Mark Allen, Flintshire County Council
In 1984 I began my bookbinding apprenticeship at St Deiniol’s Library working on Gladstone’s books and his incunabula. I attended college day release at Liverpool to do a city and guilds in bookbinding and did two years night classes with Paul Delrue, the well known fine binder, in Chester. During my time at the library I completed many rebacks and bound many volumes that had belonged to Gladstone and been annotated. Amongst many special tasks I was able to work on books owned by Robert Browning and Tissot. In 1992 I moved to the Flintshire Record Office to the post of trainee conservator working with Malcolm Godfrey an instructor on the SOA course. I gained the Society of Archivists certificate in Conservation in 1995 and became a registered member due to my work as the convenor for the Wales region. Since taking over the studio in 2000 I have been involved in many projects.
- Heritage Lottery bid to install air conditioning and monitoring equipment in Strong rooms
- Digitisation of photographs funded by CyMal
- Conversion of offices into new Strong room areas
- Conservation of the Flintshire and Denbighshire Enclosure awards
On going training I have attended the SOA conference each year and regional meetings regularly and serve as the conservation editor of ARC magazine. On the Preservation and Conservation Group committee I am the Training officer and have organised many training days and conservation meetings. I am on the SOA conference committee and devised the conservation programme for the 2009 conference at Bristol.
Articles
What have you been doing? – Description of work as a conservator in local government -ARC -2007 The socio –economic history of bookbinding – ARC 2008 Fire! – How to organise a disaster day –CyMal magazine 2009 When to do nothing –ARC 2009 – parchment dated 1375 The conservation of the Flintshire and Denbighshire Enclosure awards-multi-membrane parchment documents- SOA Journal spring 2010 - work in progress
Conference sessions featuring Mark Allen
- Conference 2010: