Unfolding the Salem Register

I've just added something new to the Reference Links in the right hand column of this blog. The U.S. Dept. of Interior - National Parks Service has a series of publications on conservation titled Conserve O Gram. They provide full and printable text in PDF format to a large number of pamphlets detailing guidelines on the conservation of books and other printed documents, photographs, works of art, and other collectible items. They even have one on safe handling and display of radioactive minerals.

One which I hope to make immediate use of (I'm printing a copy of it right now) is titled: How to Flatten Folded Paper Documents. I've had these old newspaper issues of the Salem Register dating January 16, 1888 to October 21, 1889 in their original folded state for about 30 years. They came from a Sunday flea market that used to be held at the Revere Drive-In.

Published on Mondays & Thursdays at Essex Street, cor. of Central, Salem by C.W. Palfray and E. N. Walton.

Also worth visiting is Caring for Your Collections by the Library of Congress. Thanks to OldImprints.com for pointing the way.

And one more new addition to the Reference Links: LC Newspapers. Check out the historic newspapers available to read online in Chronicling America at the Library of Congress.

Gemstone Healing 1899

Article from: The New England Home Magazine, Volume VI, Number 8, 19 February 1899.

Check Out My Bead Blog

Now and again I have talked about beads here but from now on I will try to stick to "Collage and Life" like the title says. Although you have to admit that "Life" leaves a lot of room for digression!

I now have a new blog called Anita's Bead Blog where I will talk about beads and the jewelry I am designing with them. I may also indulge in occasional rock rambling which I can justify by the fact that I got into the whole "bead thing" through mineral collecting.

Minerals as Art

I have spent the better part of two days photographing fossils and other minerals specimens to add to my Toad Hollow Minerals site. I'd like to do a mineral collage with some of the concretions, they are so beautiful. Pictured above is a pair from Utah, cut and polished. The fossil teeth, would make powerful focals in amuletic necklaces. The coprolite takes the prize for ugly, but makes a thoughtful gift for boys of a certain age!

I'd like to share the work of a couple of painters who have make minerals the subject of their art. Michigan artist Susan M. Robinson's acrylic of this candle-lit cave features a nice azurite/malachite specimen. Her vanadenite looks like strange flora from another planet. I also like the work of Leroy de Barde. Entirely self-taught, he was recognized as a virtuoso while still in his 20's. His Minerals in Crystalization, watercolor and gouache (1813), exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1817 and is in the collection of the Louvre Museum, Paris.