Parsimonious documentation

 Today, down at Lake View, I've been documenting the contents of a large nineteenth century display cupboard which has been dressed with a selection of plausible looking willow pattern dishes and some big heavy nineteenth century religious texts, plus the collected works of Sir Walter Scott.

Even though these books are props with no real connection to the house, one doesn't want to damage them by opening them and stressing the spine to photograph the title page.

The standard solution would be to use a book pillow. These usually are made of Tyvek or something similar with an inert filling and are quite pricy at around $75-80.

I don't happen to have one, don't particularly want to buy one, and anyway it would would take too long to come in the post, especially as we are getting close to Christmas.

I needed an alternative solution.

Given that the books are not intrinsically valuable, all I needed was something with a washable cover that I could stack to make a support.

And I hit on a solution - a box of kid's beanbags from K-Mart

for a little under $7.

Just the right size to stack to support a book cover

and because they are designed for little kids to play with, they have washable covers, very useful in case an old book sheds something, and if they get really mucky, cheap enough to throw away...