Squeezing is Believing Larry DeVore is a retired lawyer who
became a docent at Freer|Sackler twenty years ago. Shortly
thereafter, he began volunteering in the Department of
Conservation and Scientific Research. For the last fourteen
years he has been working with our paper conservators, first
Martha Smith and now Emily Jacobson. He has been involved in
many different projects, including the repair of a collection of
“squeezes.” A squeeze is a paper cast of an inscription or
picture that has been incised on an outdoor monument or
building. In this way the inscription, which could become eroded
or destroyed over time and cannot be moved to another location,
can be preserved. Large sheets of wet paper are pounded into the
recesses of the inscribed surface and once the wet paper dries
it is peeled off the surface. The F|S Archives was given more
than three hundred squeezes by Ernst Herzfeld, an archaeologist
who worked in a number of Middle Eastern countries, including
Iran, during the 1920s and 1930s. Over time