Soot on ceramics

Alayne Alvis <alayne.alvis [at] awm__gov__au>

>The Objects Lab at the Australian War Memorial has been looking at
>various treatments for soot damage, both for use in our lab and in
>terms of general advice we can give to the community.

I studied this problem for my Problems in Conservation course at the
Institute of Archaeology in 1985, and published it in the UKIC
Conservator Journal in 1987 with Sandy Davison.

I had 2 pots that were burnt one was a Greek black figure and the
other a Greek Geometric period pot. one had been a victim of the WW2
blitz the other of vandalism and the soot totally covered the
patterns. Sandy also had a similarly damaged pot.

I burnt it off!, slowly raising the temp of the oven to about 400
deg. C and slowly letting it cool again. I was nervous but the pots
survived with no additional cracks that I could see.

This is drastic and did damaging things to the TL or
thermoluminescence of the pot--the heat allows the captured
radiation in the pot's crystals to escape, we supposed the TL had
been heavily corrupted by the damaging firing so we considered our
treatment acceptable. cheers

Paul Harrison
Metals Conservator Hong Kong Govt


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:48
                 Distributed: Friday, February 14, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-16-48-001
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