About paper restoration
Paper is a historic relic… if properly treated
MúzeumCafé 11.
It can sometimes happen like this … in the morning I step into the restorers’ workshop. Rays of sunshine are streaming in through the huge windows and the white walls beautifully reflect the light. How magnificent and tranquil it would be if it stayed like that! Of course, it cannot be. I first draw the curtains since it is best to exclude sunlight from the room. Light – mostly ultra-violet – can represent a rough deal for coloured materials, paint, ink, paper or polish. The paper restorer can stop or at least slow down further deterioration of acidified paper by adequate conservation, but can no longer rebuild disintegrated materials. So it is best to eliminate strong light with a high UV content or at least screen it with foil in premises or in a glass cabinet where valuable objects are kept. The appearance of a paper restoring workshop, its dimensions and the nature of its equipment depend on many factors. Needless to say, the determining one is the amount that can be spent on its construction and maintenance, as well as how many people will work there. This, in turn, is subject to the expected ‘turnover’ of the workshop. Planning is required so that any treatment can be executed with the least possible movement of the items. Take the example of a workshop mainly involved with small works of graphic art, etchings, maps and books. The initial space has to be for storing received objects, and it is preferable not to have this in the workshop itself. The second can be designated to photographing the work. The third is the place for mechanical cleaning, protection and any other local treatment on desks near a sink. The fourth place is for wet treatment. The fifth can be for the flat drying of objects with drying stands and appropriate presses. It is advisable to have this place near the soaking trays. The technological process involved with restoring books is more complicated, but on the other hand it usually takes place without much movement of the objects. The phase requiring the most space is that of washing, drying of the pages of the book taken apart and then putting the sheets back together. A paper workshop of a general nature is one type of approach. In a sense, this is not really ideal since it also has its own specific problems (in a nutshell: something of everything but hardly anything entirely). Yet these days this is what is sustainable, though regrettably is not always available – there are public collections in provincial Hungary which do not have any kind of paper-restoring workshop. A workshop mainly concerned with restoring books requires entirely different utensils and equipment from a restoration workshop specialising in graphic art or one dealing with tracing and photographic copies, where large-format items consisting of one sheet are involved. A workshop restoring three-dimensional paper items, models, props and folk objects must again be equipped differently, and requires moveable utensils which can be used in a variety of ways. It is impossible to equip a workshop in an ideal way, such that it would be suitable for every procedure. What is true is that a restorer who has to renovate an embossed, gilded and hand-painted fan at one point, followed by a large-format technical tracing and a manuscript from the end of the 19th century, or a missal from the beginning of the last century under identical technical conditions will constantly be faced with the fact of having to make compromises. This, of course, needs creativity … we might even say a deeper understanding of the materials being handled. I am convinced that restoration workshops cost much yet can yield a lot from visitors, tourists or commerce – if they can function. If not, then it’s a case of “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”.