Alex Brooks Conservation

08/05/2022

For everyone asking about how to help:
And thank you so much for everyone who’s already helped.

Thank you to all who have volunteered your time and energy this past week. We could not have emptied the archive so quickly and prepped the materials for restoration without you. In the coming weeks and months, we will need more hands to help with this process!

Please sign up at appalshop.org/volunteer and let us know if you're willing and able to help us through the long road ahead.

💚🙏

📸 Roger May

07/28/2015

The Smithsonian used Kickstarter to raise $500,000 to conserve Neil Armstrong's spacesuit. Much of this money won't really go to physical conservation (it will also be used for outreach, education, publicity - arguably aspects of conservation), and they're shooting for even more - the new goal is $700,000. The Smithsonian's annual budget is 851 million, so it's a small amount for such a large institution. And most of the kickstarter funds came from donations of $100 or less.

I have mixed emotions about the scheme, but it's still a cool and interesting project. And I'm glad they're taking care of our young nation's cultural heritage.

Millions of Americans gathered around small black and white television sets in the hot July of 1969, to watch Neil Armstrong step off the Apollo 11 spacecraft..

05/13/2015

This saturday morning I'll be teaching my last class of the year for the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning - Making Hardbound Journals!!! 10am - 1pm in my new studio on North Limestone. There's only one spot left. Don't you want to make a journal? Who's the lucky one?

Call the Carnegie Center at (859) 254-4175 or click here:
http://carnegiecenterlex.org/adult-class/bookmaking-hardcover-journals/?class-name=Bookmaking:%20Hardcover%20Journals&class-price=$55

04/01/2015

Hello Everyone:
On Saturday April 11th I'll be teaching a non-adhesive bookbinding class at my new workshop, in collaboration with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. This is a perfect opportunity to learn some basic bookbinding skills, and is good for all beginners or someone with a little experience. And the price is super-low! We still have a few spaces, but they're filling up fast - only a week left to register. Get it.

With Alex Brooks. We will learn simple bookbinding techniques including a simple single signature pamphlet stitch, …

03/14/2015

Really amazing conservation story from Japan's 2011 Tsunami

When Japan was devastated by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, countless families lost precious photos in their homes that washed away. In respons

01/15/2015

Very cool story about conserving and reconstructing a Civil War era navy coat. The most interesting part to me? It cost more then $20,000 to conserve the remains of this jacket - but it's the only one of it's kind that has survived - locked underwater for 150 years in the gun turret from the US warship monitor.... super cool.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-uss-monitor-20150111-story.html

 More than 150 years after it sank off Cape Hatteras inside the warship Monitor, a woolen coat discarded by a Union sailor trying to escape the doomed Civil War ironclad is approaching another milestone.

12/22/2014

A recent lithograph, washed, bleached, and repaired in the studio.

08/22/2014

A large rock of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, a rare group of pigments from Japan, fluorescent Day-Glow pigments: these are just some of the treasures housed in the long row of cabinets in the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. The cabinets, situated within t…

08/17/2014

a nice took at lapis lazuli
via Kristine Rose

Just look at that - a beautiful precious Blue, its subtle variety of shades and striations, shot through with streaks of calcite and glittering iron pyrites, describing some imaginary landscape. It...

05/27/2014

26-50 of 240 Making one box can be fun, challenging, boring, rewarding, frustrating; provoking any a large range of possible emotions and thoughts. But making 240 boxes can only be described as a...

05/27/2014

A short video about making boxes for a collection of special edition hardbound books by poet Nikky Finney. For details - http://nikkyfinney.net/books.html

05/13/2014

With Wendy Currier Zumwalt. Come start an altered book, a used hardback book that is repurposed …