The Elizabeth Nourse sketchbooks that have been on display in Gallery 213 are going back into storage.  While inserting new interleaving between the pages to help keep the drawing media from transferring to adjacent pages, conservation intern Caitlin Cummane came across this study of squash and melon vines. The watercolor drawing is in Nourse’s sketchbook from her travels in France in 1888.  The white cotton paper we chose to place between the pages has a smooth surface and contains zeolites, or micro-porous minerals.  The zeolites will help preserve the drawings, by absorbing both acids from the sketchbook and airborne pollutants, for many more years to come.

Image Credit: Elizabeth Nourse, Sketchbook 5, 1888, watercolor and pencil on paper, gift of the Mercantile Library, Cincinnati, through the generosity of the Niehoff Family, 14/15.29:7,