Amazing Facts
Fun and informative insights into the practice of conservation
-- from the clever use of unusual equipment and materials
to technologies adapted from other scientific and technical
areas. Whether it's ABS pipe from the hardware store, high
power lasers, or John Lennon's Rolls Royce, conservators have
had unique and creative input. What do they do with sturgeons
and microscopic plastic bubbles? Have a look!
Ordinary ABS plastic pipe was recently used in a conservation treatment to support the ribs of a 7.6-m (25-ft.) sealskin-covered kayak that is thought to have belonged to Sir Frederick Banting.
Conservators are using Nd:YAG lasers to surface-clean artifacts on an experimental basis. The technique was originally developed for cleaning stone surfaces.
Analytical techniques such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray microanalysis have been used by conservation scientists to identify such diverse substances as waxy crystals from a mummy's head, buttons made from vegetable ivory (a type of nut), a sticky coating on a Ukrainian-Canadian Easter egg, and the paint on a 1965 Rolls-Royce once owned by John Lennon.
A 6-ton hydraulic jack was needed to separate some assemblies in a century-old printing press (collection of the MacBride Museum, Whitehorse, Yukon) used by the first "gold rush" newspaper, the Whitehorse Star.
A 300-year-old incense aroma was released during the cleaning of a late 17th/early 18th century tablet-woven textile known as the Gondar Hanging (collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto). This odour was the final proof that the hanging had come from an Ethiopian Christian church, and not an imperial palace.
A cherry picker is sometimes used by paintings conservators to examine and treat large-scale murals, or decorative architectural surfaces.
Glue derived from sturgeon (the same fish that provides roe for caviar) is used as an adhesive in conservation treatments because it can be reactivated with heat.
Parylene is used to consolidate (or strengthen) extremely delicate objects such as fragments of disintegrating silk, moth wings, and charred paper, in order to preserve them. Manufactured by international companies such as Union Carbide and Montecatini Edison, the product is deposited as a vapour in a special apparatus. It forms a very even transparent film on the surfaces to which it is applied -- in most cases there is no perceptible change to the surface. Yet the previously fragile object becomes much stronger.
Gap fillers made from epoxy resin and microballoons (tiny hollow plastic bubbles) are used in conservation to replicate the lost surface of wooden objects. These materials are also used commercially to fill the inner cavities of surfboards.
The "cavitron" is a dentists' tool used to remove deposits from teeth very gently. It works by sending ultrasonic vibrations through a stream of water, causing bubbles to form (cavitation); when the bubbles burst they create gentle suction on gums and teeth. Archaeological conservators use this tool to remove soil from soft, wet artifacts such as degraded basketry.
Conservators sometimes supervise movie crews during filming in historic homes or buildings. When the 1904 Haskell Opera House in Stanstead, Quebec was the setting for a scene in an Arts & Entertainment Network mini-series about P.T. Barnum, a CCI conservator was there to provide advice and assistance to protect the historic furnishing and interiors.
Lining is a conservation technique in which an additional fabric support is applied to a painting's weakened structure. It involves the use of heat, vacuum (negative pressure), and solvents (in conjunction with adhesives and adhesion). Temperatures above 60°C in the hot table are necessary to accomplish the procedure successfully.
