J.CAC VOLUME 28 (2003)
The Use of Simmering Water in the Treatment of a Nineteenth Century Sketchbook of Iron Gall Ink Drawings by James G. Mackay
This paper describes an approach to the conservation treatment of a sketchbook from the collection of Library and Archives Canada. The J. G. Mackay sketchbook consists of drawings that are severely damaged by iron gall ink corrosion. Two different treatments were considered for the sketchbook: calcium phytate treatment, recently developed at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN), and the “boiling,” or as the authors prefer to describe it, “simmering” water treatment, based on the experiments of Austrian conservators and treatments carried out in a few European laboratories since the 1970s. Analyses were also carried out to investigate the efficiency of the simmering water treatment by monitoring the wash water’s pH, iron concentration and UV absorbance (indicating the presence of soluble salts). This report will describe the difficult process of choosing the optimal treatment and its ethical significance, along with a detailed description of the simmering water treatment.
Download: JCAC28 Trojan-Bedynski et al