Kovács Petronella (szerk.): Isis - Erdélyi magyar restaurátor füzetek 6. (Székelyudvarhely, 2007)
Kiss Hédy: A Székely Nemzeti Múzeumban őrzött zászlók állapotfelmérése
helped us at the preparation of the cover and the binding. The book binder is a special personality of Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureş), who inherited the workshop and the trade after three generations. He practices and passes on his trade in a traditional way and, at the same time, he is interested in the theories and methods of restoration as well. In his workshop, he keeps equipments from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and flyleaves and covers, etc. from the same age. In lack of analogues, we used papers, marbled paper cover and a flyleaf of a neutral shape, which offer a moderate and pleasant harmony to the cover. Both books were placed in acid-free cardboard boxes prepared after the sizes of the books. Kriszina Márton Conservator Teleki-Bolyai Documentation Library Marosvásárhely Târgu Mureş Andrea BERNÁTH Conservation of an Eskimo child’s boots The Eskimo pair of boots restored as a thesis work is the property of the International Ethnographic Collection of the Franz Binder Museum operating within the frames of the Complexul Naţional Muzeal Muzeul ASTRA. The exact date of the production is unknown, but it is certainly more than 100 years old as it was donated to the museum in 1901. The yellowish boots must have been made for an about three-year-old child (regarding European sizes). The thick leather soles are yellowish-orange of a darker shade than the rest of the boots and their surfaces are shiny. The matt yellowish-creamy legs were made of thinner leather. They end in round leather stripes at the top, to which cotton ribbons were attached. They are decorated with white and red horizontal and arched stripes on a grey background. The boots were stitched by hand using a thread made of animal intestines. The microscopic comparative analyses revealed that they were made of reindeer skin. The analysis of the tanning demonstrated that the skin was not tanned. The leathers skins of the boots were not coloured, the discolouration of the sole came from the fat that had been smeared in it. The result of the pH measurement was satisfactory: it gave a value of 5. The objects had earlier been mechanically and chemically cleaned and the restorer tried to soften them and conserve their shape. The restoration data sheet contained the followings: they were cleaned with a netex brush, moulds were removed with ethyl alcohol, the material was softened with the watery solution of glycerine, alcohol and fungicide, and small sandbags and faience fragments were used to restore the shape. The small boots were in a strongly dehydrated condition at the beginning of the restoration. The leather was desiccated, hard and brittle. Dust covered the surfaces. Insects damaged the material causing losses, which extended to about 5-10 % of the leather surface. Where there were many holes, the leather thinned. We found spots indicating the activity of micro-organisms. One of the boots was tom along the stitching at the toe probably because the thicker sole and the thinner leather of the leg reacted in different ways to moisture and shrinking caused by desiccation could lead to the tearing of the less resistant skin. There were similar tears at the jointing of the upper stripe and the leg as well on both boots, which could be caused by earlier interventions when the shape of the boots was restored without having sufficiently moistened and softened the skin. The straps and loops also became brittle on the sides. No trace of wearing could be detected. To determine the measurements of the boots, a sketch was made exactly following the cut. Then a scaled copy of the boots was prepared from cardboard, which later helped to keep the shape of the objects. The purposes of the conservation were the disinfection, the cleaning and the increasing of the moisture content of the boots, the reconstruction of the original shape, the replacement of the losses and securing appropriate storage conditions. After dusting, mould development was stopped with a solution containing 70 % isopropanol and 30 % distilled water, the skin was cleaned and the pencil traces were removed. In effect of the treatment, the skin somewhat softened. To restore the original shape of the boots, the moisture content of the leather had to be stabilised. A perfectly closed exsiccator was used, in which the vapour content was stabilised with various saturated salt solutions. Concentrated potassium-bichromate was placed in a vessel of a slightly smaller diameter than the transparent glass vessel, in which the changes could be checked. The stabilisation of the micro-environment was controlled for a few days with the help of a digital thermo-hygrograph placed into the exiccator. In the first few days, salt had to be added since the moisture content of the closed space increased to an undesirably high value with the dissolution of the solid matter. Finally, we succeeded in securing a stabile environment of a moisture content of 50 % and a temperature of 18-20 °C. The small boots were placed on a ceramic grate and a cotton wool layer covered with neutral synthetic material was put underneath. This damping humidification method brought only partial results: the skin was no more rigid, but it did not contain enough moisture to afford the restoration of the original shape. Thus, all the deformed elements were moistened across a Sympatex semi-permeable foil membrane. The membrane lets water through the specially prepared surface only in vapour form so over-moistening can be evaded. The boots were wrapped in Sympatex foils, over which a thick paper saturated with water was placed covered with a rubber bandage and finally wrapping foil covered the objects, which hindered the fast desiccation of the paper. The layers were removed after half an hour 89
