e-conservationthe online magazine No. 15, July 2010

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Back to Basics?

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"The technologies which have had the most profound effects

on human life are usually simple."

Freeman Dyson

In the 70’s my father acquired some electronic tools that I now own and still use. Their simplicity always fascinated me as after some 40 years they still work perfectly, aside some natural wear out, of course. I doubt that the tools made today will pass the test of time as those of my father did.

Over the years several high-tech devices were developed that helped to move forward the know-ledge we have of art materials, either helping us to take conservation decisions or just for the sake of research and knowledge. In that same way, much of our education in art conservation focuses on 21st century technologies that can be used in the analysis of materials or for diagnosis, such as spectroscopy techniques, 3D, and, more recently, even nanotechnology.

However, once the young professional starts his career in the private sector it is unlikely he will use most of these high-tech tools only at the reach of big budget institutions. And we should not forget that the most recently developed high-tech products are also those experiencing the fastest obsolescence. Conservators are (or should be) trained with problem-based methodolo-gies which means they should know how to resolve an intricate conservation issue, although their training should also include the development of new tools when needed, often low-tech ones, to help resolve those same problems.

I would like to point out that using low-tech conservators could often achieve the same level of in-formation that high-tech could provide. Not everyone can use Raman spectroscopy on a daily basis for pigment identification, for example. But there are several new technologies available at affordable cost that can be employed quite easily. For example, a digital camera, some filters and an open access software can generate high-end imaging data, allowing the identification of materials, etc., without the hassle of high-tech analytical tools.

Low technology solutions are everywhere. Need to know if a certain metal is iron? You can always use a magnet. Their only requirement is creativity. They are often of high fiability, inexpensive, off-the-shelf, and although they are fairly simple by definition they should not be confused with DIY (Do-It-Yourself) philosophy. Although DIY is characterised by the use of low-tech solutions, it always has a strong amateur character which is undesirable in our field.

We, conservator-restorers, are said not to need creativity in the course of our work. However, creativity and ingenuity are the two most powerful tools that we should use in problem-solving. After all, it is in the making of these low-tech tools that we can show our highest creativity.

Perhaps the everyday presence of too much technology around us has made us lose track of what the simplest technologies can still achieve. Perhaps before embracing 21st century products we should go back to basics and re-evaluate what has already been achieved.

Rui Bordalo

Editor-in-Chief

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NEWS & VIEWS 6

ARTICLES

67

CASE STUDY

46

Conserve or Destroy?

By Daniel Cull

REVIEWS

VII Symposium of Art and Science

Research in Conservation of Paintings from the North of Portugal

June 11-12, 2010, Porto, Portugal

Review by Rita Veiga and Stefan Alves

NEWS

Virtual Reintegration of Renaissance Mural Paintings

The Gates of Brasov

By Silvia Demeter-Lowe

UPCOMING EVENTS

August-September 2010

Preventive Conservation, a Deliberate Choice

By Jaap van der Burg

Risk Management and Care of Collections in the Balkans

Interview with Asterios Apostolidis

Identification of Natural Dyes in Historical Coptic Textiles

from the National Archaeological Museum of Spain

By Estrella Sanz Rodríguez, Angela Arteaga Rodríguez, María Antonia García

Rodríguez, Marián del Egido and Carmen Cámara

Laser Cleaning in Art Conservation

Part I: Laser Fundamentals

By Rui Bordalo

The New Discoveries of the Restoration and Archaeology in the

Church of King St. Stefan in Žilina, Slovakia

By Jozef Dorica

Forgotten Heritage

The 18th Century Wooden Church from Ursi Village, Romania

By Anca Nicolaescu

EVENTS

9

54

INDEX

27

20

32

13

INTERVIEW

5

HERITAGE IN DANGER

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PERSPECTIVES 22

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CONSERVE OR DESTROY?

The art world is no stranger to the con-

cept of destruction. Works of art are

unfortunately destroyed by accidents,

by deliberate vandalism, and sometimes

by strange phenomena such as Stend-

hal Syndrome “a rare condition in which

often perfectly sane individuals momen-

tarily lose all reason and attack a work

of art” [3]. Works of art are also inten-

tionally destroyed by artists themselves;

the avant-garde has an iconoclastic ten-

dency in which the destruction of art and

cultural institutions (museums, libraries,

etc.) has featured heavily. Famously

Gustav Metzger coined the term ‘auto-

destructive art’ to describe art which

destroys itself within 20 years but his

own nylon canvases over which he threw

acid lasted significantly less time. More

recent examples of auto-destructive art

include performance installation works

such as ‘Breakdown’ by Michael Landy

in which he shredded everything he

owned so that “after two weeks nothing

but powder remained” [4], or the sculp-

ture ‘Always Becoming’ by Nora Naranjo-

Morse, in which the concept is re-spun

so that the aim of the artworks is to

“adapt to a continually changing cultur-

al, political, and environmental land-

scape” [5]. As we can see there is a long

established legacy of creative destruc-

"Conservation is not merely an act of stewardship that privileges the past over the present;

it is a creative destruction of alternative futures." (Erica Avrami) [1]

