Planar distortion of canvas

Lalit Kumar <lalitkumar88 [at] hotmail__com> writes

>... I would like to stretch the canvas in humid condition and
>then impregnate the canvas with a suitable mixture to make it
>insensitive to humidity. Any advise for the suitable impregnating
>material is solicited. In India Wax-resin mixture is commonly used.

The method of impregnation you describe was commonly used by
paintings conservators over many years. Nowadays a more
sophisticated treatment should be considered, as it shouldn't change
the materials characteristics too much. With soaking canvas in a
wax-resin mixture you might lose valuable information about painting
techniques, materials used, etc. As I'm sure you considered climate
control of the room where the painting is stored to prevent the
canvas from permanent moving, there are several ways of establishing
a microenvironment on single paintings. An interesting method was
described in an article from E. Bosshard "Paintings: "The (show) case
for passive climate control" in: Simon Knell (1997), Care of
collections, London, New York

Here the author designed showcases for single paintings. The object
is then framed with the case, which is made from glass and plexiglas
with bagged silica gel behind the painting. The silica gel can be
conditioned to the desired relative humidity (RH) and keeps it
stable over a long period of time when the case is airtight sealed.
This way you can avoid the disadvantages of sudden changes in the
surrounding climate.

Ingo Carow
Student of engineering conservation
Berlin, Germany

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:29
                 Distributed: Friday, November 12, 1999
                       Message Id: cdl-13-29-004
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