Poison Book Project

Bibliotoxicology and Green Books

Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library is an American estate and museum in Winterthur, Delaware which houses one of the richest collections of Americana in the United States The museum and estate were the home of Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969)., Winterthur's founder and a prominent antiques collector and horticulturist.¹

Winterthur Poison Book Project

The Winterthur Poison Book Project is an ongoing investigation to explore the materiality of Victorian-era publishers’ bindings, with a focus on the identification of potentially toxic pigments used as bookcloth colorants.² The Poison Book Project investigates arsenic and other toxic colorants found in mass-produced, Victorian-era, cloth-bound books, and assists other institutions with identification of these hazards in their own collections.

The project also explores the historical context within which these materials were produced and makes recommendations for safer storage and handling of potentially toxic bookbindings.

ARSENICAL BOOKS DATABASE - Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.³

Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Winterthur, Delaware.

Bibliotoxicology and Green

From around 1800 manufacturers began to make use of a number of arsenical compounds, particularly as colouring agents,” “Cheap to produce, chemically stable and capable of yielding vivid hues, the most popular of these was Scheele’s Green (sometimes known as emerald green or copper arsenite)…it found in literally dozens of goods in everyday use,” including books.”⁴

Scheele’s Green became incredibly popular. It all but completely replaced older green pigments based on copper carbonate that had been used up until Scheele’s discovery. So popular was the hue that even after it became common knowledge that the paint was toxic, it was still used.⁵

1. Magnani, Denise. The Winterthur Garden : Henry Francis Du Pont’s Romance with the Land. New York: H.N. Abrams in association with the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1995. Since 1964, Winterthur has published a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal entitled Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.

2. Melissa Tedone, The Poison Book Project . International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. (April 2020). She is a founding co-chair of the international Bibliotoxicology Working Group. Melissa Tedone & Rosie Grayburn (2022) Arsenic and Old Bookcloth: Identification and Safer Use of Emerald Green Victorian-Era Cloth Case Bindings, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation. See also: April-May 2020 "News in Conservation" Issue 77, p. 10-13.

3. ARSENICAL BOOKS DATABASE - Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library

4. Bartrip, P. W. J. “How Green Was My Valance?: Environmental Arsenic Poisoning and the Victorian Domestic Ideal.” The English Historical Review, vol. 109, no. 433, 1994, pp. 891–913.

5. John Hulsey and Ann Trusty, “Green Death | The Art History of Arsenic.” Artists Network