Warsaw’s Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych [Central Archives of Historical Records], more popularly known by its acronym AGAD, has been a PMC partner for over a decade as a part of our collaboration with the Head Office of the Polish National Archives (NDAP). As a result, several archivists and conservation experts have come to Los Angeles to work on-site and help preserve the great variety of unique materials in the PMC’s Archival Collections. In July 2024 however, it was the PMC that went to AGAD, to retrieve several items that had been painstakingly restored by the dedicated AGAD staff.
Since the beginning of our over 10-year collaboration, these experts have helped to identify several objects in urgent need of conservation, particularly in the PMC’s Zygmunt and Luisa Stojowski Collection. Their extremely fragile condition required special testing, equipment and laboratory facilities that were not available to us locally. Thus, in fall of 2022, a decision was made to carefully package four Stojowski Collection items and transport them to the special labs at AGAD in Warsaw. These four items included a large format photograph that was broken and falling apart, a manuscript of a short solo piano piece, another manuscript of a major work for large orchestra, soloists and chorus, and a watercolor with a dedication to Zygmunt Stojowski.
After arriving at the AGAD headquarters, these four items were passed on to Anna Czajka—a world-class specialist in paper conservation working at the Central Laboratory for Conservation of Archival Records. Together with her team of specialists, Ms. Czajka went to work on the PMC items left in her expert care.
Photo Re-Assembled
Their first task was to tackle the photo, “Farewell dinner to His Grace Archbishop Jan Cieplak in Hotel Astor.” Taken on 10 February 1926, this black-and-white photograph (approximately 28 x 46 cm) of important figures of Polonia in New York had several broken or detached parts, other serious structural damage, surface accretions, major chemical damage and fading. The conservation team treatment included repairing the mechanical damage, reconnecting separated fragments of the photograph and building a preservation enclosure with rigid support to forestall further damage. The photo underwent mechanical dry surface cleaning, tears were mended with Japanese paper and photographic gelatine, straightening/flattening of the object was also combined with deacidification. No attempts were made to remove silver mirroring from the photographic image layer.
All tests were documented and sets of photographs before and after conservation were taken, showing the incredible restoration effects on this fragile and seriously damaged object. Several are shown below.
Nocturne Uncovered
The second item from the Stojowski Collection to undergo conservation was the manuscript of his Nocturne for piano solo. Dated 19 November 1912, this work without an opus number was previously unknown to Stojowski researchers and the world until, in 2021, it was sent to the PMC by a donor named Frank Martignetti and the work joined the rest of the original manuscripts held in the Stojowski Collection.
The Nocturne was notated with black/dark blue ink on four folios (approximately 27 x 33 cm). The structural damage to this manuscript included torn edges, detached folios, soiling and surface accretions, chemical damage and tonal change at the edges of the music paper. Mechanical dry surface cleaning, mending torn fragments with Japanese paper and wheat starch paste, straightening/flattening under weights and deacidification were carried out. Acidity of the manuscript paper was measured at pH 3 before and pH 7.9 after conservation. Tests done on the ink showed that it is water and ethyl alcohol resistant, and UV scanning was also carried out (see image at right). All conservation work detailing the Nocturne’s successful restoration was diligently documented by AGAD specialists.
Prayer Answered
Perhaps the most daunting challenge that faced Ms. Czajka and her team when they came face-to-face with the manuscript of Stojowski’s Modlitwa za Polskę [Prayer for Poland]. This large-scale orchestral work was notated on 17 large-format folios of varying sizes (34 x 41 cm, 34 x 54 cm) as well as on small staff paper fragments containing various corrections that were attached to certain manuscript pages. For more than a century since its New York premiere in 1916, this manuscript was stored without proper protection and folded in half due to its large size. With the passage of time, the highly acidic paper began to crumble and, where folded, caused each page to be broken in half—see damage pictured in detail at the top of this article. In many places music notation on staff lines was torn right in the middle and there was a real chance that whatever was written there originally might be forever lost. As if this damage wasn’t critical, throughout the manuscript, Stojowski also made numerous corrections, crossing over notes and sometimes whole bars of music, rubbing out with a razor blade the blue-black ink in which the score was notated.
The overall aim of restoring the manuscript of Modlitwa za Polskę was to piece together pages that had broken in half, and flatten and stabilize them to enable scanning of the entire work. Once again, the entire team of conservators at AGAD began cleaning and repairing the score, mending the broken pages with Japanese paper and wheat starch paste, and patiently fixing the torn edges of each page. Acidity tests revealed pH 3 levels before deacidification process and pH 7.1 afterwards. Tests of the ink used by Stojowski revealed that it was a metal gallic ink with addition of a blue dye. Chemical analysis also revealed presence of iron ions (Fe+2). After well over a year of conservation work, the score was carefully scanned and then each folio was packed in a separate, chemically-neutral plastic sheathing so that human hands would not disturb this very delicate manuscript. See the before and after photographs of the score below.
Watercolor Like New
The fourth and last item to be repaired and scanned by AGAD for us was a watercolor painting by Tadeusz Rybkowski, entitled “A boy with a straw hat and flute” and featuring a dedication to Zygmunt Stojowski by the artist. Dated Lwów, 7 October 1900, this painting on paper measures approximately 44 by 31 cm. The biggest problem here was damage caused by the extremely acidic cardboard backing. The treatment program for this artwork included removal of the residual layer of acid fibers from the back of the painting and the extraction of animal-based glue from the edges that had to be then repaired. A process of deacidification was applied, and a series of ultraviolet and infrared tests were also carried out. The infrared photographs revealed that the work began as a pencil sketch and further exams with a stereomicroscope gave the conservation team precise images of the acid fiber layers and of the animal glue residue before treatments. Just before the work was completed in July 2024, additional pigment-identifying tests were carried out with the X-ray fluorescence apparatus, which analyzes in a non-destructive way the elemental composition of materials by measuring their emitted radiation. The exact results of these tests will be shared in a few weeks with the PMC.
When this watercolor—alongside the photograph and two manuscripts—was delivered two years ago to AGAD, it looked like a light-brown toned painting. After two years of amazing conservation work, rather miraculously the lively green and yellow colors came to life along with the loose background wash-like painting strokes that give some texture to this painting. To say that this work has been transformed is not really enough—it literally looks like it was painted last week by the artist! The same can be said about the astonishing recovery of notated musical material and about the precise assembling of the Modlitwa za Polskę manuscript’s badly torn pages. The other solo piano manuscript and photograph of a gala dinner in New York in 1926 were likewise made to look almost as good as new.
With such astonishing results, our great thanks go to Anna Czajka and her fabulous team of experts, as well as to the directors of AGAD and National Archives, Dr. Hubert Wajs and Dr. Paweł Pietrzyk (pictured below). The photographs of these prized and very delicate items from the PMC’s Zygmunt and Luisa Stojowski Collection that accompany this article with images made before, during and after conservation will hopefully give our readers at least some inkling about the great assistance these two institutions and their dedicated staff have placed at our disposal.
[Photos: Courtesy of AGAD and PMC Archival Collections]