Hi again. I kind of forgot about this... sorry! Actually, in all honesty, it's been a combination of forgetting and me reformatting my computer because it had viruses. Again. Ugh.
Anyway, that's all over with and my baby's been running just fine.
I guess we should start at the beginning of my list, my internship.
I love it. Absolutely love it. I'm currently volunteering at the Winterthur Estate Museum and Gardens, and every day I'm there just flies by. I work with one other girl, also named Elizabeth, and we are surveying the condition of the lacquer coating on the some 4,000 silver pieces. A brief history: Winterthur was Henry Francis du Pont's home, he was an avid collector of Americana as well as an excellent gardener. The gardens at Winterthur are comparable to those of Longwood Gardens, in fact, some people prefer Winterthur's set up. Either way, he converted his country estate into a museum in 1951, and over the years, continued to donate furniture and objects to it. Winterthur is a museum that strives to educate the public about American decorative arts and is one of a few unique museums that is more or less entirely made up of period rooms. I personally think it is freaking fantastic. 9 floors, 175 rooms, all jammed with stuff.
What I am personally doing is going through each room, finding the silver objects off of a list, examining them, writing that information into Excel, finding any other information from the masses of files in the conservation office, and looking for trends, percentages, and types of damage so the museum can put together a grant to treat the silver. Silver is lacquered in museums because continual polishing actually removes a layer of silver and can, over time, wear down engravings, details, and, if it is a plated piece, can wear down to show the base metal. The original mass lacquering was in 1983-1987, and another set was done in 1998 when the lighting in the museum was redone. The majority of what we have seen were coated in that 1983-87 period, and it is amazing how well the lacquer has held up considering the amount of time it has been on. We ran into one that was coated in 1978, which is just mind boggling.
I have free access to the entire museum, as well as permission to pick up and look at any piece that I want. I have a badge that opens doors that aren't available to the public and we have the freedom to wander around wherever we want. It's awesome. The only thing that could make this any better is if they paid me. But I like it enough for it to not really be a problem just yet.
Backtracking a little bit, painting my room was a bitch and a half. We started at 7:45, painted the walls until 12:30, ate lunch, did the second coat, finished at 2:30, waited until 6:30 to start the trim, which I more or less finished up around 1:15 am. A few touchups the next day, and then I could move some furniture. However, I don't really like the set up I have right now, I think I'm going to have to switch a few things around if I'm going to be able to walk comfortably around. It's a little awkward to maneuver.
Lastly, I've gotten into the habit of writing letters, mostly because I know how much I hate it when everything in the mail is just bills and crappy coupons. I prefer to have something to look forward to, like a little surprise. I've written a few to Matt, and I'd like to expand that out to other people. Maybe tack on my grandparents, and roomates. And whoever really wants to have a letter.
That's all for now!
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