Parchment for art project

I am a book conservator in the John Rylands library in Manchester.
I've been contacted by an artist, Leonid Tsvetkov, to help him
produce an artwork which would be a believable reproduction of a
4th-5th century parchment fragment.  It would be great to have ideas
and thoughts on this subject from the conservators using the Cons
DistList.  I attach a couple of pictures of fragments which could be
of reference and below there's an explanation of the project.

   "I plan to produce a text document that was written by Saint
    Servatius the bishop of Tongeren.  I will invent a history that
    brings this document into the care of Father Paquay, composing a
    legend involving a long line of guardians who have protected
    this precious text.  The document--or the 'surviving' fragments
    of such--will be presented in a museum case and installed in the
    Minderbroederskerk, along with the translation of the text.  The
    project explores legends in the Christian traditions surrounding
    the communities of Hasselt, Tongeren and Maastricht, inviting
    observers to connect with local cultural heritage, but in new
    ways that open up a different world of possibilities.  With the
    'discovery' and installation of this text, I am creating an
    object and a story that, while drawn from the realm of fantasy,
    nevertheless fuels the imagination, grounding participants in a
    larger world history and at the same time to their (our) own
    concrete time and place.

   "This text will be written with extreme care and thorough
    research with the help of top scholars in textual research as
    well as specialists in the particular history of the region,
    scribes and palaeographers as well as paper conservators.
    Alongside with the production and exhibition of the text I will
    produce a series of events designed to provoke discussions and
    gossip around the 'discovery' of the text, its contents and its
    meaning for the cultural heritage of Belgium.  These
    provocations may include newspaper blurbs about local
    archaeological findings, appearances of other 'less significant'
    artefacts in the area and the church, and consideration of the
    implications of this 'finding' for re-energizing the strong
    historical connections between Hasselt, Tongeren and Maastricht.

   "The installation must therefore include a beautifully executed
    text that is then beautifully installed.  Though the
    installation itself will offer very little in the way of
    description, the high value of the document should be
    immediately evident and the placement of the text within its
    setting pleasant to the eye."
        -- L. Tsvetkov

These are links to Leonid's previous art's projects:

    <URL:http://www.hadrianus.it/people/leonid-tsvetkov>
    <URL:http://www.doppiozero.com/materiali/ars/leonid-tsvetkov-disturbance>
    <URL:http://www.neromagazine.it/n/?p=14463>
    <URL:http://julietartmagazine.com/it/leonid-tsvetkov-disturbances/>

Laura Caradonna
Conservator
The John Rylands Library
The University of Manchester
150 Deansgate
Manchester M3 3EH
+44 161 306 6524


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 28:1
                   Distributed: Friday, June 6, 2014
                        Message Id: cdl-28-1-013
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