“The passion for destruction is a creative passion too!”(Mikhail Bakunin)[2]

By Daniel Cull

tion in art, however, “while the legacy of destruc-

tion art may be guaranteed, the museum's role

in the presentation and interpretation of this art,

is not” [6], issues of collecting, exhibiting, and

preserving such art are complex and approaches

vary significantly, being guided mostly by the in-

stitution, the artists intent, and the individual

work of art itself.

As conservators we have begun to formulate ap-

proaches to the ‘conservation’ of works of art

that auto-destruct, however, the question remains

whether we have come to grips with the destruc-

tive potential of conservation itself. Working as

a conservator there is no avoiding the simple fact

that no matter how well cared for an object may

be, eventually it will degrade to the point of de-

struction. This simple fact establishes the clas-

sical conservation discourse of an epic struggle

to prevent the inevitable, and the utopic idea of

e-conservation

Michael Landy, Breakdown, 2001.Photo by Julian Stallabrass, Some rights reserved.

a system that will one day arrest decay. Contem-

porary conservation has developed a more com-

plex and nuanced relationship with the concept

of destruction than simply its prevention. Perhaps

most explicitly in the debates surrounding the

principle of reversibility [7], in which the term

‘change’ developed as a synonym for destruction.

The resulting acceptance that all conservation

treatments cause change to the material elements

of objects has led conservators to accept that re-

versibility is at best a “fuzzy concept” [8]. This

was expanded to incorporate metaphysical ele-

ments of objects too. It is slowly being accepted

that conservation treatments have the potential

to destroy not only physical but metaphysical ele-

ments and associations of objects, in fact such

realizations lead directly to questions of whether

retaining material culture in collections could it-

self be considered emotionally and culturally de-

structive. Most simply any object undergoing con-

servation could perhaps be considered to have

been permanently destroyed in its essence as it

existed prior to the conservation intervention.

Alternatively, we could view the process as similar

to have undergoing a life-changing metamorphosis.

Either way, we can view the resulting object as

being new and uniquely different.

In theorizing the conservation process as a cre-

ation of new objects conservation praxis can po-

tentially align itself with the growing trend in muse-

ology towards embracing individual and collective

agency, "an activist museum practice, intended

to construct and elicit support amongst audiences

(and other constituencies) for alternative, progres-

sive, ways of thinking" [9]. If the discourse in de-

struction so far has focused on negative connota-

tions it is in the act of conservation that we can

begin to locate the positive potential of destruc-

tion. If the conservation process facilitates future

uses of objects, in taking a particular course of

action the potential for one set of uses are ele-

vated, as conversely another are destroyed. This

potential is shaped not only by the physical act

of intervention, but also by the process itself.

Moreover, it is increasingly clear that as conser-

vators we do not simply act upon the physical man-

ifestations of material culture, but our actions

also play out within surrounding metaphysical

landscapes as well. Contemporary conservators

therefore make treatment decisions based on the

views of an expanded range of experts, it is pos-

sible that the growing participatory nature of

museums will expand the range of voices further,

following the trend towards the melding of audi-

ence and authoritative voice, which although in

its infancy has already proven to be both a popu-

lar and worthwhile approach [10].

It is clear that conservation choices are subjective;

albeit based on particular scientific, artistic, and

craft knowledge, as well as experience and past

VIEWS

e-conservation 7

'Always Becoming', sculpture by Nora Naranjo-Morse, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC. Photo by Daniel Cull, Some rights reserved.

VIEWS

8 e-conservation

DANIEL CULLConservatorThe Musical Instrument Museum

Daniel Cull is a Conservator, Wikipedian, Social Networker, and Blogger from the West Country of the

British Isles. Trained at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where he received a

BSc in Archaeology, MA in Principles of Conservation, and an MSc in Conservation for Archaeology

and Museums. He was later awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the National Museum of the

American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. He currently works as an ethnographic

musical instrument conservator at the Musical Instrument Museum, in Arizona.

Website: http://dancull.wordpress.com

Contact: daniel.cull@themim.org

precedent. It is in this understanding of the sub-

jective nature of our profession that we can begin

to take ownership of our collective and individual

agency, and the necessity for far greater explora-

tion of both the positive and negative implications

of such destructive power; perhaps in so doing we

can be inspired by, and bring new meaning to, the

oft-mis/quoted scripture "I am become death, the

destroyer of worlds" [11].

