Herbarium

I'm writing my master-thesis (University of the Arts Bern,
Switzerland) on the herbarium of doctor Felix Platter's (1536-1614)
in the Burger Library in Berne, Switzerland. The 8-book herbarium
collection contains dried plants and images of plants. They are now
digitized and are going to be accessible online in the future.

The thesis focuses on conservation. The difficulties about the
conservation of a herbarium bound as a book are manifold: One must
be able to turn pages supporting brittle and loose plants. The
plants are in direct contact with the opposite page, sometimes
showing watercolours.

Beside researching past publications, I would like to collect
experiences of conservators having already dealt with the problem of
preserving herbal material, especially herbaria in book form. So if
you have experience with the following problems, I would be very
grateful to read about the solutions you chose:

    Dry cleaning the paper sheets supporting fragile specimens

    Consolidation of loose plants: how and with which kind of
    adhesive?

    Pest control and treatment (also the handling of objects which
    may have been treated in the past with harmful pesticides)

    Storage

I also would be interested in earlier procedures that might now show
negative developments.

Lea Dauwalder
Student MA
University of the Arts Bern
Conservation and restoration (graphic arts, books and photography)
Gerberngasse 43
CH-3011 Bern
+41 79 485 10 83


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 25:19
                Distributed: Saturday, October 15, 2011
                       Message Id: cdl-25-19-017
                                  ***