Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
Pages - 128
POSSIBILITIES OF COLOUR RECONSTRUCTION Ornaments and patterns made with metal threads cannot be cleaned, the corrosion cannot be removed, and looking at the textile we cannot see if gold or silver threads were used. On the base of the results of visual or instrumental analyses we can better characterise the textile and can build an image of the original colours. It can of course only be tentative since the faded textile base and its original colour are difficult to reconstruct even when the colouring agent (pigment, dye) is known (7). Gilt silver can also have various shades depending on the composition (8) and thickness of the metal leaf. The colour reconstruction of the metal surfaces can happen in different ways. In the follow5. Membrane thread after chemical cleaning — the metal layer jngs we give an disappeared from a part of the membrane (remains of metal example of the corn- can be seen only after untwisting the thread). puterised technique 6. Blackened gold-coated membrane thread from and Italian (Lucca) textile fragment from the 14th century. The original gold colour appeared in the middle when the two or three times twisted strip was untwisted. 7. Colour reconstruction of the thread in picture 6. 128
