1 INTRODUCTION

There are certain textiles which for one reason or another, cannot be sewn, although, for those textiles which are physically strong enough, sewing is the least destructive and most easily reversible mounting technique. The fibers of many textiles are too deteriorated to take the strain put upon them by a sewing thread; the surfaces of some very smoothly finished textiles, usually silks, are too visually disturbed by sewing for this technique to be used. Various other methods have been devised for mounting textiles that cannot be sewn. Sandwiching textiles between a solid support and glass or Plexiglas is a common alternative, especially for pieces that do not require a great deal of manipulation during the mounting procedure. Methods of treatment which do not immobilize deteriorated textiles, including sewing between two layers of crepeline, do not provide adequate support.2

Various adhesives have been used to mount deteriorated textiles. Solvent adhesives3 (including aqueous ones) have some serious drawbacks both during and after treatment, which have been discussed elsewhere.4 Heat-seal adhesives offer many advantages, especially during the mounting process.5 One of these advantages is non-impregnation of the textile. This paper presents a heat-seal technique using a mixture of polyvinyl acetate resins that avoids many of the problems of earlier heat-seal procedures. Polyvinyl acetate resins retain greater solubility than the emulsions6 and, in the technique presented here, offer much greater flexibility of the mounted textile.