Notes

[1] E. Avrami, “Heritage, Values, and Sustainability”,

in A. Richmond and A. Bracker (eds), Conservation:

Principles, Dilemmas, and Uncomfortable Truths,

Butterworth-Heinemann, London, 2010, pp. 183

[2] M. Bakunin, “The Reaction in Germany: From the

Notebooks of a Frenchman”, originally signed as

“Jules Elysard”, in S. Dolgoff (ed. and tr.), Bakunin

on Anarchy, Black Rose Books, 1996

[3] H. Samuel, "Woman attacks Mona Lisa", The Tele-

graph, 11 August 2009, URL

[4] M. Landy, Breakdown, URL

[5] N. Noranjo-Morse, Always Becoming, URL (blog),

URL (site)

[6] J. D. Powell, Preserving the unpreservable: A study

of destruction art in the contemporary museum,

MA Museum Studies Thesis, University of Leicester,

2007, pp. 59, URL

[7] A. Oddy and S. Carroll (eds), "Reversibility - Does

it Exist?", British Museum Occasional Paper 135,

British Museum, London, 1999

[8] S. Muñoz-Viñas, Contemporary Theory of Conser-

vation, Butterworth-Heinemann, London, 2005

[9] R. Sandell and J. Dodd, “Activist Practice”, in R.

Sandell, J. Dodd and R. Garland-Thomson (eds),

Re-presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in

the Museum, Routledge, London, 2010, pp. 3

[10] N. Simon, The Participatory Museum, Museum 2.0,

Santa Cruz, 2010

[11] ‘The Bhagavad Gita’, Verse 32, Chapter 11, URL,

famously quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer, sci-

entific director of the Manhattan Project, in ref-

erence to the Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb

Review by Rita Veiga and Stefan Alves

The VII Symposium of Arts and Science (VII Jorna-

das de Arte e Ciência) was held at the Portuguese

Catholic University, in Oporto, on the 11th and 12th

of June 2010. It was organized by the Department

of Art - Conservation and Restoration and included

the presence of 13 researchers. This event has been

organized since 2003.

This time the Symposium focused on the research

in Painting Conservation. The oral presentations

addressed works from the sixteenth to the twen-

tieth century, illustrating technical and material

features. Most works were developed in the scope

of a research project in progress at the Research

Center for Science and Technology in Art (CITAR)

entitled "Materials and Techniques of Painters

from the North of Portugal”.

For the first time, several companies and associ-

ations could present their material during the

coffee breaks: Agar-Agar, the Iberian Heritage

Institute (Instituto Ibérico do Património), the

Association of Restorers Without Borders (Asso-

ciação Restauradores Sem-Fronteiras), the Digital

Interface for 20th Century Portuguese Art (Inter-

face Digital de Arte Portuguesa do século XX), the

Spanish Group for Conservation of International

Institute for Conservation (Grupo Español de Con-

servación - IIC), the Professional Association of

Conservator-Restorers of Portugal (Associação

Profissional de Conservadores-Restauradores de

Portugal). The digital magazine of CITAR “ECR - Con-

servation and Restoration Studies” (Estudos de

Conservação e Restauro) was also presented to

the public.

June 11 -12, 2010

Porto, Portugal

Organiser:

Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP)

http://www.artes.ucp.pt/jornadasarteciencia/

VII SYMPOSIUM OF ART AND SCIENCE

REVIEWS

Research in Conservation of Paintings from the North of Portugal

e-conservation 9

An exhibition consisting of radiographs of paint-

ings that were shown during the Symposium was

also organized.

The Symposium was opened by the director of the

Department of Art - Conservation and Restora-

tion of the School of Arts, Gonçalo de Vasconcelos

e Sousa.

The first presentation was carried out by Ana Calvo,

coordinator of UCP Bachelor, Masters and PhD

programs in conservation and restoration. Her

presentation focused on the need of complement-

ing the information on the materials and tech-

niques used in paintings with different historical

sources, such as artistic treaties and working con-

tracts. On this occasion, a review of the main trea-

ties that have been published was provided.

Ana Brito presented seven paintings of Abel Salazar

(1889-1946) on rigid supports, such as wood and

plywood. The use of the wood textures, the im-

portance of the drawing, the absence of a ground

layer and the use of impastos together with trans-

parent colors were some of the characteristics

identified.

Maria Aguiar showed some portraits and self-por-

traits on canvas from the nineteenth century artist

Aurélia de Sousa. The presentation focused upon

some pieces from a larger group that is being stud-

ied and that belong to private collections, to the

Museum of the School of Fine Arts of Oporto and

to the National Museum Soares dos Reis. Through

non-invasive laboratorial techniques, such as in-

frared photography, energy dispersive X-ray spec-

trometry (EDXRF) and radiography, it was possible

to identify the materials and to characterize the

techniques used. The artist technique was contex-

tualized in the turning over that took place in the

nineteenth century in what concerns the use of

traditional and modern materials.

