It is sad to report the death on 27 December of Arthur David Baynes-Cope,
peacefully at home in Suffolk after a long illness. The announcement in
'The Independent' of Wednesday 1 January is that the funeral service will
take place at All Saints Church, Stanton, Suffolk on Tuesday 7th January at
14.45, followed by cremation. "No flowers by request, donations if desired
to Marie Curie Cancer Care, c/o A.E. Thurlow & Son, 1 High Street, Ixworth,
Suffolk IP31 2HH."
Formal obituaries will say much more in due course about 'B-C', as he was
amiably known over many years to a wide acquaintance of archivists,
librarians and map curators. B-C was Principal Scientific Officer in the
the Research Laboratory of The British Museum for many years, indeed for
many years before the The British Library was formed. He was an expert on
the paper and construction of early maps and globes, and worked in close
consultation with the then head of the Map Library, Dr Helen Wallis. He
held strong views about the Vinland Map, which he had examined on its
travels, and most recently gave a compelling account of that work in an
invited coda to Michael Richey's 1999 lecture at the Royal Geographical
Society on 'E.G.R. Taylor and the Vinland Map'.
To archivists looking for advice in paper conservation he was an expert more
in paper deterioration and damage, and he may perhaps be best known to
subscribers to this list as the author in 1981 of 'Caring for Books and
Documents', a slim but characteristically acute guidebook to the owner and
curator concerned to prevent such deterioration, the messages whimsically
reinforced by cartoon illustrations from his bookbinder friend Sture
Akerstrom. A mine of idiosyncratic information about everything one could
possibly want (or not want) to know, B-C showed his friends a subtle and
subversive sense of humour, not least in asides at meetings of the Society
of Archivists, of which he was a longstanding member. His paper
conservation advice was the more memorable for it: on the effect of
excessive heat on paper, for example, 'A well-baked telephone directory is
much easier to tear in half than an unbaked one.'
Andrew Cook
India Office Records
The British Library
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