Ink corrosion

Alberto Ballotta <aballotta [at] libero__it> writes

>Actually I'm working on a late 12th century Italian manuscript,
>calfskin, where the ink is starting to corroding few pages.
>...
>I'm searching a way of trying to stop this corrosion, so I'm
>wondering what's the best way to start to treat this manuscript.

You will find the recent research & conservation topics concerning
iron gall ink corrosion on the iron-gall ink web-site
<URL:http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/ink/>. The site was developed in The
Netherlands and is hosted by the ECPA. It contains a lot of
information and consists of the following chapters:

    iron gall ink
    ink corrosion
    collection management
    research
    conservation
    events
    literature

Mainly it is focussed on the conservation of ink corrosion on paper,
concerning ink corrosion on parchment unfortunately there are very
few articles (see site / literature: Wouters et al.).

Two recent articles concerning the comparison of aqueous treatments of ink
corroded artefacts are published last year:

    Reissland, Birgit
    Ink Corrosion: Aqueous and Non-Aqueous Treatments of Paper
    Objects--State of the Art.
    in: Restorator 20 (1999): 167-180.
    (Lecture at the ICOM-Congress in Lyon, 1999)

    Reissland, Birgit, Suzan de Groot
    Ink Corrosion: Comparison of Currently Used Aqueous Treatments
    for Paper Objects.
    in: Preprints der IADA, 9th IADA Congress, Copenhagen, August
    16-21, 1999, Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Archiv-,
    Bibliotheks- und Graphikrestauratoren, Copenhagen (1999):
    121-129.

As you could read in the Conservation DistList there will be a
conference this year in Newcastle, England with iron gall ink as
topic. Our Institute is doing research on the ink corrosion topic
since 6 years. For further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Birgit Reissland
Paper Conservator
Conservation Research Dept.
Netherlands Institut for Cultural Heritage
Gabriel Metsustraat 8
1071 EA  Amsterdam
+31 20 3054 702
Fax: +31  020 3054 700


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:46
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 7, 2000
                       Message Id: cdl-13-46-014
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