Cleaning parchment

We are pursuing a conservation treatment on a collection of
18th-19th century books with very dirty parchment bindings.

Taking into consideration that dirt can be damaging to its substrate
and since the mechanical cleaning with vinyl erasers is not giving
us very good results we would like to ask if someone has any good
advises about other appropriate cleaning techniques.

We have read about the cleaning with "surface cleaning agent"
suggested by the National Library of the Neederlands, which consists
of a mixture of neutral non-ionic soap with carboxymethyl cellulose
(CMC) in water, but we believe that some percentage of this solution
would remain in the parchment causing its damage.

We have also been suggested to use lime water applied with slightly
humidified cotton swabs. Since lime is one of the products used in
the parchment preparation it wouldn't cause it any harm; however we
can't find any written reference to this cleaning procedure. Has any
one ever heard of it?

Laura Moura and
Silvia Sequeira
Paper and Book Conservators
The Tropical Research Institute (IICT)
Portugal


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 21:43
               Distributed: Wednesday, February 13, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-21-43-019
                                  ***