Cold comfort: Flood recovery project of the Eduardo Paolozzi Archive

Abstract

The store of the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), temporarily housing the c. 55,000 paper‐based items of the Sir Eduardo Paolozzi Archive, was inundated with floodwater in April 2000. While most were stored on the mezzanine floor, about 8000 items on the ground floor became submerged. The NGS Disaster Plan, which proved very robust, was put into operation as soon as the alarm was triggered. The paper items, comprising mostly twentieth‐century uncoated and coated paper‐based objects, both cased and unbound, made with a wide range of media, including bodycolour, inks and photographs, and with adhesives, remained saturated in muddy water for approximately 60 hours. To prevent further damage, fast but careful recovery was needed to freeze items while maintaining the physical relationships of this uncatalogued material. With the help of the National Museum of Scotland (NMS), freezing gave time for research and experimentation into the optimum drying method for the very mixed material. Vacuum freeze‐drying was selected in preference to air‐drying or the use of a vacuum packing machine. It gave very good results: items largely separated well, there was virtually no planar distortion, mud deposits could be brushed off, and only minor problems arose from the fact that it had not been possible to prepare the items for initial freezing.