Injectable foam for furniture

My fellow students and I are currently working on a suite of Bauhaus
seating furniture. As a focal point these works include the adaption
of conservation concepts on the treatment of the upholstery.

The conservation of the upholstery's material state resulted in a
shape that is not quite as voluminous as the original shape was
intended (loss of mass due to embrittlement, degeneration and
compression of the herbal textile materials). Very accurate
indications allowed us to build a transparent PMMA negative mould
that represents the upholstery's original shape. Putting this
negative mould on the conserved upholstery (= positive mould) results
in voids in between, which we want to fill by injecting a foam that
best fulfills conservational requirements.

Looking for a suitable material we were surprised not to find any
injectable foam for conservation applications. As the furniture is
in a museum context there are no special demands on the
functionality of the foam, but a light and soft material would be
appreciated. Does anybody have any ideas?

Christian Imhoff
Student Conservator
Department for Wooden objects and modern materials
Cologne Institute of Conservation


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 23:41
                 Distributed: Saturday, April 24, 2010
                       Message Id: cdl-23-41-019
                                  ***