Cleaning wallpaper

Dawn Christine Mankowski <dawnm [at] darkwing__uoregon__edu> writes

>I am a graduate student in Historic Preservation at the University
>of Oregon. I am currently assisting the director of a historic house
>museum with several projects, one of which is cleaning the 1920s era
>wallpaper in two rooms.
>...
>I have done test patches to determine which method would best clean
>the paper.

>Vicki Warden <vicki [at] qvmag__tased__edu__au> writes:

>I also have to find a solution for cleaning wallpaper.  The
>wallpaper I am dealing with is from the 1850's and lines the walls
>of an old kitchen.  The paper was originally cream in colour but is
>now 'black' with soot, smoke, oil, grease and mould.  I have tested
>a number of traditional cleaning materials including Absorene and
>Chemical Sponges.

Cleaning wallpaper can be sometimes quite hard task and cleaning in
situ even harder, in both posting most of the conventional surface
cleaning were tested but the results weren't good I would suggest to
try another two methods that weren't listed :

    1.  The adaption of a steamer, high temperature dry steam can
        sometimes help in softening "stubborn dirt".

    2.  The adaption of enzymes, though, the "dirt"  must be
        carefully identify in order to use the right catalysts.

Good luck,

Michael Maggen
Senior paper conservator
The Israel Museum Jerusalem

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:75
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 23, 1999
                       Message Id: cdl-12-75-009
                                  ***