Re: muslin for storage

[Joan Kiplinger <jkip@xxxxxxxxx>]

       Karin -- thanx for very useful information which clears up some
"mysteries" and heads me in the right direction.
     As I replied to Jerry Shiner, my concern for best-grade cotton was
remembered from a previous discussion on this list where top quality was cited
as a must-have.

"Karin von Lerber, Prevart GmbH" wrote:

> For small Museums and private Collections we usually use unbleached wide
> cotton fabrics, unsized (as they are sold e.g. for theatre drops). They are
> relatively cheap and - if used to wrap around several times - offer quite
> good dust protection.
> If thorough dust protection is needed, we use cotton down cambric (normally
> used for feather pillows), a lightweight but very dense cotton fabric. It
> only comes bleached and is rather expensive, but great.
> For very low tech solutions we often make e.g. churches collect white cotton
> bed sheets, have them washed once with a detergent without perfume ore
> bleaching agents (they can be bought in health- or oeco-shops in Europe as
> part of a modular washing-solution system and are much more easily available
> than real conservation degree detergents, even though essentialy similar),
> and then washed again without any additives. This is a virtually free
> solution as far as materials are concerned.
>
> I don't think that - in Switzerland - we worry much about the *grade* of
> cotton. Its much more the finishes that bother us. There are lots of
> flame-proof, ready-for-printing-, anti-crincle-, etc. finishes; but we also
> get quite a wide range of non-treated cotton fabrics nowadays. Why do you
> worry about the grade? Because of the inclusion of heavy metals in the
> cellulose? That is - as far as I know - a general problem nowadays when
> growing cotton and not really connected to the grade?