cleaning, relaxing the weft, and sewn-on localised repairs, I created a ribcage like support, and custom housing, which gave an unobstructed view of the basket’s inner and outer structure and construction, without direct handling. Thus successfully ensuring the basket’s preservation and continued access to it.
Before Treatment – flattened basket with detached handle
After Treatment – Basket with inner ‘ribcage’ structure after treatment, and rehoused handle
Unexpected finds.
Prize Papers Project – 2022
In the ledger of a French slave-trading ship captured by the British in 1748, a cockroach was discovered. It was mummified within the volume, believed to have been from the same era as the ledger. This cockroach, a common American Cockroach, originally from Africa and transplanted to the American continent through the slave trade, serves as a significant artefact connected to the Transatlantic slave trade.
The main focus shifted to housing the specimen appropriately and restoring its broken antenna while maintaining the insect’s original physical context in the volume. To achieve this, the specimen was carefully pinned inside a display case, allowing viewers to observe it next to the ledger without direct contact, given its delicate nature. A photo showing the cockroach’s original placement in the ledger was included with the rehoused cockroach and ledger for reference. The antenna was delicately reattached using very dry wheat starch paste to ensure a secure bond.
Closed Letters
2020-2023
The large number of sealed letters in the Prize Papers Project at The National Archives posed a conflict of ethical values between providing access for readers and for archivists sorting the collection, and the preservation of the untouched letters as evidence of epistolary craft and practice.
As a compromise between providing access and preserving the letters, I designed a treatment methodology using enzymatic gels which would minimally alter the appearance and materiality of letters. I opened them, by targeting the starch wafers sealing the letters; Combining an agar agar gel with the enzyme alpha amylase to break the chain of the starch molecule. At the right gel consistency and enzyme percentage the letter flap could be delaminated from the surface of the starch wafer seal, without visibly disrupting the appearance of the wafer seals.
The blog Letters Unread: Using agar enzyme gels to open sealed letters. was published by the Icon Book And Paper Group in November 2023.
