Online class on care of leather

MS224: Care of Leather and Skin Materials
Instructor: Helen Alten
Oct 4 through Oct 29, 2010

Location: online at <URL:http://www.museumclasses.org>

Prior to the invention of plastics, skin materials were the flexible
covering used for most objects--from bellows to books, carriages to
desktops. Furs and skins are in almost every museum's collection, be
it Natural History, History or Art. Caring for leather and skin
materials demands an understanding of how and why they deteriorate.
Care of Leather and Skin Materials offers a simplified explanation
of the origin, chemistry and structure of leathers and skins.
Students learn to identify leathers and surface finishes, determine
their extent of deterioration, write condition reports, and
understand the agents of deterioration that are harmful to leather
and skins both in storage and on exhibit. Topics include preparing
hide and skin materials for storage and exhibit, the use of archival
materials and which ones might harm skin proteins, housekeeping
techniques for large objects or books on open display, and
three-dimensional supports for leather and skin to keep them from
distorting. Integrated pest management and historical treatments
will be covered, with a unit on hazardous materials applied to older
skins and leather that might prove a danger to staff.  Students will
receive a sample set of skin materials on which experiments may be
carried out.

The Instructor:

    Helen Alten, is the Director of Northern States Conservation
    Center and its chief Objects Conservator. For nearly 30 years
    she has been involved in objects conservation, starting as a
    pre-program intern at the Oriental Institute in Chicago and the
    University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. She
    completed a degree in Archaeological Conservation and Materials
    Science from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of
    London in England. She has built and run conservation
    laboratories in Bulgaria, Montana, Greece, Alaska and Minnesota.
    She has a broad understanding of three-dimensional materials and
    their deterioration, wrote and edited the quarterly _Collections
    Caretaker_, maintains the popular
    <URL:http://www.collectioncare.org> web site, and lectures
    throughout the United States on collection care topics. Helen
    Alten began working with people from small, rural, and tribal
    museums while as the state conservator for Montana and Alaska.
    Helen currently conducts conservation treatments and operates a
    conservation center in Charleston, WV and St. Paul, MN.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:18
               Distributed: Thursday, September 30, 2010
                       Message Id: cdl-24-18-018
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