As custodians, we exhibit and display artefacts, making the stories available that we think are currently relevant, and unless the display is very temporary, the books and manuscripts are almost always shown in a display case.
The solidity of a display case can diminish or amplify viewers’ access to particular stories within a volume, controlling their volume may determine how hard or softly they fall in the minds of the audience. Stories we choose to tell, we make obvious through our display. They become louder; pass more easily through the glass and therefore have more impact on a greater number or viewers. Quiet ancillary details, indistinct or personal stories, more likely, fall in fewer minds. Book collection cataloguing projects are helping to uncover volumes with incredible stories, turning the seemingly impenetrable walls of books into history that can enlighten, entertain and connect people through relevant stories with characters and events from the past.
My journey, moving my work from unseen to unleashed, started with an innocuous email from the National Trust requesting a guard to protect volumes put on open display on the Library table at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk. The guard should enable the house teams to set up open book displays in invigilated rooms, throughout the house, that avoided the need for display cases where they were neither available or desirable, enabling the teams to tell some of the stories in their collections quickly, easily, safely and beautifully.
The aim was to unleash the power of the artefact. To enable a viewer experience as close to open display as possible, maximising the impact of the exhibits on the viewers and enabling the magic to happen: everyday magic for us as professionals, but not for the viewer. The closeness of the object, the clarity of the visual experience and sharing of the same physical space as the object can open minds to consider that they may be standing where the author stood, or simply enjoy the trust engendered by being allowed and enabled to get this close to this object: potentially each and every one of these is a truly transformative experience.
At the same time in my studio for conservation, was a collection treasure, the only extant account book of the celebrity landscape gardener Capability Brown, which had resided in private ownership since the gardener’s death until its donation to the RHS.
I worked on the two seemingly unconnected projects simultaneously as they provided a welcome counterpoint to each other: the result was the Book Shelter, a revolution in display resulting from the collaboration between myself, National Trust house stewards and conservation consultants including Chris Calnan and Caroline Bendix.
I initially thought the “guard project”; how could I best maximise the viewing experience in order to communicate the wonder of the object to the causal viewer, in those first moments of engagement?, would be a quick and simple antidote to the complexities of the
conservation project, which, with all its details and nuances, was inward-looking and focused on the past: what approach would best retain as much of Capability Brown as possible?
Working on Brown’s account book prompted in me one of the most profound experiences that I have ever had; as though I had been handed the un-mediated manuscript by the author himself, with all its clues and stories for me to retain and convey. The juxtaposition of both projects produced a sensation of looking into a camera whilst turning the lens from wide angle to macro. Side by side, these projects kaleidoscoped into a strange sensation, and as the projects progressed, they began to merge, providing both evidence and purpose for each other.
The result of this journey was the Book Shelter, which enables us as custodians to:
- Tell amazing stories to selected audiences through the protected display of rare or vulnerable material, otherwise unsuitable for any length of open display
- Enable a viewing experience as close to open display as possible
- Enable objects to have their greatest possible impact whilst remaining protected
- Multi-layered story telling through location-based displays
- Provide great visual clarity and all-round object visibility
- Protect books, manuscripts, documents, albums and other artefacts on open display, in invigilated rooms from dust, handling and accidental damage
- Ensure both the availability and protection of artefacts required to be available for special events
Now developed, trialled and in production, the house team at Chartwell, the family home of Sir Winston Churchill, is using the Book Shelter to show a continuously changing display of the inscriptions contained within their large collection of octavo sized books, given to Churchill by colleagues, guests and foreign dignitaries with personal inscriptions written on the front fly leaf by the giver.
Instead of keeping the books under lock and key or limiting their function to wallpaper, the Book Shelter has enabled the team to create brief but intimate glimpses into moments experienced by Churchill and his family. The shelter does not create an enclosed space, provides no buffer against poor or fluctuating environmental conditions but enables the viewer intimate visual interaction with the artefact and the Churchill family at appropriate locations within the house.
The custodian can choose a distinct and alternative experience for the viewer, enabling, allowing, and even encouraging close physical proximity between viewer and object. If you want your audience to do something (visit, donate, volunteer…), they need to feel the urge to do so, and that urge is created by feelings, not thoughts. We all “think” we would like to do lots of things - it is only when we “feel” the need, that we actually do it. As custodians, in order to have a real impact, we must enable the audience to feel, not just think. As a result of my personal journey to solve the simultaneous equation of conserving the details and potential stories present in the Capability Brown artefact, and the request to somehow guard objects whilst improving their accessibility and the ability to show their stories; the Book Shelter can help us do that. By making this journey and maximising the number and type of stories viewers can hear, feel and take away with them, we increase the chances of our artefacts, in the fertile soil of our viewers’ minds translating unseen feelings to actions unleashed.
This article is adapted from Bridget Mitchell’s original presentation., January 2020
