Putting the Pieces Together With Genealogy

National Preservation Week has come to a close, and we at the studio have been inspired to leaf through our extensive archives of past projects. This particular work of preservation was completed late last year, and it was one that we just adored.

Initially, this client contacted my parent's bookbindery in Princeton, NJ—Smith-Shattuck Bookbinding—with an unfinished Microsoft Word file containing extensive research and information on her family's genealogy dating all the way back to New England in the 1600's! 

Our client wanted to preserve this rich history in bound leather copies, but only had a text-formatted Word document to work from.

Here, Cyndi Shattuck Archiving stepped in to assist. In addition to our scanning, preservation and photography services, we also offer creative design and direction for all our bound materials. 

We began by scanning the client's old family photos, documents and drawings, Next, we designed photo collages for each chapter of the book from the scans. We created an attractive visual layout, and helped bring the family's story to life in full color.

Finally, the printed pages were brought back to Smith-Shattuck Bookbinding to be professionally bound by hand with burgundy bonded leather, a gold ribbon bookmark, and gold stamped on the cover and spine.

Let us help you finish your next book project in MS Word or Adobe InDesign. We'll put the pieces of your book together after you put the pieces of your family tree together!

Preservation Adoration with National Preservation Week

Did you know that your photo albums, documents and family memories could be at risk of permanent damage? Not from a sudden tragedy like flood or a fire, but from seemingly innocuous packaging materials like acidic paper, acidic adhesives, old photo albums, or improper temperature control! 

Inaugurated in 2010 by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALA), National Preservation Week is geared towards raising awareness of how easily items decay, and why preservation is such a vital part of our humanity and history. 

This is a celebration of our most beloved artifacts and the people who work meticulously to ensure they remain safe.

In honor of the art of preservation and all of our colleagues, Cyndi Shattuck Photography & Archiving will share tips about our favorite archiving tools on Pinterest. We can’t get enough of these tools—like the finest-point glue pen we’ve ever used—and wholeheartedly recommend them for photo album preservation and safekeeping of your documents and collections. 

We hope you will follow our Pinterest board, blogs, Twitter feed and Facebook pages to learn some new tricks, and hopefully find these tools as indispensable as we do! 
Follow us for National Preservation Week and make sure to check back each day for new items! 

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Lowering Our Flag to Half-Mast

Today is one of those days in New York City where the sirens going north past our office on First Avenue sound different than they did a few days ago.

We first saw the news of the bombing in Boston yesterday, and realized that my cousin Janet was probably running the marathon or cheering her friends. She is a consummate marathon runner and supporter, and so the search for Janet's whereabouts began. We finally heard from Janet in the early evening—and although shaken, she was okay. Some good news and goose bumps; she had been a block away from the finish line at a bar with friends cheering on the runners. I received the email from her on my way downtown to Broadway and Maiden Lane in Manhattan, and my eyes welled with tears of relief in the back of a cab.

As I got out of the cab facing the new Freedom Towers under construction, I realized how eerily quiet the streets were. Not one person was talking on a cell phone. People walking together were not speaking to each other. Even the children were silent. It was the end of a work day and rush hour was pretty much silent. I stood on the corner to observe the palpable hyper-alertness we were all feeling, but especially in that area of the city.

It brought back strong memories for me. I worked at that time for The Wall Street Journal Online, where I was the Creative Director for the Daily News Graphics Department. My 12th story office windows in the World Financial Center faced the Statue of Liberty and my colleagues in the newsroom faced the World Trade Center. I was one of the lucky people fighting a head cold, and running late to work on September 11th. I remember crying for a year every time I looked at the revised skyline of Manhattan as I drove back in from our temporary offices in New Jersey. 

My heart goes out to the people of Boston who will now forever feel what we felt in New York City. They too, have unfairly experienced the deaths, the injuries, the fear, and most of all, the unwarranted hate of others. It is a painful sting that leaves a deep scar.

My husband is a native New Yorker, born and raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. On my father's side of my family, I am the fifth generation of our family to live on the Upper East Side. We are New Yorkers deep down in our bones with a passionate love of urban life, the arts, and freedom—fighters of equality for all races and genders. However, yesterday's events did, in fact, stop both me and my husband just a little bit. I took cabs instead of the subway. By 10:00 pm last night, watching the news, we were both in tears. 

I know that we are supposed to stand strong, "keep calm and carry on."  I think that sometimes we all move on too quickly from sadness. Then again, I also come from a long line of people who take time out to sit shiva and mourn when people die. We embrace our grief and surround ourselves with family and friends.

We know first hand that hatred never wins in the end. But for now, the people and the city of Boston are in our hearts. 

A Sticky Situation: Preserving Autographed Sport Memorabilia

One of my favorite projects from 2012 was a large collection of autographed trading cards from various sports players.

Joe Dimaggio, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Walt Frazier, Jim Plunkett, Andre LaCroix—this collection had it all. Cards autographed by both major and minor sports stars from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Unfortunately—like so many collections from the past—the cards were being stored in several of those sticky, crumbling old photo albums from the 1970s. You know the kind...

Everything surrounding the collection was acidic, and this was decreasing the value of the autographs more and more each day. From the harmful plastic page covers, sticky old glue to the crumbling cardboard—even the wood drawers they were being stored in—the very elements in place to protect this memorabilia were actually contributing to its decay.
Without archiving, this piece of sports history wouldn't last another 10 years.

As a solution, we de-acidified the autographs and used a heat treatment to remove cards that were stuck to the album (if they didn't just fall out on their own, that is).
This process stopped the further deterioration, and immediately caused the paper to brighten.

We then scanned each autograph in order to create a digital catalogue that our client could access through iPhoto (a program the client was already familiar with and could use easily at home). We also added keywords and carefully thought-out metatags so the images could easily be searched for within iPhoto.

The original cards were then placed in acid-free archival sleeves and sealed inside an archival buckram binder and matching slipcase.

We used clear archival photo corners to hold some of the smaller photos in place. All were mounted on or buffered with acid-free paper.

Finally, we created a beautiful hard cover coffee table book through www.blurb.com so that our client could reference both the images and the file names easily. This kind of archival book is not only an attractive memento, but can now be used for insurance purposes. It can even be kept in a safe as a backup to the collection. Our clients can also use these books as a reference to the file names in digital collection.

Archiving is a wonderful way to secure a piece of history and simultaneously have a lovely bound book to show to others. No more sticky photo albums!