1 INTRODUCTION

The fraktur is one of the legacies of America's early cultural diversity. This form of manuscript folk art was popular among the Protestant German immigrants in Pennsylvania and an integral part of families and communities for more than 150 years. However, interest in the fraktur waned by the mid-19th century, and many deteriorated on walls and in drawers over the years. This article presents a concise historical background of the fraktur and the conservation case study of an extremely deteriorated early 19th-century fraktur birth-baptismal certificate, or Taufschein(fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Taufschein, 1800–23, before treatment. Collection of the Library of Congress