Műtárgyvédelem, 2012-2013 (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum)
Két, hőtől károsodott ájtatos könyv restaurálása
Ruska Lívia • Két, hőtől károsodott ájtatos könyv restaurálása The conservation of two heat-damaged prayer books Lívia Ruska In 2011, as her degree project, the author had the opportunity to restore two heat-damaged prayer books held by the Hungarian National Archives. The various interventions aimed on the one hand to strengthen the fabric of the books and on the other to make them readable and researchable. Restoration was warranted by their stiff, scorched, and out-of-shape condition. Both works once belonged to the Habsburg family. During a fire which broke out at the time of the 1956 revolution, they were damaged, albeit differently in each case. This provided opportunities for investigating, in the course of experiments, the restoration possibilities available for heat-damaged books. As regards prayer book no. 1, which was bound in purple leather, the text was written in French using iron-gall ink. The decorative headers introducing the prayers were executed in coloured ink containing a gum binding agent; they were given further emphasis by means of gilding and silvering. Distributed through the book were a number of pictures painted in aquarelle. Silk endpapers preceded and followed the textblock. The cover, the edges, and the endpapers, too, were decorated with gilding. The book had become weak structurally, edges of pages were discoloured and incomplete in some cases, and the leather covering was shrunken and very fragile. So that the necessary forms of treatment could be employed, the book had to be taken apart. The humidification and repair of the pages was worked out experimentally using purpose-made pages scorched similarly to the original ones. After dry and wet cleaning, repairs for the pages were made from coloured cellulose-fibre leafcasted paper and then pasted in. Methyl-cellulose was used for glueing. Next, the edges were reinforced with Japanese tissue paper. Finally, gatherings were resewn in the original way. After repair, the silk endpapers were each covered with silk crepeline. The leather covering had been so much changed in the fire that it could not be softened and repaired without damaging it further; moreover, such interventions would have caused the disappearance of evidence of how it was made. For this reason, the original boards were placed in a protective box made especially for them. Prayer book no. 1 was given a new leather cover made from vegetable-tanned goatskin. Prayer book no. 2 was bound in brown leather. Its text was written in carbon ink, on handmade paper, and in German, with decorated initial letters. The volume featured engravings on parchment set at intervals; the cover and the edges were decorated with gilding. The gatherings were sewn onto five single raised cords. The heat of the fire had caused serious deformation of the binding and the parchment. The leather had become hard and fragmented, and consequently the boards were difficult to open. The cleaning of the pages was performed mechanically; the repair of the endpapers (which were likewise removed) took place by means of leafcasting by hand after dry and wet cleaning. The smoothing out of the parchment leaves could be achieved through humidification and stretching. The leather was less dehydrated 107
