A day with Mamta at IGNCA

Last month I visited Delhi to meet one of my  closest blogger friend Glenda from Hawaii. She along with her husband David was on a week trip to India. We finally met and it was a dream come true. Read more on our dinner-meeting here - India: A friendship that transcends all boundaries. 

Though meeting Glenda and David was the highlight of my  Delhi visit, I also had and opportunity to visit various interesting places. IGNCA is one of them  where my younger sister Mamta works as a senior research fellow at conservation unit.

 As a centre for research, academic pursuit and dissemination in the field of arts IGNCA ( Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts) was established in 1987 as an autonomous institution under the Ministry Of Culture India.The Arts' encompassa wide range of subjects - from archaeology and
anthropology to the visual and performing arts, enveloping them in a complementary and non-demarcated vision. (info courtesy- IGNCA).

As we entered the building she showed me this interseting piece  of Australian Aboriginal rock art. Aboriginal rock art has been around for a long period of time.Traditionaly it is composed of organic colours and materials, but modern artists often use synthetic paints when creating aboriginal styles.

 Mamta took me to her lab where she and other senior reaearchers perform various conservation and preservation activities. I was greeted by her very nice and friendly colleague Nuruddin. Later he explained and demonstrated different process involved in preserving rare, old, valuable books.

Village Poems written by Dr. Manmohan Singh

Nuruddin showed me few books on which he is working at present. The above book titled Village Poem was surprising to me, all because it is written by non other than our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. Had no idea that he writes poetry . This book is from personal collection of Kapila Vatsayayan a leading Indian scholar of classical Indian dance and Indian art and architecture. She  donated her collection to the centre library. Kapila  was the founder-director of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (Indira Kalakendra) in Delhi.

 The books looks brittle and hence is in need of repair and restoration.

The thin transparent tissue sheet you see above is called Japanese tissue. It is used in the conservation of books and manuscripts. It is a thin, strong handmade  paper made from vegetable fibers. The tissue comes in varying thicknesses and colors, and is used for a variety of mending tasks, including repairing tears, mending book hinges, and reinforcing the folds of signatures. 

 A Mylar sheet ( a heat resistant plastic sheet) is placed on a glass top .

Japanese tissue in a color close to that of the paper to be repaired is chosen. A strip of tissue is torn away from the main sheet using a water tear. This is done by wetting the paper along the area to be torn and then pulling sideways so as to have feathered edges. The fibers in these feathered edges  allow the tissue to have a firmer hold on the mended paper and also to blend in with it once dried.

 This is how the page looks once dried.

 Heavy felt sheets are used to press the treated papers.

They showed me one book cover which is recently mended.

A closer look.

Now the binding process .

The binding frame.

Enjoyed watching the process of book binding.

Another interseting book in line.

Amrita Shergil's book .

 

An original hand painted movie poster . Later I visited their library which was awesome and her colleagues were so kind to show and explain me the process of scanning manuscripts, books and documents and also the way books are microfilmed . All that and more in my next post.