Friday 25th March, prescription 8pm, Westerham Hall
“Healing the Ravages of Time – conservation for publishing” Talk by Bill Curtis (to follow the Westerham Society AGM)
Old photographs and documents, creased and split with damaged edges, but they are 150 years old and possibly the only copy. Drawing-pin holes and rust marks from pins and paperclips; some photographs would make you shudder, but they’re pretty much all fixable in the digital age. Bill Curtis, author of four books on nineteenth and twentieth century Westerham history and the proprietor of the publishing company Past Times Press, has been loaned hundreds of documents, letters, posters and photographs, some of which were in terrible condition, but unique images of a world left far behind. Using before and after examples, and maybe a little bit of live restoration before his audience, Bill will explain the techniques which he has learned in part from his career as a lighting cameraman and photographer. He has teamed these skills with his desire to reproduce, with the best quality possible, old images of the town and its people for current and future generations to enjoy and to enhance understanding of the social history of a small market town in rural Kent.