Transporting and storing manuscripts

Gianlorenzo Pignatti <gianlorenzop [at] hotmail__com> writes

>The Italian company Stein is actually working on the transport and
>storage of the manuscript heritage owned by an important Italian
>conservation institute. For the package of the parchment scrolls and
>the manuscripts on vegetable fibers ...

I work at the British Library and within my project we have been
dealing with scroll manuscripts on a variety of material including
parchment and paper. We store the scrolls in custom made boxes
although we tend to use standard measurements to optimise storage
space.

The boxes are made of "pawlonia wood" which has very low emissions
and very good insect repelling properties. These boxes have been
used in Japan for centuries and have very good documented archival
properties. Pawlonia boxes being expensive, we also use boxes made
of archival acid free board, lining the inside with Plastazote.

Are your scroll rolled up? One important consideration is the size
of the roller inside the scroll. If the diameter is too small, the
scroll will crease with time. The roller we use are also made of
acid free board and lined with acid free tissue paper. The diameter
is 5cm. If it helps I could send you pictures of our boxes.

Barbara Borghese
UK and European Project Coordinator
The International Dunhuang Project
The British Library
+44 20 74127316
Fax: +44 20 74127641


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 21:33
                Distributed: Wednesday, December 5, 2007
                       Message Id: cdl-21-33-006
                                  ***