Removing felt-tip pen ink from paper

I have studied paper Conservation. However, for the past seven years
I have not had the chance to work on hands-on paper conservation on
my job (although the job is conservation related), so I really need
your help.

A friend of my parents has his year book and on his picture he has
drawn and written an insulting word about him with blue and orange
felt tip marker. He asked if it could be removed because he did not
want to pass it on to his children as it is.

Since that had happened more than fifty years ago he had no idea of
what kind of marker it was. I had tried some spot testing with
water, water-ethanol, ethanol, acetone. The only thing that was
responding was acetone using capillary action onto a blotter, but it
was very slow, so I thought I will give it bath. As I was
humidifying the paper with the spray I thought to use a solution
with 50-50 water-ethanol that worked a wonder. It was then that the
orange colour disappeared. The blue on the other side has faded but
it does not want to go away. Although I was afraid that paper would
not withstand all that treatment it has not done any harm to it. Is
there anything else I could try?

Amalia Gkimourtzina
Conservator
Kastoria Greece


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 22:47
                Distributed: Saturday, February 21, 2009
                       Message Id: cdl-22-47-019
                                  ***