Photocopied letter

One of the stranger phone calls I have received involves a civil war
letter that was inadvertently sucked into the 11x17 tray of a copy
machine while the operator was carrying out "preservation
photocopying." The result is that one civil war letter was copied
onto the substrate of another.  The question posed to me was what
could now be done to the document that now possess its original
faded writing as well as the text from another letter.  The document
is on what I'm assuming to be a highly calendered paper (she says it
isn't at all fibrous, but quite smooth) dating 1865, (suggesting it
is not wood based).  The assumption is that the ink is most likely
iron gall.  I'm wondering if it would be possible to exploit vinyl's
predilection for removing photocopied text onto its own surface if
brought into contact under slight pressure.  I thought this query
was perfect for the DistList and I'd appreciate your ideas and
suggestions.

Hilary A. Kaplan
Conservator
Georgia Department of Archives and History
330 Capitol Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30334
404-656-3554
Fax: 404-651-8471


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 14:35
                Distributed: Thursday, December 21, 2000
                       Message Id: cdl-14-35-007
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