AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

The historic wooden columns currently on open display in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) have been consistently shedding wood flakes throughout 2024. This ongoing deterioration has prompted the application of a targeted, multi-faceted strategy to identify the causes and mitigations made to combat them. For this organic material, the most likely potential agents of deterioration were identified as relative humidity fluctuations, pest activity, and physical force. To gain the clearest image of how and if these agents were impacting this object and a three pronged approach has been implemented.

The first prong of this strategy is analysing the existing data from the object environment, including environmental data and visitor number estimates. This will help identify trends in fluctuation of humidity, periods of increased physical force due to high footfall, and potential patterns in the degradation process.

The second prong employs Acoustic Emission (AE) analysis to monitor internal movement of the wooden columns and determine if movement is caused by humidity changes, pest activity, and external vibrations from urban traffic and gallery visitors. This analysis is combined with the innovative use of touch sensor alarms to alert when the columns are physically contacted by visitors, an area of concern that was raised during planning. The third prong uses Dynamic Vapour Sorption (DVS) analysis, conducted in partnership with English Heritage, to assess the structural integrity of the wood and its vulnerability to humidity variations.

There are multiple instances where these analyses are looking at the same agent of deterioration, for example all tests included consider humidity as a factor. This is not a redundancy in design, but an opportunity to consider factors that cause deterioration as a dynamic and interconnected system - rather than a roster of lone agents. This work aims to inform display strategy for similar heritage objects and to highlight the need for adaptive and interdisciplinary methodologies in preventive conservation.