Kate Furbish's Maine Flora Conserving a state treasure

Since 1980, Special Collections & Archives has been working to conserve Kate Furbish's Maine Flora. Furbish, an accomplished botanist and artist, traveled the state of Maine from 1870-1908 seeking rare plants and specimens that she preserved in her herbarium and depicted in her botanical portraits, watercolor and graphite images that are both stunningly beautiful and scientifically accurate. The fourteen volumes of Maine Flora depict 1,369 plant specimens and remain today, more than 100 years after their creation, the most comprehensive visual record of Maine's flowering plants.

Because Furbish used animal-based glue to assemble the work and her pigments are water soluble, the conservation of the volumes is exceedingly complex and expensive. To date, the Library has conserved five of the fourteen volumes. The below images depict the conservation treatment of the most recently conserved album, volume 9, which Furbish considered to contain her most beautiful works, the evergreens. Special thanks to Northeast Document Conservation Center, which completed the work over a 12-month period, and to the donors who generously supported the conservation of volume 9: Michael Callewaert (Bowdoin Class of 1984) and his wife, Claire, and Mark Silverstein (Bowdoin Class of 1973) and his wife, Dory.

Full treatment was complex and multifaceted. Every drawing had to be removed from its acidic support, the verso was then digitized revealing Furbish's previously hidden notes, a new support created, linen hinges added, and Furbish's original labels then reapplied. The book's spine was also repaired, allowing the volume to again be safely used by patrons in Special Collections & Archives reading room. All the work was accomplished without disturbing the original look and feel of the volume.