Preparing manuscripts for Washington DC

Submitted by Ewelina Warner on Tue, 08/08/2006 - 11:01

Andrew Honey and Nicole Gilroy are to visit the monastery from 19 to 12 August to prepare a number of manuscripts for the exhibition "In the beginning: bibles before the year 1000", due to open on 21 October in the Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Most of the manuscripts come from the largely fragmentary New Finds collection, discovered in a ruined room in a tower in the monastery in 1975, which has allowed individual separated gatherings or bifolia to be sent to the exhibition, including a single bifolium of the Codex Siniaticus. This has allowed the selection of leaves which do not have flaking pigment on them, one of the more serious problems to affect the manuscripts in the monastery. The project team has worked out how these items will be prepared for the exhibition, sewn in to thick, strong handmade paper covers and placed within acid-free card boxes lined with Plastazote and cushioned with blotting paper. To avoid risks to the dessicated fourth-century parchment, the Sinaiticus bifolium will be mounted on a flat board before it leaves the monastery, so that it need not be handled or flexed throughout its time away.

Once Andrew and Nicole have finished their work, it will be up to the Sackler/Freer conservators and technicians to maintain the desert RH levels (ca 20% RH) within the shipping and exhibition cases, and during the delicate moments at the beginning and the end of the exhibition when the items are transferred from one to the other (the separated leaves will be immediately vulnerable to differences in humidity). It is a complicated and expensive process.