Diamonds

The Historical Society is pleased to announce that thanks to a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, we’ll be preserving an important example of early Rhode Island film making.

In 1915 the Eastern Film Company of Providence created a feature crime drama called Diamonds. It is one of the many films that Eastern Film Company made between 1914 and 1917, but one of the few that survive and one of only 14 films owned by the RIHS that were created by Eastern.  The exact plot for the film is not clear due to the unstable condition of the film, but we do know it includes a scene at the Narragansett Pier, an iconic locale in southern Rhode Island.  In addition to providing documentary evidence of Rhode Island at the time, Diamonds is also important in the history of film making as an example of an early film created before California became the dominant location for the film industry.

Diamonds is part of the Gordon Collection at the RIHS, a large collection of nitrate films found in a warehouse in Providence in the 1940s and donated in the 1970s.  No documentation on any of these films survives, apart from what little was written about them in the contemporary press.

Diamonds currently exists only as a negative on cellulose nitrate film.  Nitrate was the first plastic used as the base for photographic negatives and is very unstable and quite flammable (see the video below).  Small rolls of film deemed unusable would sometimes be sold by film companies to kids who would light one end like a fuse and watch the film go up like flashpaper.  Nitrate film burns fast and bright.  The replacement of nitrate plastic with the more stable acetate plastic, aka “safety” film, happened slowly starting in 1908 with the production of the first safety film for still cameras.  The production and use of nitrate plastic for use in photography didn’t end completely until the 1960s.*.

In addition to this inherent flaw, Diamonds is also showing signs of decomposition, thanks to poor storage conditions earlier in its life. So for these reasons—and also in the hope of making the film more accessible—we’ll soon be working with Cinema Arts, a Pennsylvania film restorer to create preservation copies of the film**. We’ll also be creating a DVD copy to make the film easier to use for researchers, and we hope to screen a copy of the movie during an event next year.

Through a similar collaborative process, the Historical Society has already preserved a number of important early films, including My Lady of the Lilacs, an image from which appears below.

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*National Park Service. Museum Handbook, Part I, Appendix M, Management of Cellulose Nitrate and Cellulose Ester Film, 1999. http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/MHI/AppendM.pdf

** Tech Specs: One 35mm fine grain master(wet gate from original nitrate negative), one 35mm duplicate negative, one 35mm black and white projection print, and one Beta SP video master.

Uncovering Hidden Collections: a Look at the RIHS Graphics Collection Survey Project

By Jim DaMico, Graphics Project Archivist

On January 16, 2007, the RIHS Library embarked on a systematic survey of the entire collection of graphic materials held by the Society. This collection includes visual materials ranging from 17^th century maps to 1910’s picture postcards to 1970’s television footage. Not surprisingly, photographic prints and negatives make up the majority of the collection surveyed so far. The primary reason for this mammoth undertaking is to make accessible, through the library’s online public access catalog NETOP, the rich visual and auditory resources that have been collected by the Society since 1822.

The first step to making any collection accessible is to know what it contains. The Project Archivist pulls each box from the shelf, opens the box and does a visual inspection of the overall material. This allows the archivist to determine what preservation steps can be taken at this initial stage, such as re-housing items using archivally sound storage. The next step is to create a minimal, core catalog record of descriptive information which is then entered into a database.

The catalog record includes the title, creator, date, description, donor and preservation notes. We also record the quantity of new storage material needed to protect the items adequately.  The importance of knowing, for example, that we need 82,000 new sleeves is useful for determining a yearly budget for supplies or for applying for small preservation grants that provide for archival supplies. This survey and collecting the data is also important to set preservation and conservation priorities and determine disaster response priorities.

Much like other cultural institutions across the United States, space is at a premium in the library building. A concerted effort has been made to maximize shelf space by storing like-sized boxes together and consolidating where possible.

To date, a total of 5,668 collections containing 154,730 individual items and occupying 619 linear feet have been examined. We have estimated that the data collected so far will result in a 30% increase to the graphics holdings available through our online catalog, NETOP. When complete, this survey will represent a major strategic advancement for the Society’s collection management efforts.

An example of a before and after processing a large photograph collection:

BEFORE

AFTER