Paper Conservation: Decisions & Compromises

was basically to reinforce the structure of the
artifact to prevent it from further deterioration
and mechanical damages.
The priority of the owner was to bring the
item to a condition that would enable scientific
research, and identify the origin and the history
of the herbarium. Moreover, the item was supposed
to be exhibited. This meant that all the
loose material can no longer stay between the
sheets of paper and it was necessary to find a
solution for the more than half of the specimens
loosely laying on the pages.
What did this mean for conservation? It soon
turned out that the professional knowledge of
paper conservation is not sufficient to complete
a treatment that would meet the owner’s expectations.
The Museum of Agriculture in Ciechanowiec
doesn’t employ a paper conservator. All
the processes should be completed during this
particular treatment. The conservation studio
was remote from the Museum’s location and
there was no possibility of frequent consultation
meetings. From the conservator’s perspective
it was a matter of scientific responsibility. The
questions to face first were: shall the conservator
match the loose plants to a particular place in
the herbarium using a botanic encyclopedia and
intuition or should he put all the loose material
in a buffered envelope and send it back to the
owner? What if he confuses the plants? What if
he attaches them and makes it difficult to work
with for a botanist researcher who will find out
that somebody made some terrible mistake? Will
the researcher then be able to safely remove the
specimen from the sheet and attach it onto the
Fig. 2: Plant fragments from page 5 prepared for matching.
right sheet without any damage to the specimen
and the whole item?
The only method to solve the problem of the
loose plant material was close cooperation between
the conservator and an ethnobotanist,
notably since there were a lot of specimens belonging
to the same taxonomic family and several
plants were apparently not lying on “their”
sheets but were dislocated in the distance of a
few pages. Specialist’s advice seemed to be more
than necessary.
Treatment
Before the conservation treatment the herbarium
was carefully documented, including pageby-page
photographing which proved to be an
extremely helpful tool from the very beginning.
The binding and the book block were disassembled.
Dismantling revealed fragments of the
woodblock printed paper that were not discolored,
which enabled the later reconstruction.
Originally there were no numbers on the pages,
so the conservator made the pagination. After
slitting the sewing, each page was treated as follows:
the loose plants and plant particles were
taken out from the area of spine, the whole loose
plants and possibly identifiable plant fragments
were put into envelopes numbered after the
number page on which they were found. Dirt,
plant crumbles and insect remains were removed
and the sheet was separated from the block.
Pages were dry cleaned. Brittleness of plant
specimens excluded the possibility of extensive
wet processes like washing, so only local wet
treatment of the paper was considered when applicable.
The brown stains on the paper support
were not planned to be removed as this might
have been damage the plants. Furthermore, the
stains were considered an identifying factor,
helpful in matching some of the loose plants or
identifying the lost material. The sheets were
deacidified from the back with Bookkeeper
Spray which is a surface deacidifying agent and
provides non-aqueous deacidification. This was
considered the safest solution both for the paper
and plants as there are no clear guidelines for
the deacidification of plant material. The pH rose
from 5-6.30 before to 6.5-8 after conservation.
Paper support needed strengthening which
was provided by applying 2% methyl cellulose solution
from the back of the sheet. After application
the sheet was turned upside down and any
excess methylcellulose on the plants was gently
ICOM-CC Graphic Documents Working Group Interim Meeting | Vienna 17 – 19 April 2013
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