Ending the morning session, Sónia Barros pre-

sented her work about the use of white pigments

in Portuguese paintings from the nineteenth cen-

tury and made a comparison between the theory

stated in historical references and the actual prac-

tice implemented by artists. She crossed documen-

tary sources and elemental analysis by EDXRF un-

dertaken on 21 paintings from the collections of

the National Museum Soares dos Reis and the City

Hall (Câmara Municipal do Porto), dated from 1828

to 1891. She also related external trade in the

second half of the nineteenth century with the

introduction of white pigments found in each work.

In the afternoon session, Gonçalo de Vasconcelos

e Sousa presented "The romantic portraits in

Oporto". He focused on the most important Ro-

mantic portrait painters who worked in the city,

showing some of their major pieces. In his presen-

tation, the contribution of important families and

of some institutions for the development of this

kind of painting was also shown. The speaker ad-

dressed the evolution of representation during the

three phases of Romanticism and the sociological

dimension that these paintings have achieved.

Rita Veiga presented a study of three oil paintings

on tinplate (iron recovered with tin), by Francisco

10 e-conservation

Prof. Ana Calvo (UCP) during her presentation "Contribution of technical and material studies to the conservation of painting".

REVIEWS

José Resende (1825-1893). A brief background on

the study of paintings on metal was given, which

were more traditionally made of copper alloys.

The materials and techniques used in those three

paintings on tinplate were identified and possible

reasons for their conservation condition were

pointed out, relating them to certain material

aspects.

Carla Tavares presented four paintings on canvas

by Pedro Alexandrino de Carvalho (1730-1810),

property of the Church of Bom Jesus do Monte, in

Braga. Two of the paintings belong to the collateral

altar of the transept, and two oval paintings were

situated in the walls of the main chapel. The altar

canvases are now separated from their original

location but they were originally crated and fixed

in their respective niches. Carla Tavares presented

the results of the technical research, including the

characteristics of the canvas, ground and paint

layers as well as considerations on their conser-

vation condition.

Rita Rodrigues focused upon the study of the ceil-

ing paintings from the church of the Old Salvador

Convent, in Braga. This work consists of a set of

40 panel paintings affixed to the ceiling. For this

study only two were selected. The lecturer addressed

the contextualization of this type of paintings,

methods of affixing them to the ceilings and the

research results of the materials and techniques

of the paintings.

Invited speaker Professor Vítor Serrão presented

his research on a recently discovered painting by

António Leitão that belongs to a church in Freixo

de Espada à Cinta. The painting depicts a Pente-

cost and brings together more than 40 figures.

It’s probably the oldest Portuguese work with the

representation of Japanese figures. Other topics

of this presentation included the painter’s back-

ground, who studied in Lisbon, Rome and Antwerp,

e-conservation 11

and some remarks on other known paintings by

the same author, such as "Visitação", belonging

to a chapel in Cepões (Lamego), and the old al-

tarpiece of the Church of Vila Nova de Foz Côa.

The last communication was carried out by Gonçalo

Vasconcelos e Sousa and Vítor Serrão to present

the book "Studies in History of Paintings and En-

gravings”, by Carlos da Silva Lopes (1904-1978).

This book was edited by the Portuguese Catholic

University, similarly to what has happened to other

studies by Carlos Silva, in the field of ceramics,

jewelry and furniture. The book is a series of 34

chronics, originally published between 1963 and

1969 in the newspaper “O Primeiro de Janeiro ".

As Vítor Serrão noticed, the importance of these

writings is related mainly with the fact that they

were written at a time when little importance was

given to other painters than "great masters".

Starting the second day of the symposium, Dalila

Rodrigues proposed a model to understand the

artistic systems that frame and support fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries paintings. The art histori-

an explained the correlations between the differ-

ent dimensions of painting, sculpture and archi-

tecture. Each one of these artistic media legitimizes

their presence for aesthetic reasons but also for

the functional aspect that each one can provide

to the art system. Altarpieces, sculptures and

paintings are combined to form a certain icono-

logy and symbolism. They cannot be disconnected

from the aesthetical functionalism by which they

mold their observation. Visualizing thus presup-

poses another correlation: the one that is estab-

lished between the artistic media and the spectator.

Joana Salgueiro presented the technical study of

the five panels paintings made by Vasco Fernandes

for the main altarpiece of Lamego’s cathedral

(1506-1511). The research focused upon the

wooden supports, exploring the techniques in-

volved in their construction. The speaker crossed

REVIEWS

12 e-conservation

REVIEWS

documentary references with the radiographies

made for these panels. The researcher not only

traced an historical profile of previous restora-

tions, but also explained the pathologies identified

in the wooden supports. It was shown by graph-

ical means the dimensional subtraction undertaken

and the conjecture of the original dimensions and

full extensions of each composition.

