JAMES
WHITE
ENTERTAINMENT
HERITAGE
LOTTE REINIGER
I formally accessioned the Lotte Reiniger collection to the BFI National Archive, preserving and cataloguing original materials so that the full collection is now accessible from the BFI Reuben Library at Southbank.
Lotte Reiniger was a pioneering German animator who created the earliest surviving animated feature film, Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926). Known for her distinctive cut-out, silhouette animations, she eventually settled in the UK where she made a series of short animations of fairy tale stories. She deposited her film prints and working materials, including backgrounds and silhouette figures at the BFI in the 1950s.
It was a privilege to work with the collection, gaining an intimate understanding of her working methodologies through the construction of her animation pieces. The silhouette figures are incredibly delicate and yet utilitarian and mechanical, made of black, sometimes recycled card, wire and occasional lead weighted joints. They seemed to reflect the animation process, uniting technology with artistry. Similarly the backgrounds were created of roughly cut, layered tracing paper, which looked like nothing until illuminated when the scene suddenly gained life and depth.
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The collection had been in storage since arrival and required rehousing to protect the fragile materials. I rehoused the backgrounds in Melinex and created bespoke archival card mounts for the silhouette figures. The majority of the figures had been mounted by Lotte on annotated card mounts which constituted part of the archival object. The figures were attached by their wire joints through the support mount, but also unfortunately by sellotape. The tape had degraded and was beginning to damage the items, staining and obscuring the materials.
I was fortunate to have been given paper conservation training during my time at the BFI. I performed appropriate conservation across all silhouette figures. Using a heat pen I carefully lifted decaying tape. I then used crepe erasers and scalpels to remove remaining residue. Smoke sponges removed dirt across the surfaces. In some cases the construction of the figures required adhesive, in these cases I removed the offending tape, recording the original positions, then rebuilding the piece using Japanese conservation paper and methyl cellulose. The process allows all work to be reversible.
The backgrounds were in much better condition with only colour backgrounds, created for Jack and the Beanstalk (1955) and The Star of Bethlehem (1956), displaying minor affects of historic moisture. As part of the cataloguing I created conservation reports for all objects, bringing the collection up to national collections management conditions.