Paper Conservation: Decisions & Compromises

Digitally Printed Paper In-fills for Compensation
as Applied to Japanese Fold - Dyed Paper
Hsin-Chen Tsai
Asian Conservation, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
Introduction
In the conservation of Japanese folding screens,
the decorative papers on the back can sometimes
be replaced with new ones with the same
or similar patterns. In the case of the folding
screens, The Deities of the Tanni-sho, by Munakata
Shiko, these decorative papers are typical Folk
Art Movement (Mingei) style fold-dyed paper. The
artist, Munakata Shiko, dedicated these screens
to the founder of the Mingei movement, Yanagi
Soetsu, with an inscription on the labels at the
back of the screens. Therefore, the label and the
decorative papers should be treated as integral
parts of the art work and put back into place on
the screens.
However, several large losses to these fold-dyed
papers (Fig. 3) were present. For creating in-fills,
it is not only a matter of choosing appropriate
Japanese paper by evaluating the thickness
(slightly less than support) with visually matching
chain lines, color and texture, but also reproducing
the patterns. Therefore, printing digital
photographic images on an appropriate Japanese
paper for use as in-fills was considered.
This paper presents the process of assessing
the appropriateness of using digital in-fills for
this case, the preparation of these digital in-fills
and the materials and equipment that were
used.
Digital techniques for loss compensation
Several papers have been presented about using
digital techniques to compensate for losses in
textile conservation. Rogerson used digital reconstruction
to display the completed image next
to a beaded mask after research and discussing
with the curator (Rogerson, 2002); this example
illustrated how a digitally reconstructed image
met the need of conservation and education. In
the case in the Victoria and Albert Museum, a
digital in-fill was successfully used in compensating
large losses on a Thirteenth Century carpet
(Hartog, 2009). Since the patterns of carpet are repeated
and geometric, the conservator was able
to print the image from the surviving pattern on
an appropriate substrate. For recognition purposes,
the image was printed in a lighter shade
than the original, so the visitor could be aware
of the digital in-fill at a distance of six inches but
would not be distracted by it when viewing at a
distance of six feet. In paper conservation, Mc-
Clintock has mentioned using digital reproduc-
Fig. 1: Printing digital in-fills on the Sekishu paper.
Fig. 2: Tracing the losses before in-filling.
ICOM-CC Graphic Documents Working Group Interim Meeting | Vienna 17 – 19 April 2013
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