Inuit clothing and kayak

Brown Christine <christine.brown [at] hullcc__gov__uk> writes

>We have a selection of Inuit clothing and artifacts that are made
>from what we believe is seal skin.  Most of the objects are
>straightforward but two or three items are proving more difficult
>due to their poor condition and/or construction.  One is a man's
>hooded jacket which has become very dry and brittle and has suffered
>some tears on the sleeves. We think the tears have been caused by
>the weight of a wooden hand attached to the end of each straw
>stuffed sleeve.  ...

Concerning your request for kayak treatment information, the CCI
website posts an article on the treatment of a kayak I did a while
back now, here:

    <URL:http://www.cci-icc.gc.ca/
        crc/cidb/document-eng.aspx?Document_ID=269>

This paper was actually published in English as:

    Carole Dignard, 1992,
    "Tear Repair of Skins with Minimal Access to their Back: the
    Treatment of a Kayak"
    Leather Conservation News Volume 7 Number 2, p. 1-8

and also in French with a slightly different angle as

    Carole Dignard,
    "La reparation des peaux d'un kayak", 1989,
    Proceedings of the 14th Annual IIC-CG Conference Actes du 14e
    Congres Annuel de l'IIC-GC, ed. Johanna G. Wellheiser, Toronto
    Area Conservation Group of IIC-CG, Ottawa.

Also my fellow conservator in the Ottawa region, Caroline Marchand,
has posted on the Canadian Museum of Civilization's website the
following paper:

    'Conservation of a Kayak'
    <URL:http://www.civilization.ca/
        cmc/exhibitions/aborig/watercraft/kayak/kayak1e.shtml>

There are also the following:

    Bonnot-Diconne, Celine and Francois Coulon, 1998
    "Restauration dun kayak esquimau en peau du Musee des Beaux-arts
    et dArcheologie de Rennes", CoRe no. 4, SFIIC and Editions
    Errance, pp. 26-30.

    Cruikshank, Philippa, 1987
    "The Conservation of a Model Eskimo Kayak Involving the
    Treatment of Gut", Leather Conservation News vol. 4 no. 1, fall
    1987, p.1-12.

Similar issues to the treatment of kayaks may be found in the
treatment of sealskin floats, which you may want to search for in
AATA, e.g.

    Ruppel, J.R.
    "An Arctic Sealskin Float: To Inflate or Not To Inflate."
    The Conservator 26 (2002) pp. 2-41.

Concerning your request concerning 'a man's hooded jacket', what
type of skin tannage is it? is it a gutskin parka (very thin, almost
transparent, and oiled) If so there are these papers on gutskin
treatments:

    Heather Dumka
    "The Conservation Treatment of Three Gutskin Parkas"
    Journal of IIC-CG (now Journal of CAC) vol. 16 (1991) pp.17-22.

    Hill, Linda K., 1986,
    "The Conservation of Eskimo Seal-Gut Kagools"
    SSCR Bulletin, no. 7, Scottish Society for Conservation and
    Restoration, p. 17-19.

    Morrison, Lynn, 1986
    "The Conservation of Seal Gut Parkas"
    The Conservator, no. 10, p.17-24.

and of course the classic:

    Fenn, J.
    "Some Practical Aspects in the Choice of Synthetic Resins for
    the Repair of Ethnographic Skin and Gut"
    pp.138-140 in Adhesives and Consolidants, Preprints of the
    Contributions to the Paris Congress, 2-8 September 1984 (eds.
    N.S. Brommelle, E. M. Pye, P. Smith, and G. Thompson). London:
    IIC, 1984.

As you may know the CCI library can provide copies of any of these
or loan publications through inter-library loan.

Carole Dignard
Senior Conservator
Objects Laboratory
Canadian Conservation Institute
1030 Innes Road
Ottawa, Canada K1A OM5
613-998-3721 ext 151
1-866-998-3721 (toll-free in Canada)
Fax: 613-998-4721
Teletypewriter (toll-free) 1-888-997-3123


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:26
                Distributed: Thursday, November 18, 2010
                       Message Id: cdl-24-26-003
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