The Tyburn Convent Megilla

Last post was about restoring a megilla, but I only restored the text. Here is a photo-diary of veteran Sofer-Sta"m Marc Michaels restoring an old megilla belonging to a convent in England. His expert conservator's job includes repairing minor rips, stains on the back, and anything else necessary to restore the scroll to near new condition.

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Here are some pictures of the damage.

A very inexpert repair done with scotch tape

 

Mold or dirt on the back.

The writing itself.

There are several interesting things in the last picture among them the very old sephardic font, the pairing of that font with the iron gall ink, and the flourishes where different parts of letters overlap e.g. the second yud being written inside the nun of יכניה.

My first ever project

My first real scribal project was restoring an old megilla belonging to my teacher Rabbi Marvin Schneider shlit"a. The megilla is 150-200 years old and was in pretty bad condition. Rabbi Schneider found it in a nursing home about 50 years ago in very bad condition. He kept it around meaning to fix it "one of these days" and in June 2012 when he deemed me ready to start working on real scrolls it finally happened.

Before

The background image for this blog is an "after" picture from the next column over.

And here is a more visible copy of the same image.