Peter Waters
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Peter Godfrey Waters (19 May 1930 – 26 June 2003), a former Conservation Officer at the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
in Washington, D.C., United States, worked in the areas of disaster recovery and preparedness, and the salvage of water-damaged paper goods. His published works, specifically ''Procedures for Salvage of Water Damaged Library Materials'', are considered the standard for this area of conservation.


Biography

Born in 1930 in
Woking Woking ( ) is a town and borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in northwest Surrey, England, around from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as ''Wochinges'' and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settlement o ...
, Surrey, England, Peter Waters began his formal education in 1945 at the Guildford College of Art, Surrey, where he studied
bookbinding Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, b ...
under the instruction of William Matthews. He then went on to study at the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...
in 1949 and eventually teach at the
Farnham School of Art Farnham ( /ˈfɑːnəm/) is a market town and civil parish in Surrey, England, around southwest of London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, close to the county border with Hampshire. The town is on the north branch of the River Wey, a tribu ...
Metzger, Manuela (2003
Peter Waters Obituary
''Book Arts''. Accessed on 1 June 2007.
and the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...
. While at the Royal College of Art, Waters became a close friend and associate of his tutor Roger Powell, a well known preservationist and bookbinder whose work includes the 1953 restoration of
The Book of Kells The Book of Kells ( la, Codex Cenannensis; ga, Leabhar Cheanannais; Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. 8 sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the Gospel, four Gospels ...
. At the RCA, Waters also met his future wife, Sheila, who was soon to become one of the foremost calligraphers and map designers in the world. In 1957, Waters and Powell formed a professional partnership in book binding and conservation at the bindery in
Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...
. They produced many designer bindings for museums and collectors, often aided by Sheila, who made many drawings and designs for stamping engravings. Powell and Waters were called upon to restore many rare books, including The
Book of Durrow The Book of Durrow is an illuminated manuscript dated to c. 700 that consists of text from the four Gospels gospel books, written in an Irish adaption of Vulgate Latin, and illustrated in the Insular script style.Moss (2014), p. 229 Its origin a ...
, the Books of Dimma and Armagh, and the
Lichfield Gospels The Lichfield Gospels (recently more often referred to as the St Chad Gospels, but also known as the Book of Chad, the Gospels of St Chad, the St Teilo Gospels, the Llandeilo Gospels, and variations on these) is an 8th-century Insular Gospel ...
. Waters eventually took over Powell's position at the Royal College of Art and remained there until he and his family moved to the United States in 1971. A DVD entitled ''Peter Waters, Master Bookbinder'' has been produced featuring his early bindings from student days to the mid-1960s, prior to the
Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
flood. In 1971, Waters was appointed the Conservation Officer and Chief of the Conservation Division at the United States
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
in Washington, D.C. Under Waters' supervision, a new conservation lab was created so as to allow for the restoration of many of the items found in the Library of Congress's huge collection of library materials, artefacts and cultural archives. Waters remained at the Library of Congress until 1995 when he retired, although he remained an active member of the conservation community and served on the National Archives Preservation Committee and was a fellow of the International Institute for Conservation and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Waters died on 26 June 2003, of
mesothelioma Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that develops from the thin layer of tissue that covers many of the internal organs (known as the mesothelium). The most common area affected is the lining of the lungs and chest wall. Less commonly the lining ...
-related heart failure. His exposure to
asbestos Asbestos () is a naturally occurring fibrous silicate mineral. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous crystals, each fibre being composed of many microscopic "fibrils" that can be released into the atmosphere b ...
dust while using bookbinding tools in the mid-1900s is responsible for his development of this form of cancer.Andyshak, Ashley (2006)
Master of her craft
''Gettysburg Companion'' April/May 2006 Vol 3 No. 2. Accessed on 29 January 2012.


Significance to preservation

From the beginning of his conservation career, Peter Waters' work was both ground-breaking and sought after by libraries all over the world. Dealing primarily with disaster preparedness, Waters was instrumental in developing recovery plans for large natural disasters affecting libraries and archives, most notably "Procedures for Salvage of Water Damaged Library Materials",1 which was originally published in 1975 and revised in 1993. Of all of Waters' conservation efforts, his work with the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze after the Arno River Flood in Florence, Italy, in November 1966, and the Library of Congress as Conservation Officer are the most well known.