Carla Ferreira presented the problematic of the

authorship of the “Triptych of Pentecost” from São

Pedro de Miragaia church. The researcher focused

the stylistic and material issues of this piece in

the discussion of its geographical provenance.

Starting with the presentation of analytical data

obtained through several laboratory techniques,

the researcher presented some conclusions about

the origin of the central panel and both wings. By

comparing this piece with other Flemish paintings,

especially those from the school of Tornai, Ant-

werp and Brugges, the researcher explained the

main influences that were stated in this triptych,

as well as the presence of several features, such as

decorative, architectural and figurative details.

Sandra Saraiva (UCP), on behalf of Jorgelina Car-

ballo, ended the VII Symposium of Arts and Sci-

ence with a presentation on the importance of

energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDXRF) for

Ending debate. From left to right: Carla Ferreira, Joana Salgueiro, Dalila Rodrigues and Ana Calvo.

the study of painting materials and techniques.

The researcher showed some specific character-

istics of the equipment used in the project “Ma-

terials and Techniques of Painters from the North

of Portugal”, since results may diverge with the

use of different equipments. Through some case

studies, the advantages and limitations of this

technique were identified. Despite the great

amount of information that is provided, EDXRF

always requires the comparison of the results to

other analytical techniques.

The symposium ended with a debate by Ana Calvo,

Carla Ferreira, Joana Salgueiro and Dalila Rodrigues

that focused mainly on aspects related with the

conservation of panel paintings and the necessity

to proceed with this kind of researches.

ANA RITA VEIGAConservator-restorer

Contact: aveiga@porto.ucp.pt

Ana Rita Veiga has a Bachelor Degree in Conser-

vation-Restoration and a Master Degree in Con-

servation of Paintings, both in the Portuguese

Catholic University.

STEFAN ALVESMaster's Student

Contact: sfalves@porto.ucp.pt

Stefan Alves has a Bachelor Degree in Conser-

vation-Restoration and currently is attending

the Master Degree in Conservation of Sculpture

and Gilded Wood, both in the Portuguese Catholic

University.

Currently, they are researchers on the Project

“Materials and Techniques of Painters from the

North of Portugal”, in Research Center for Science

and Technology in Art (CITAR).

13e-conservation

NEWS

In the 16th century Hans Ritter, a student of Lucas

Cranach the Elder, executed the mural paintings

in the Broemserhof manor, Ruedesheim, which

houses today a museum of mechanical instruments.

The renaissance murals were painted in the secco-

style and depict some biblical scenes next to a

great variety of genealogical motifs.

The conservation of the murals has started in

2007 under the direction of Prof. Dr. Nicole Riedl

from the University for Applied Sciences and Art

in Hildesheim (HAWK). The team integrated stu-

dents and alumni from the Cologne University for

Applied Sciences and from HAWK.

The mural has a tumultuous history, including

heavy damage during the Second World War.

However, there is a precise water colour copy of

the intact mural paintings made by the 19th cen-

tury artist Mogens Francesco Hendrik Ballin.

This copy has inspired Michaela Janke, a student

at the Cologne University for Applied Sciences’

conservation and restoration institute, to come

up with an idea to restore the damaged murals.

The idea consisted of projecting a digital picture

based on the water colour painting onto the miss-

ing parts of the mural. The project came into reality

with the support of the private software and hard-

ware companies coolux GmbH and Burmester Event

und Medientechnik.

Although this has already been tried, the novelty

of this project resides in the manipulation of the

image file. If a conventional slide projection would

Belmira Maduro(IMC) during her presentation about the conservation of Custódia de Belém.

VIRTUAL REINTEGRATION OF RENAISSANCE MURAL PAINTINGS A new way of reintegrating lost parts of mural paintings experimented by German conservators

A damaged area of the murals in the Broemserhof manor. The projection of a grid pattern onto the area for recognition.

have been used it would have resulted into a dis-

torted image due to the curvature of the arches

where the image is projected. To overcome this

problem, a special software normally used in

opera performances and rock concerts was used.

The method consists in the projection of a grid

pattern onto the target area which is then re-

cognised by a software that allows the picture

to be easily adjusted. The area to be projected is

about one and a half square meters. The image

formed has a good quality and integrates well into

the mural ensemble, remaining chromatically

recognisable and non-intrusive at the same time.

This new approach allowed Michaela Janke to pre-

pare her forthcoming dissertation on the subject.

