Polyethylene glycol and parchment

Javier Tacon Clavain <restauracion [at] buc__ucm__es> writes

>A valuable book of our collection (manuscript on parchment)
>"suffered" a "restoration treatment" thirty years ago, with the help
>of polyethylene glycol applied by immersion. Would somebody  to
>predict the aging behavior of this material? Is there any possible
>treatment to remove this PEG?

If the PEG was applied 30 years ago and the parchment sample is
displaying increased degradation, then the damage is virtually done
so to speak. The ageing of parchment is very difficult, if not
impossible, to assess but a number of methods are available to
assess the parchment as it is today (X-ray diffraction, Raman
spectroscopy, FT-IR, SDS-PAGE etc.)

To slow down the ageing of the parchment, I would suggest keeping it
in ideal conditions (dark room, low relative humidity etc.) At this
time there is no way to reverse the damage done.

Craig Kennedy
Centre for Extracellular Matrix Biology
School of Biological and Environmental Sciences
University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA
United Kingdom
+44 1786 467814


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:74
                   Distributed: Tuesday, May 27, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-16-74-006
                                  ***