Over the last two weeks I have devoted a bit of time to rehousing 51 tintype portraits of Massachusetts legislators from the 1860s. Details about this project can be found in a previous post. Above are three portraits that struck me, all of unidentified legislators.
I have included a picture here of the individual four-flap enclosure I made for each tintype along with a quarter to show scale. Of the fifty-one portraits, all but one are one inch by three-quarters of an inch. The one outlier was a portrait that measures approximately one-an-a-half-inches by one-and-a-half-inches. The standard size allowed me to create the four-flaps in an assembly line fashion, cutting all 50 inside flaps at once, then all the outside flaps, thenfolding and gluing all at once.
The four-flaps before processing.
A labeled four-flap with the outer envelope and tintype.
The processed enclosures in the new box, including a spacer to provide support and keep the envelopes upright.
The rehoused tintypes ready to be returned to the shelf.
- Lacy Crews, Preservation Librarian
