QF

Care editor

Quinn Faraday

Based in Edinburgh, Scotland · Joined 2025

Quinn Faraday trained as a paper conservator at the Camberwell School of Art. She edits the magazine's Care section.

Beats

Published in The Pewter

Tools

The Bone Folder and the Paper Conservator's Hand

A small tongue of polished bone, shaped like a flattened spoon, is the most-used object on the bench of a paper conservator working in a Glasgow studio.

Care

Leather Book Bindings and the Red Rot Question

A 19th-century theological library in a Boston rectory, the powdery decay that conservators call red rot, and the four interventions that work.

Tools

A French Polisher's Bench: What's on It and Why

In a basement workshop in Edinburgh, a polisher with forty-one years at the work keeps a bench whose contents have changed less than three times in her career.

Care

Humidity Control for a Small Private Library

A 2,800-volume private library in a converted New Hampshire schoolhouse, a hygrometer logbook since 2018, and the case against the basement.

Workshop Visits

A Paper Conservator in Edinburgh

Una MacBeath conserves manuscripts, maps, and personal letters from a top-floor studio in Stockbridge. On a Wednesday in May she treats a water-damaged 1842 sheriff's ledger from Inverness-shire.

Care

Waxing Oak Furniture Seasonally: A Year on a Yorkshire Refectory Table

Four applications across twelve months on an 1830 oak refectory table, and what the wax does that the polyurethane never could.

Care

Cleaning Silver Without Abrasion: The Conservator's Method

A Georgian sauceboat in a Hudson kitchen, an aluminum-foil bath, and the slow argument against the pink paste in the cupboard.