Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
Pages - 83
7. Structure of Gore-tex sandwich during the treatment of the coffin piece of the paint layer the stains caused by water and body fluids became more distinctive. Since 160 coffins and many coffin fragments from the crypt were given to the collection of the Tragor Ignác Museum we obtained permission to conduct experiments to remove stains with the Gore-tex membrane on the coffins not treated yet. We chose a gray painted separate end piece of a coffin. We haven’t fixed the powdery layer of paint before the treatment. We carried out the wetting from both sides in order to avoid the warping of the piece. We placed a piece of Gore-tex felt cut to size on the painted side of the piece with the membrane facing the paint, followed with a somewhat smaller size wet blotting paper and finally a polyethylene foil. Then we turn the sandwich around and placed paper tissue on the unpainted side, a piece of wet blotting paper, foil and a piece of board for a weight. (Picture 7.) We repeatedly wetted the blotting paper from the side of the Gore-tex approximately every 20 minutes using warm water in each case. Within 2 hours the full surface was wet. During drying the pieces of blotting paper were changed frequently. As a result of the treatment certain stains disappeared completely, whereas others just became dimmer. We thought that maybe the remaining stains could be dissolved in some kind of organic solvent, so we repeated the treatment, applying the 1:1 solution of ethanol and water.16 Instead of bringing an improvement this process resulted in the appearance of even more borderlines after drying they came out in places were there were no such stains before. The object was given to us by the museum for experiments, so we carried out a third wetting process, similar to the first treatment. As a result of this treatment the stains caused by the alcohol treatment disappeared. The powdery layer of paint didn’t get damaged or wiped off during the treatments and we didn’t experience any optical changes either. The paint was fixed with a 5% alcohol solution of poly(vinyl-butyro-acetate) after the stains were removed. Optical change of the paint layer could not have been found after the treatment. ** “v-. 8. Coffin piece after treatment 83 6. Coffin piece before treatment I WEIGHT S FOIL ( WET BLOTTING PAPER ; THE OBJECT \ GORE-TEX WET BLOTTING PAPER S FOIL
