Műtárgyvédelem, 2006 (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum)
Összefoglalók
Restoration of 18th century leather boots shrunk and deformed at high temperature Róza Brenner The boots that were embroidered according to a rococo taste came from the collection of the aristocratic Esterházy family and probably Miklós Esterházy (1765- 1833) wore them. The collection had been kept in the Museum of Applied Arts at the beginning of the 20th century, during World War II, however, the family thought the cellar of their palace a safer place. A bomb raid totally destroyed the palace in 1945. The objects had spent three more years under the burnt down and ruinous building until they were recovered in a strongly deteriorated condition and returned to the Museum of Applied Arts in 1949. The purpose of the restoration of the boots that got shrunken, deformed and strongly hardened at high temperature was to soften the leather, apply conservation cleaning and return them a shape that resembled the original as much as it was possible. Before treatment, the leather was strongly corrugated and desiccated, it had become so hard that it was nearly impossible to bend it, and it got strongly deformed. One of the boots shrunk to about 80% of its original height in result a direct contact with the heat effect. The metal threads of the embroidery, the flitters and the spurs were corroded to a black colour. The analyses have revealed that the material applied at an earlier treatment burnt on the surfaces that were affected by the high temperature and they created a plastic and hard corrosion different from the silver sulphide layer. The thread that fixed the embroidery weakened and tore at several places so that some of the flitters went missing. The leather was torn at a few places on the head of the boot that was not shrunken. The silver-coated spur broke off from the upper band and got bent toward the sole. Restoration started with the dry cleaning of the dusty surfaces using soft brushes. The leather sucked up the moisture content necessary for its forming in a humidification chamber built above a saturated salt solution providing a moisture content of 56%. A stabile moisture content was reached by the end of two weeks by the way of experimenting with the appropriate ratio of the saturated salt solution of calcium nitrate and sodium chloride. Giving the right shape with regular moving, stuffing and tools that provided a sufficiently intense force in the right direction was a long and slow process that took several months. Water that the object gradually absorbed from dump could return the flexibility to the extremely desiccated leather, yet the areas that had become shrunken in the heat could only partially be extended. The extremely careful execution of reshaping prevented the further tearing of the highly deteriorated silk thread that fixed the silver plaques. Fat liquor applied on moist cotton swabs was used for the wet cleaning of the leather surfaces. The tears were supported with vegetable tanned leather and glued with the 2:1 mixture of rice starch and acrylic type dispersion adhesive. Detailed experiments were made with adhesive mixtures of various components to choose the appropriate adhesive. Then the silver embroidery and the spurs were cleaned with an alcoholic cleaner mixture and mechanically with vinyl rubber. To prevent further deformation, acid-free wadding was pressed in the head of the boots and turned wooden stuffing matter wrapped in cotton cloth was placed in the bootlegs. 188