A short movie about the project can be seen at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WbzDSArOMA

14 e-conservation

REVIEWS

Credits

Virtual Restoration Project Leader/Idea: Michaela Janke Contact: m.janke@gmx.de

Financing: Hessian Department for the Protection of Historical Monuments, LfDH

Supervisors: Professor Adrian Heritage and Professor Dr. Elisabeth Jaegers, University for Applied Sciences, Cologne. Christine Kenner, LfDHProf. Dr. Nicole Riedl, HAWK

Installation/Sponsoring: coolux GmbH and Burmester Event-und Medientechnik

Conservation Project Leader: Prof. Dr. Nicole Riedl, HAWK

Supervision of the restoration works: Christine Kenner, LfDH

Projection of the image on the mural surface.

The News section is publishing diverse

information on cultural heritage topics, such

as on-site conservation projects reports,

conferences, lectures, talks or workshops

reviews, but also course reviews and any other

kind of appropriate announcements. If you are

involved in interesting projects and you want

to share your experience with everybody else,

please send us your news or announcements.

For more details, such as deadlines and

publication guidelines, please visit

www.e-conservationline.com

FREE

CONSERVATION

RESOURCES

Art Conservation Research

conservationresearch.blogspot.com

NEWS

15e-conservation

By Silvia Demeter-Lowe

The gate of 22 Baritiu Street, Brasov, has just

been dismantled and a temporary gate has been

installed in its place until the completion of the

repair and conservation works. On the 16th of

April 2010, the gate of 7 Britiu Street has been

re-installed. After years and years since being

dumped and forgotten in one of the cellars of

the property, it has been brought back to light

and restored.

THE GATES OF BRASOV

NEWS

A Pro Patrimonio Foundation Project

Below: Gate of 7 Baritiu Street before and after the works completed.

16 e-conservation

Partners: The Directorate for Culture and Cultural Heritage, Brasov

The Evanghelical Church CA, Brasov

“Each place on Earth has a story of its own. One

needs a good ear in order to hear it and a little

bit of love in order to understand it.”

Nicolae Iorga

Above: 22 Baritiu Street before conservation.

These initiatives are part of a project initiated by

the Pro Patrimonio Foundation. Under the name

of "The Gates of Brasov", the project aims to raise

awareness about the importance of the preserva-

tion of architectural elements. The Foundation is

supporting the owners of traditional buildings

from the historical areas of Brasov who wish to

repair and conserve the gates of their properties.

The support consists in financial help and profes-

sional assistance. The works are undertaken by

craftsmen specialised in conservation of timber

and metal elements, employing only traditional

materials and techniques.

The project begun in 2009 when a Brasovian citizen

contacted the Pro Patrimonio Foundation asking

for help to save the gate of his property. An im-

pressive, old timber gate, with beautiful carved

walnut wood decorations, was supposed to be re-

placed with a modern metal one. Unfortunately,

in a "throw-away" society, replacement rather

than repair is the preferred option. But the story

of this gate was not to end there. Pro Patrimonio

Foundation, though the generosity of their High-

nesses Princess Marina Sturdza and Prince Serban

Cantacuzino, together with the Foundation’s ar-

chitect Mrs. Silvia Demeter-Lowe and Mr. Arpad

Jakab from Frizart joinery firm, managed not only

to prolong the life span of this gate but also to

restore its former beauty.

This first initiative brought the attention on the

necessity of supporting the owners of historic

properties in their efforts of maintaining and re-

pairing their buildings. As a consequence, other

organisations joined in and a partnership has

been created with the Directorate for Culture and

Cultural Heritage-Brasov and the Evanghelical

Church CA - Brasov. Therefore, other nine gates

have been selected as potential candidates for the

continuation of the project. The main criteria for

the final selection were: architectural and historic

value, location and, foremost, the desire of involve-

ment of its owners.

The costs of the repair works and professional

assistance are covered almost entirely by the Pro

Patrimonio Foundation and partners. Only 3% to

5% of the repair costs are covered by the owners.

NEWS

16 Brancoveanu Street, before and after the works completed.

e-conservation 17

Above: Selected gates (from left to right): - 2 Poarta Schei; - 8 Piata Sfatului;- 18 Brancoveanu Street;- 8 Paul Richter Street;- 3 Vasile Saftu Street;- 46 Castelului Street;- 23 Cerbului Street;-15 Republicii Street.

SILVIA DEMETER-LOWEArchitect, Project Coordinator

Contact: contextarchitecture@gmail.com

Silvia Demeter-Lowe is architect and consultant

for Pro Patrimonio Foundation, an organisation

dealing with conservation of vernacular architec-

ture. She is also the director of Context Architec-

“Gates of Brasov” inauguration, with the partici-

pation of leading architect Serban Cantacuzino, one of the founders of Pro Patrimonio Foundation.

