AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

The selection of appropriate repair materials is a primary factor in the long-term success of interventive treatment. This is particularly challenging for parchment repairs in which we must find a material that is comparable in rigidity, color, and weight as well as compatible with the hygroscopic nature of the original parchment. When parchment repairs are needed in bound materials, these repairs must also be able to withstand repeated flexing from use. Following a 2019 cross disciplinary workshop hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library, “Biocodicology: The Parchment Record and the Biology of the Book”, conservators at the Folger became interested in recreating an historic preparation of tawed parchment for use as a repair material. It was immediately apparent that this project would require extensive collaboration. The outline for the project included processing the skins, making sample repairs, and carrying out a suite of analytical and ageing tests. 

As a small independent research library, the Folger does not have the analytical capabilities necessary to evaluate the skins, nor do we have a scientist to help guide testing and interpret results, so we began reaching out to other institutions for assistance. The Folger collaborated with Jesse Mayer at Pergamena to prepare twelve skins of varying thicknesses using an historic recipe. Once the skins were prepared, conservators at the Folger worked with William Minter and the Penn State University Libraries to begin accelerated ageing tests on samples from the skins. The Preservation Research and Testing Division (PRTD) at the Library of Congress has an extensive array of analytical equipment and a staff of highly trained conservation scientists. In the spring of 2024 conservators at the Folger began working with Dr. Gwen dePolo at PRTD to analyze the tawed skins. With the specific use case of the repair material in mind, the analytical testing has focused on the mechanical properties, physical properties, thermal stability, and investigating the source of a residue exuding from the skins. Dr. dePolo and Kathryn Kenney have had regular meetings about the skins, types of tests to perform, and how the results impact the usability of the alum tawed parchment as a repair material. The collaboration between the Folger Library and PRTD has proved mutually beneficial as the methods applied to analyzing the alum-tawed skins will also be used in other parchment-related research projects that will be pursued at the Library of Congress. 

This talk will discuss the benefits and challenges of a large collaborative project. We will discuss how we defined the scope and scale at an institutional level and have been able to draw on the strengths and expertise of all the participants at an individual level. Specifically, we will focus on how we used our different, but complimentary knowledge to evaluate a potential new repair material considering usability and long-term stability.