Odour removal

Melissa Gunter <mgunter [at] museum__vic__gov__au> writes

>The two dog collars are composed of stitched leather and undyed wool
>felt with copper studs, possibly nickel plated iron buckles and
>aluminium name plates.  The harness is composed of white, thick,
>possibly cotton webbing with black thread stitching; a nickel plated
>iron loop; pale green nylon rope; and thinner cotton webbing with
>pink, yellow and grey bands with blue and black felt tip pen
>markings. ...
>
>We need advice on how the odour can be removed from these objects
>without wet cleaning. Any suggestions or comments on past
>experiences of removing odours from cotton, leather and wool felt
>would be greatly appreciated.

You might try to place the objects into plastic bags containing
diatomaceous earth. I did this with a book that reeked of tobacco
smoke and after several weeks the odor was gone.  Cleaning the
objects thereafter is simply a matter of vacuuming the objects
(using appropriate conservation technique).  If anyone knows a
reason why this should not be attempted please inform Ms. Gunter.

Randolph Stilson
Archivist
The Evergreen State College


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 21:1
                 Distributed: Saturday, April 28, 2007
                        Message Id: cdl-21-1-010
                                  ***