Arno River Flood, 1966

In the aftermath of the Arno River Flood, thousands of books housed in the
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze The National Central Library of Florence ( it, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, BNCF) is a public national library in Florence, the largest in Italy and one of the most important in Europe, one of the two central libraries of Italy, alon ...
(BNCF) were left damaged by water, dirt and oil. Because of its location, the BNCF experienced some of the worst damage in Florence and materials were literally shovelled into trucks to be dried out in tobacco kilns before being returned to the BNCF for further preservation.4 Of the collections, the Magliabechiana and Palatina were among the more valuable.5 Waters led a preservation effort, with the support of the Council on Library Resources and James Lewis of Imperial College, London, to preserve the BNCF's materials that included a multi-phase restoration effort to clean, dry and re-bind some of the library's valuable and rare books. Waters was also in charge of training and managing over 120 volunteers, referred to as "mud angels", during the duration of his stay, and he designed all the work stations which were used by the conservation staff over many years following the flood.2


Library of Congress

Appointed the Conservation Officer and Chief of the Conservation Division at the Library of Congress in 1971, Waters began a long career aiding the United States' largest library in its conservation efforts and has been dubbed the "father of American Library Conservation".7 Within a few years of his placement, Waters had developed new conservation programs including the point system, "whereby the Library's custodial divisions were assigned a budget of treatment hours in a given year, which were reasonably committed through ongoing liaison with senior conservators on his staff2", and the popular "phased preservation" technique. Hailed as the most effective and non-invasive treatment of large collections of deteriorating materials, phased preservation "emphasizes actions that have the greatest impact on the preservation of collections as a whole, rather than concentrating on treating individual items and includes surveys to establish priorities, disaster planning, environmental controls, and holdings maintenance."6 Waters is also credited with inspiring his son Michael Waters and daughter-in-law Carmen Waters to develop computerised box-making machinery and software to produce archival custom boxes

Peter and Sheila Waters' other sons are Chris Waters, owner of Multimedia solutions, Maryland: and Julian Waters (calligrapher), Julian Waters, who was also protégé of the type designer
Hermann Zapf Hermann Zapf (; 8 November 1918 – 4 June 2015) was a German type designer and calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married to the calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Typefaces he designed include Pa ...
.2


See also

* Preservation: Library and Archival Science *
Library and Information Science Library and information science(s) or studies (LIS) is an interdisciplinary field of study that deals generally with organization, access, collection, and protection/regulation of information, whether in physical (e.g. art, legal proceedings, e ...
*
Archival science Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and curating archives, which are collections of documents, recordings and data storage devices. To build and curate an archive, one must acquire and evaluate recorded m ...
*
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze The National Central Library of Florence ( it, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, BNCF) is a public national library in Florence, the largest in Italy and one of the most important in Europe, one of the two central libraries of Italy, alon ...
*
1966 Flood of the Arno River The 1966 flood of the Arno ( it, Alluvione di Firenze del 4 novembre 1966) in Florence killed 101 people and damaged or destroyed millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. It is considered the worst flood in the city's history since 1557. Wi ...
*
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...


References


Sources

* 4Clarkson, Christopher. (2003) "The Florence Flood of November 1966 & its aftermath". Accessed on 8 April 2014

* 5Metelli, Piero. (2007) "History, Foundation and Function". Accessed on 12 June 2007

* 6 Pearce-Moses, Richard. A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology. Vol. 2. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005. * 7"Caring for America's Library." The Library of Congress: Preservation. 18 October 2006. The Library of Congress. Accessed on 12 June 2007


External links


CoOl Disaster Preparedness and Response

Book Arts Web

Library of Congress: Preservation

Regional Alliance for Preservation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Waters, Peter 1930 births 2003 deaths People from Woking Academics of the Royal College of Art Bookbinders British librarians