Dear Jennifer,Jennifer Hadley wrote: I encountered exactly the same problem about 1 year ago. There was one suggestion from the list at the time re using solid CO2 ("dry ice"). As the plastic I had, was probably a PE, I could not really reach the point of embrittlement with pellets of CO2 ice. Using warm temperature made everything worse. Solvents didn't help either (I tested a whole lot of them!), as - as soon as there was a slight effect on the plastic, everything started creeping into the textile even further... I ended up removing as much as I could mechanically, which, yes, did pull some textile fibres away. But I considered this being less of a problem than pushing the plastic into the textile even further. Where I had no chance with mechanical removal, I tried to at least work around the embroidered pattern, so that the glossyness of the plastic was reduced in the embroidered areas. All in all: it took an awfull lot of time. Visually, the result (looked at the object from a normal viewing distance) was just barely o.k., but in conservation terms, I still wonder what would have been a better way of proceeding. Not doing anything with the object in question was not really an option: it was a family hairloom that had been sent to one of the last descendents of this particular familiy, and had been placed on the tiled stove in late summer (placed on the acurately folded packaging plastic)... and forgotten there until when the stove was heated for the first time early autumn..... The owner was devastated and desperately wanted the object to at least *look* nice again. I am sorry not to be of any more help, and - I would be very interested in hearing what solution you will find to the problem. Not knowing, why your object has been melting to plastic I would still like to add an additional remark: I find it quite worrying that plastics such as Ethafoam and the like are being introduced more and more into storage areas. In case of a nearby fire (e.g. adjacent room), the heat might cause severe melting of these foams.... (not to speak of the high autoflammability if the fire is in the same room). To me this seems to be a case for careful risk assessment: what materials to use where and why. And I do not think that the use for storage areas can be generalized in "good" and "bad" without such a risk assessment for every specific situation. Sincerely, Karin von Lerber --
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