18

NEWS

e-conservation

ture Ltd. Her work experience includes project

management, sustainable new built and architec-

tural conservation projects. She is the represent-

ative of the Romanian Order of Architects to the

Architects’ Council of Europe - Environment and

Sustainable Architecture Work Group. Over the

years she has coordinated various projects on the

conservation of monuments from Romania.

Are you reading this?So is everybody else...

e-conservationline

For advertisingand other information on publicity,

please contact

general@e-conservationline.com

and request a copy of our mediakit.

even

tsThe events in this section are linked to the

original homepage of the organisers or to the

calendar of events at www.conservationevents.com.

Click on "Read more..." to find out more details

about each event.

4th International Architectural Paint Research Conference

'Sharing Information'

Date: 3-6 August Read more...

Place: Lincoln, UK

This conference will focus on current issues fa-

cing the profession and examines the relation-

ship between Architectural Paint Researchers

and those commissioning the research exercise.

It will bring together international members

of the architectural paint research community

and provide a platform for the interchange of

knowledge and to explore the future directions

of this significant aspect of buildings and arte-

fact conservation.

Reusing the Industrial Past

Date: 10-15 August Read more...

Place: Tempere, Finland

The primary theme of the first joint conference

of ICOHTEC – TICCIH is 'Reusing the Industrial Past'

and it is intended to be a broad idea covering

various approaches. Clearly, the industrial past

is reused whenever old industrial installations

are reno-vated or adapted. There have been many

attempts to preserve the most significant as-

pects of old industrial areas after productive

activity has ceased, by giving them a new viable

function. However, the idea of reusing the in-

dustrial past need not stop there.

Sept

embe

r 201

0

Museums and the Market

14th European Conference on Digital Libraries

Date: 6-10 September Read more...

Place: Glasgow, UK

The European Conference on Research and Advanced

Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL) is the leading

European scientific forum on digital libraries and asso-

ciated technical, practical, and social issues, bringing

together researchers, developers, content providers and

users in the field. The ECDL Conference Series started

in 1997 in conjunction with the activities of the first

DELOS Working Group.

Date: 10-11 September Read more...

Place: Leeds, UK

This event focuses on the intersections, the formal and

informal spaces where the market and the museum meet

and overlap. The papers reflect a wide range of interests

and perspectives and bring together leading academics,

museum professionals in order to further discussion and

debate around this increasingly significant subject. The

conference will be of interest to all those who are interested

in the history of the museum and its role in society.

e-conservation

Augu

st 2

010

SEM and microanalysis in the study of historical technology, materials and conservation

Date: 9-10 September Read more...

Place: London, UK

The Department of Conservation and Scientific Research

is hosting a conference on the application of scanning

electron microscopy and microanalysis (SEM-EDX) to the

study of materials, manufacturing methods and deteri-

oration processes of objects from ancient through to

contemporary cultures.

11th Symposium on Virtual reality Archaeology and Cultural Heritage

Conservation and the Eastern Mediterranean

Date: 20-24 September Read more...

Place: Istanbul, Turkey

The Congress will focus on the conservation of moveable

and immovable heritage in or from the Eastern Mediter-

ranean. This will include material held in collections

around the world, the care and conservation of works

of art, artifacts and sites, and the preservation of archi-

tecture, all reflecting the influences that have made this

region one of the world’s richest centres of heritage.

Date: 21-24 September Read more...

Place: Paris, France

The goal of this VAST will be to build on the open dialogue

between these different areas of expertise, and in par-

ticular allow ICT experts to have a better understanding

of the critical requirements of the CH scientists for man-

aging and delivering cultural information. The result of

this interaction will be disseminated through use of in-

novative digital techniques in research and education

for Cultural Heritage and through publications.

Museums and the Market

Date: 24-25 Septembe Read more...

Place: Austin, Texas, USA

The symposium aims to bring together an international

group of graduate students who are involved in the re-

search and practice of protecting cultural heritage. In

order to prevent the loss of material and intangible cul-

ture due to both human and natural causes, EPOCH will

engage a new generation of scholars in the practices and

methodologies necessary to preserve our cultural legacies

for today and the future.

7th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects

Preserving the Past, Protecting the FutureCollecting and Conserving Fine and Decorative Arts

Date: 14-16 September Read more...

Place: High Wycombe (Buckinghamshire), UK

The conference will bring experts from the industry and

academia together with enthusiasts of the collection and

conservation of the fine and decorative arts. It will focus

on new and evolving ideas in the conservation and resto-

ration of private and public collections, examining issues

in furniture, painting and ceramics, and exploring the

contrast between traditional techniques and the most

recent breakthroughs in conservation and restoration.

Date: 19-24 September Read more...

