Caring for industrial collections, part 4: dynamic reflections on a year’s work at Smail’s

The objective of preventive conservation is to minimise degradation from dust, pests, light, and fluctuating or high humidity, which all can contribute to material decay. In heritage settings, limiting handling or touching also helps us protect our collections and interiors in the long term. Therefore, it might at first seem counter-intuitive that conservation practices are undertaken slightly differently at Smail’s.

Robert Smail’s Printing Works, as well as being an important part of Scotland’s industrial heritage, still operates as a letterpress printers, with working collections within its authentic spaces. We have retained operator knowledge and skills for the maintenance, repair and operation of the machinery, as well as the artistry of typesetting, through the Printer, Compositor and Assistant Printer roles as well as our volunteer with printing experience. The printing presses and traditional typesetting tools are routinely used for print making for orders, workshops and demonstrations on property tours. This active approach increases the benefit for the machines’ preservation since it retains the craft and benefits the visitors’ accessibility, experience and understanding of print heritage.

A moving or dynamic object, whether in a historic house, castle or industrial property at the Trust, relies on its operator – and in some cases external specialists or conservators – for maintenance and repair through sympathetic replacement of moving components, as highlighted in the previous blogs in this series. We ensure that the Trust’s dynamic collections are monitored, and staff are trained or have the relevant heritage craft skills to maintain dynamic objects’ functionality. Knowing when something isn’t working correctly and when further advice from external experts is required is as important and is part of the objects’ ongoing care.

At Smail’s, there is still the same Trust-wide focus in protecting working collections from light damage and pests of concern, and how fluctuating or unsuitable environments, such as temperatures, humidity, dust and pollutants, can all contribute to material embrittlement, which can ultimately impede functionality. We’ve been able to build on previous Trust conservators’ endeavours, especially against pest outbreaks, notably woodworm in the wooden drawers that the typeset is housed in. We’ve been using a legacy of environmental data and reporting to understand the property’s unique preservation needs for the building, interior and mixed media collections.

Alice has taken on the IPM (Integrated Pest Management) programme, which doesn’t look specifically to catch pests but rather gives us an idea of what insects of concern might be present at the property through findings on blunder traps placed strategically in rooms. This is particularly important as, although much of the collection in the property is metal, there is also a huge amount of organic material such as paper and archives in the collection, some of which dates back to the shop’s beginnings in the 1860s. Paper materials are particularly vulnerable to damage from several notable kinds of pests, including (the aptly named) booklouse and silverfish. Monitoring pest activity is the best way to understand what threats these seemingly innocuous insects can do to collections if left unchecked.

Pest activity is greatly affected by environments that support their specific lifecycle. An IPM programme is a useful tool, but understanding temperature and humidity levels – and how managing them can prevent pest activity – can be equally enlightening. While we had existing loggers, that measured both temperature and humidity as well as some specifically for light, Alice added to and reconfigured their distribution to make sure that there was at least one logger in every room with collections. She was taught how to calibrate and download the loggers to keep abreast of the conditions in the spaces. Analysing the information, Alice put recommendations into a report so that we can work towards making incremental improvements.

Turning our attention to the most vulnerable collections in the property, we placed a logger inside one of the bespoke storage boxes housing the Guardbooks (books that hold copies of every job produced by the printworks since it opened in 1866). Alice found that fluctuations in relative humidity were less pronounced inside the box. This is important as it shows the books themselves are more protected from environmental changes in the space, and how effective passive measures (those that don’t require power or intervention to function, like draught excluders and boxes) can be in controlling relative humidity. This all aligns to more sustainable conservation practices.

Audits of windows and light levels in the space also identified areas that we can focus on improving, for instance where ultraviolet blocking film could be added or replaced. Alice carried out an audit of the light in selected areas so she could identify where light-sensitive materials may be most at risk from prolonged, accumulative light damage. She was able to suggest changes to prevent this damage, eg moving objects out of direct sunlight or adding something to block the worst of the light in a particular area.

Having our Bute Intern focusing on Smail’s has allowed for her to embed her knowledge of preventive practices and understand the challenges of dynamic objects there and at other properties in the Trust. Thanks to the Bute Memorial Fund, a fund set up by the Trust in 1993 on the death of John Crichton-Stuart, 6th Marquess of Bute, the 2024/2025 Bute Icon Intern will take up the mantle and continue the monitoring at Robert Smail’s Printing Works, so the dynamic, working collections can continue to provide experiences that evoke the sense of being fully immersed in the past.