Darwin at Spaarnestad

Spaarnestad Photo is known for its photos. It has a massive amount of them, they are a foundation and they sell their high resolution images in order to maintain and preserve their collection. Making a profit means for Spaarnestad that they have been able all year to put photos in protective coverings, that they maintained the right atmosphere needed for the preservation of their collection and, that they were able to continue the digitisation effort of their collection.

When I visited Spaarnestad, we talked about our restoration effort and one particular picture peeked their interest; it is this picture of an elderly Charles Darwin digitally restored by Durova from a scan from the Library of Congress. It was of interest because Spaarnestad has it in its archive as well.

As this material is firmly in the public domain, I indicated that it would be fine for Spaarnestad to use this picture as they see fit. This was repeated in a recent conversation and we were told that there should be at least ten lovingly restored pictures of material that is in their collection before this starts to make sense. With at least nine more high resolution scans of pictures that are relevant, that look good and that need some work we can make this happen. With a bit of luck we will get these in a weeks time...

Adam Cuerden who is a restorationist specialising on graphics heard about this, and indicated his willingness to pitch in and restore material for Spaarnestad as well. Spaarnestad started off as the archive of a publication, and a lot of graphic work is part of this.

I relayed Adam's offer to Spaarnestad. There are now two questions on my mind:

• How long will it take us to complete ten restorations
• will we get any graphic material as well...

Thanks,

GerardM