Like all patients that arrived through the doors, this 80-year-old was triaged and assessed for damage.
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It was a full-blown emergency situation when it looked like the patient wouldn't make it, but after a breathless, sleepless, round-the-clock week of treatment, the patient was stabilised. No, it wasn't a person, but a rare lithograph on silk, created by Marion Mahony Griffin, and it very nearly didn't survive the move from its home in Sydney to the walls of the National Library.
But after intensive treatment from a team of conservators, it now forms part of the library's new exhibition, The Dream of a Century: The Griffins in Australia's Capital. The show, which opens today focuses largely on the design enterprise of Canberra's original authors, Walter and Marion Griffin, using office records from the couple's practice in the America, Australia and India.
The library acquired this vast collection in 2006 from the descendants of the Griffins' Australian partner, the architect Eric Milton Nicholls. Using drawings, photographs, silk paintings and general ephemera - most of which has never been displayed - the exhibition shows the human side of the prolific couple.
But one item - the extraordinarily delicate silk lithograph in its original timber frame - had been almost reduced to dust by the time it arrived at the library last week.
Library conservator Alexa McNaught-Reynolds said it was a shock when they first took the picture out.
''We opened it all up and went 'wow, we can't display it in this situation','' she said. ''There was grit on the front and we could see shattered areas and it became evident that it was stuck to the front of the glass and we couldn't lift it off without doing more damage to it.''
She said after 80 years pressed inside the glass, the silk had almost disintegrated.
The lithograph's owner, Marie Nicholls, daughter of Eric Nicholls, had kept it in her own collection, and has fond memories of it hanging on the wall when she was growing up.
''This is something from my family home that I always remember there. I was surrounded by many beautiful artefacts, it was my dream world when I was a child,'' she said yesterday. ''This is part of me. Not only that - I can remember we had what's referred to in our family as the Big Chair. This was a chair that Griffin brought out from America. I can remember always sitting on my father's knee on that big chair and seeing this beautiful lithograph.''
Although she had agreed to lend it to the library for the Centenary exhibition, she had no idea how delicate it was until library staff made a panicked call to her last week.
''Of course, it was quite a trauma for me to know what to do. The big question came to me - should they go ahead with it?'' she said.
Her sons convinced her to agree to let the staff take the risk, so she signed all the consent forms and hoped for the best.
''They did it on Thursday, and my birthday was on Friday and it was the best birthday present when it all worked out,'' she said.
Exhibition curator Christopher Vernon said he lost sleep at the thought of the lithograph not surviving the treatment.
''Here we would be, fully appreciative of how historically significant it was and how rare it was, and the idea of it disappearing before your eyes, it just would break your heart,'' he said.
Textile conservator Victoria Gill, who had been contracted by the gallery to work on the exhibition, said the work wouldn't have survived until the end of the year if the decision had not been made to conserve it.
''It's really a Lazarus job, because it was already well dead, and we've resurrected it,'' she said.
''We're delighted that we've saved this part of Marion's story, because traditionally women's work doesn't survive.''
■ The Dream of a Century: The Griffins in Australia's Capital opens today at the National Library and runs until June 10.