Anti-Aging Measures for Disney's Animation Cels - New York Times

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A collaborative project is studying ways to preserve deteriorating animation cels, like this one from “Snow White.” Credit Disney Enterprises, Inc

PROTECTING ANIMATION CELS

FROM THE VAGARIES OF AGE

The hand-drawn animation cels used to create cartoons before the advent of computers have aged poorly. Their cellulose and polyester backings have buckled, cracked and yellowed, and the watercolor paint is peeling. To determine the best way to prevent further damage, the Disney Animation Research Library, which owns millions of these works, is collaborating with the Getty Conservation Institute.

Michael R. Schilling, a senior scientist at the Getty institute, said researchers are studying which protective materials to wrap around the cels, what temperature are best for storage and how to reattach lost paint.

The original opaque paints were designed to be durable and flexible enough to withstand rough treatment as the cellulose sheets were passed around during filming sessions. Disney animators mixed the paints themselves instead of buying commercial brands that might not have adhered to the plastic. “Too much was at stake when they made these movies to leave anything to chance,” Mr. Schilling said.

Researchers will subject tiny cel samples to lab tests to simulate years of exposure to conditions like extreme temperatures, light, moisture and air. The results will also be useful to conservators working on 20th-century sculptures that contain plastics, Mr. Schilling said.

The Getty’s efforts will help preserve the animation collection not only for historians interested in Disney studies but also for future generations of cinephiles.

In September, a four-hour documentary about Walt Disney will air on public television. Sarah Colt, the director and producer, said the movie will have footage of animators at work. “It just took an army of artists” to make the early films, she said.

Cels from Disney productions have ended up on the market, selling for as little as a few hundred dollars each.

Heritage Auctions in Dallas, which regularly offers them, notes occasional condition problems in its catalogs, such as wrinkles and cracks.

SHAKESPEAREAN OBSESSION

Biographers only recently started poring over the voluminous documentation that Henry Clay Folger and his wife, Emily, made of their purchases of Shakespearean works. “The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio,” due out on Tuesday from Simon & Schuster, by Andrea Mays, explains how the couple divided up responsibilities in their shared mania.

The Folgers built their Shakespeare collection with little input from others. From the 1880s to the 1920s, they invested Mr. Folger’s Standard Oil earnings in hundreds of thousands of publications, manuscripts and paintings. They paid tens of thousands of dollars each for rarities, including editions of plays printed in 1623, known as First Folios. When the Folgers traveled, they took along boxfuls of file cards of their cataloged acquisitions. To ensure everything would stay together, they built the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.

“Emily read thousands of booksellers’ catalogs, marking them with dog-eared corners and making pencil squiggles in the margins,” Ms. Mays writes in “The Millionaire and the Bard.” Henry Folger negotiated with dealers and tracked what was for sale around the world. “He took meticulous notes on condition, completeness, binding, provenance, and prices paid,” she continues.

One of the couple’s favorite dealers was A. S. W. Rosenbach, whom Stephen H. Grant, the author of “Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger” (published last year by Johns Hopkins University Press), describes as “the most erudite rascal in the book business.” When Mr. Rosenbach needed quick cash, Mr. Grant writes, he would show an associate “something printed in the Shakespearean period and plead: ‘Can you make this into Shakespeareana? I want to sell it to Folger.’ ” References to Denmark and Falstaff’s basso singing were sometimes enough to persuade Mr. Folger to write checks.

Next year, for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Folger library will team up with the Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association on exhibitions of the 1623 First Folios, which will travel to all 50 states.

Daniel De Simone, head librarian at the Folger, said that despite the recent biographies, the Folgers’ innermost thoughts and feelings remain a mystery.

“The nature of their private relationship is even unknown to us,” he said.