In 1999 The Friends of Hearst Castle along with the Hearst Corporation, began a project to bring recognition to the relatively unknown architect of the famous California Landmark - Julia Morgan (Julia Morgan Drawings Preservation Project). This lady’s contribution to the world of Architecture was as significant as it is unrecognized. Her volume of work spans some 50 years and includes over seven hundred works, many of which remain today.

At that time The Friends of Hearst Castle began a lengthy and expensive undertaking to digitally archive the nearly 10,000 original working drawings of Miss. Morgan’s, archived at The Castle. As a producer of Art Reproductions, known as Giclée Prints, I was approached to contribute to the cause by reproducing a one-and-only reproduction of one of those drawings, for auction. The significance of the piece was the manor in which it was produced and how it was printed.

The process began in the Archive Room of Hearst Castle, where I prepared a specially designed mount for the very delicate drawing chosen by The Friends of Hearst Castle Board of Directors. The piece was an original pencil drawing depicting the Theater Room within The Castle. Drawn around the year 1921 by Miss Morgan, on velum, it was extremely delicate. Normal art reproduction is quite often done with high-end Large Format Photography or at an art reproduction company on large Drum Scanners. Because of the sensitive material that was unable to be removed from the location, an alternative process was needed.

I positioned a laptop computer with a portable scanner under a platform with a piece removed, over the scanner. The difficulty was in the size of the drawing which was 30 inches by 40 inches. With the help of my assistant, a small portion of the piece was scanned at a time until the entire image was captured, twenty scans in all. For over a month I worked on piecing the scans together in the computer until the puzzle was completed. Once finished, and perfected, based on samples compared to the original it was time for printing.