acidity / oxidation
Find below the blog posts related to acidity / oxidation:
Premiere of the video of the conservation treatment of a map
Premiere of the video showing the full conservation treatment of an oversized hand-coloured map, varnished and lined on a canvas. Do not miss it! Next Thursday 27 at 4pm CEST (UTC+2).
Profession: book and paper conservator
What does a paper conservator do? Whom does she work for? What skills and knowledge does she ought to have? Preservation and conservation, a field linked to science, history and arts and crafts. A video explains what differenciates us from forgers and shows -among other- how we produce a hand-made suction table to restore paper artifacts, with loads of creativity, a feature most necessary to become book and paper conservator.
“Customized” conservation with Richard Wolbers
Fellows of joys and sorrows, conservators, here is why I am so excited with the "Cleaning workshop: Paper bathing/stain removal", given by Wolbers: The idea is to make every conservation treatment a kind of custom-made dress for each particular object with a minimal initial investment. He speaks about solvents, gels, surfactants, conductivity and pH. Nor in my wildest dreams had I imagined such a close, easy and useful chemistry. Thanks a lot Richard, we owe it to you.
Chemists and conservators: a love/hate relationship
A cathartic experience: There's nothing more exciting for a conservator such as participating in a chemistry course. We go there with a certain respect (or maybe fear) and the will to be acquainted to a new miraculous reactant that will change our life. The poor conservator will poorly be able to discuss one to one with a chemist, either about the reactions that happen during the restoration treatments or along the inherent ageing of the artefact; and yet we must call the chemist into question and keep this dialogue alive. But thanks to Richard Wolbers I made peace with chemistry and their scientists.
Posters conservation: virtual inpaint vs “virtuous” retouching
The bike riders from Sants reached my studio squeaking, rather than cycling! Tears, foxing, discolouration, brittleness, acidity... All these damages have been carefully restored in order to let the splendorous riders finish line at the Municipal Archive of Barcelona. They are almost centenarian... and yet they ride wild along the repository! I'll explain which beauty and health treatments these illustrated posters have passed through
I have mold! (…or is it foxing?)
Foxing is mould... or not? One of the main concerns in archives and libraries is the presence of mould. Not surprisingly: it develops without fanfare, and when it is detected, an irreversible loss of information might have taken place. Before pulling your hair out, you should identify whether the symptoms actually reveal fungal activity, or not. Not an easy assessment.
New conservation methodolgy to retrieve lost flexibility to brittle tracing paper
Approach to a new methodolgy to retrieve the lost flexibility to brittle paper. Tracing paper -so usual among technical drawings- have in common their transparency, but there are significant differences in the process to make them. The properties and behavior will be very different then. Impregnated papers, for an instance, were applied oils or varnishes to provide them translucency. Explanation restoration of several drawings in which the varnish was removed to replace it later.
Damned “sellotapes”!
Which damages cause sellotapes? Can we release documentary heritage from these fatty strips? Explanation for the degradation mechanisms of this historic "remedial" tapes that we can find in documents of all kinds, and restoration possibilities in each case.
Conservation of school poster from spanish civil war period
This map represents the typical scholar posters: with its wooden slats to roll and hang, lined on the back. It was very common to varnish them with shellac to waterproof and protect them from abrasion. This one was made of two pieces of printed paper, sticked together along the central horizontal stripe. It is from 1936, spanish civil war was barely breaking. Removing the old varnish has allowed to repare other minor damages: tears, gaps and wrinkles. But most important is that the new varnish is not oxidizing nor yellowing. As it is very flexible it will not crack in the future.
Nanotechnology & chemical gels applied to paper conservation
What are nanoparticles and chemical gels? Latest technological advances in restoration of archive material is about nanotechnology and chemical gels and so it is studied in the paper & books section of the IPCE.
Glass plate conservation (I)
Glass plate photograph conservation (I) Types of damages (silver mirroring, tapes, fingerprints), and how to properly store photogrpahs in four flap envelopes.
Gone with the wind
I don’t like much having war books, but I must admit that this one is particularly beautiful. The velvet binding seemed to me a challenging issue on the restoration, which did not have major complications besides this. I show the restoration of this book because of the headaches it has given me when solving the lost areas, the wooden work. The considerable losses on a laborious woodcarving work, and the lack of originals of many of the missing pieces fairly complicated the subject (the shields on the corners were different).
