As in an old factory, Giada and Irene work face to face slowly, with precision, with their hands. In the summer a miracle happened to the Historical Archives of Florence and, on the first floor, the internal restoration laboratory, no longer active since 2019, when the last of 9 restorers retired – many were in the days of gold, more or less up to 200o, because then it had been a continuous dripping.
The director Sabina Magrini is happy because, after presenting the credentials of “his” laboratory to the General Management of Mibac, he “requested and obtained the hiring, through Ales, of two people who can now work on the conservation and recovery of our documents from the inside with a method and a constancy that we could not afford for years. For the moment it is a one-year contract, but I hope it will be reconfirmed in both cases ». Chiara Capuccini, at the helm of the new team, did more, she not only organized the work, but began to write a text in which she tells the story of the restoration laboratory of the Florentine archive, a glorious story, which began when she was still in Uffizi, and then «who knows – he tells us – maybe even make an exhibition of it». A project still to come because now we have to work with hands, paper and glue.
Giada, whose surname is Genua, studied in Palermo where she was born, and has worked not only in her city but also in France, she is working on an original 15th century binding: «We need to intervene on small tears – he says showing us his workstation – and to restore some leather laces in the buckles. Then I will make a restoration sheet in which I will explain the state in which I found the document and the interventions made, all reversible “. In fact, dikat number one is always the same: do not juxtapose materials that cannot be eliminated without creating damage. In this case Giada is working with very thin sheets of Japanese paper and a glue that does not create chemical alterations on the parchment. “And also in the buckle laces I will make a recognizable and eliminable intervention”.
Irene Zanella, who trained at the European School of Book Conservation in Spoleto and worked in many Italian libraries, in Egypt, Mauritania and Kurdistan, is intervening “to restore the legibility of some plants from the mid-70s coming from the Prefecture of Florence . These are – he explains – documents relating to the verification of the static conditions of some buildings ». He shows his work: he has to divide some pages that have glued together and, to do this, he adds: “I proceed with a thin blade after having soaked the two adherent parts with water with the aid of a very thin brush”. Only later will it intervene in the restoration, recognizable and revocable, of any missing parts, always using Japanese paper.
If this is the work in progress that we find at the time of our visit to the laboratory in the programming coordinated by Chiara Cappuccini, there is much more: «With the help of the officials who follow the loans and are in contact with the needs of the more than 70 kilometers of documents kept in the archives – explains – we are planning interventions aimed at killing any pests (in this case we proceed by closing the materials in closed rooms for 4 weeks where oxygen is eliminated and nitrogen is added, ed.) and above all a preventive work ». It involves dusting entire areas of the Archive to protect the materials from dust and at the same time assess their state of conservation, proceeding with their restoration where necessary. An immense and essential work for a place that has preserved the historical memory of Florence since the eighth century. Which preserves the precious Medici and Lorraine archives – currently being digitized – and then the diplomatic funds, those that tell the history of the guilds and not least the minimal history, the one that concerns each Florentine.
It is again the director Sabina Magrini who takes the floor at this point: «Among the funds whose consultation is most in demand, and which is why I would like to digitize as soon as possible – tells – there is that of the Civil Status. The requests we receive from the family search are more and more frequent, the portal consulted by those who want information on their family trees. These are researches that do not arise from mere curiosity, on the contrary in most cases they come from emigrants, many in South America, who need to show their Italian origin to apply for citizenships with which it is easier to travel but above all to be welcomed in other countries. . Let me give you an example: the American Green Card is more easily issued to those with Italian citizenship ». All this, however, goes hand in hand with the possibility of maintaining and making available the documents requested by all of us. The Ministry is warned. A year of restorers is not enough.
9 October 2021 | 08:50
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