Contact
Write to studio@quillanarchives.com. One of us reads it; there is no enquiry form and no account manager.
Useful things to say
- What it is
- Registers, photographs, plans, film — and roughly how much of each.
- How much
- Shelf metres, boxes or reels is fine. Nobody expects an item count at this stage.
- Condition
- Anything damp, mouldy, brittle or already repaired. Say so early; it changes what we bring and whether the material should travel at all.
- Constraints
- Material that cannot leave the building, access restrictions, a funding deadline.
- Who owns it
- And who can sign off the work. This is the question that delays jobs most often.
Quoting
We quote per job after a survey, not per image from a description. Per-image rates look reassuring and then collapse the moment the material turns out to be folded, oversize or stuck together — which it usually is.
The survey and the written proposal cost nothing. If you take the proposal and do the work yourselves, or use it to apply for funding, that is a fine use of it.
Mould is the one thing to tell us about before we visit. We will not open a box of it in the same room as other people's collections.
Volunteers and societies
A good deal of our work comes from local history societies run entirely by volunteers. If that is you, say what the budget actually is at the outset. We would rather scope a job to fit it than produce a proposal that sits in a drawer.
