Older "archival" products

I think that Barbara Austen's investigation of older "archival"
products sounds very interesting.  Since the quotation marks on
"archival" were originally hers, I presumed that the abuse and misuse of
that inexact term were to be part of the study.  It
would also be interesting to examine the recommendations given by the
conservation community at the time.  I would suspect that the
recommendations were rather less precise than today.  One very
significant change in the last twenty years is the huge increase in the
use of archival methods and materials by picture framers (often not
perfect practices, but greatly improved).  I am sure that the
advertisements and articles in the framing trade journals would reflect
this.  The ads might also be a good place to look for misleading claims
by manufacturers regarding their products.

Dan Clement
Ithaca, NY

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 6:51
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 23, 1993
                        Message Id: cdl-6-51-008
                                  ***