Place: Vienna, Austria

iPRES2010 will be the 7th in the series of annual inter-

national conferences that bring together researchers

and practitioners from around the world to explore the

latest trends, innovations, and practices in preserving

our digital heritage. iPRES2010 will re-emphasise that

preserving our scientific and cultural digital heritage

requires integration of activities and research across in-

stitutional and disciplinary boundaries to adequately

address the challenges in digital preservation.

Sept

embe

r 201

0EVENTS

Sept

embe

r 201

0

21

Glass and Light Colloquium 130 Years Rothkegel

Date: 18 September Read more...

Place: Würzburg, Germany

This conference is organised in the context of the cele-

bration of the company's 130th anniversary and it in-

cludes a series of ten expert presentations from confirmed

specialists on topics such as glass conservation, construc-

tion physics, glass design and lighting architecture.

e-conservation

pers

pect

ives

By stating that preventive conservation

is a deliberate choice I do not intend to

say that not opting for it is a choice. Pre-

ventive conservation aspects will always

be around whether we are aware of them

or not. Whether we like it or not, preven-

tive conservation is always an issue, but

one often overlooked. I am talking about

a choice, because resources such as time

and money can be spent only once. The

decision to free up funds for a beautiful

design, for example, is indirectly a choice

not to spend these resources for the for-

gotten issue of preventive conservation.

As we all know, before a choice can be

made the advantages and disadvantages

of all alternatives should be considered

and set against each other. However, we

oftenmake our choices based on routine

and 'gut' feeling. Whenever preventive

conservation is a factor, the choices have

to be deliberate.

As an illustration of the non-conscious

way we all treat preventive conservation

we can consider the following example.

In March 2010 a foundation focused on

safeguarding and distributing know-

ledge of preventive conservation was

established in The Netherlands. Before

the founders decided that this founda-

tion was useful the ground was “tested”.

PREVENTIVE CONSERVATION, A DELIBERATE CHOICEBy Jaap van der Burg

A wide variety of organizations, institutes and in-

dividuals were asked how they felt about an or-

ganization focused on preventive conservation.

The reaction was twofold. There was a clear and

solid support for the initiative but sometimes

questions were raised by its necessity. After all,

The Netherlands already has three educational

organizations working on conservation. This

should be enough.

To see where preventive conservation is featured

in these schools their programs were consulted.

While some programs do not even mention pre-

ventive conservation at all others only reserve a

very limited amount of time and ECTS for it. To

make matters worse all other preventive conser-

vation courses in The Netherlands given by gov-

ernmental institutions are discontinued.

The only course focused on preventive conserva-

tion is one for ‘behoudsmedewerkers’ (conserva-

tion assistants/technicians). This program is fo-

cused on working with objects and collections

and obviously tackles many preventive conserva-

tion topics. However, it lasts only 1 year with 30

contact days and it is only accessible to people

with existing employment in our industry. With

these limitations it cannot be anything but a

short introduction to preventive conservation.

The conclusion has to be that preventive conser-

vation is not a major topic in education.

Of course everybody in these schools is doing their

utmost to deliver the best education they can.

e-conservation

However, they are tied to their own history and to

financial and educational structures. The actual

needs, developments and new insights in the field

itself are seldom leading.

One example is the importance still given to chem-

istry. Ever and always since the first conservation

course was established chemistry was included

and therefore we still have it on our programs. But

we should know by now that most impacts on ob-

jects have a physical nature, but physics is rarely

(if ever) a feature in these programs.

I do realize that it is very difficult to change run-

ning courses and programs. Due to all organiza-

tional and financial restrictions and established

routines the tendency to ‘stick with what we have’

is strong. What I want to do now is to think ‘out-

side the box’. So forget the existing structures etc.,

just focus on the needs first.

We are all working in the beautiful field of cultural

heritage and in particular we are trying to main-

tain it. The best way to achieve this is to prevent

something potentially damaging from happening

to it. Prevention beats every cure. A synonym for

maintaining is conserving.

Looking at these words and phrases I cannot do

anything but state that ‘preventive conservation’

is at the core of our business.

But then, what is preventive conservation? It is

a nice slogan, but what does it mean? Preventive

conservation is described by the European Com-

mittee for Standardization (CEN) as the “indirect

measures and actions aimed at avoiding and mini-

mizing future deterioration, damage and loss of

value”1.

So let us look at the agents causing damage, de-

terioration and loss.

The ‘nine causes for deterioration’2 are a well estab-

lished and accepted framework for risk assessment.

1. Physical forces (shock, vibration, gravity,

handling, etc.);

2. Vandals and displacers (people who do not re-

place objects where they should be placed making

it difficult to find (use) them in the future);

3. Fire (as with flames);

4. Water (in its absolute form as drops, leakage,

flooding);

5. Biological damage (by insects, rodents, fungi);

6. Contaminants as environmental influences,

such as dust and gases;

7. Radiation (referring to light and x-ray);

8. Incorrect temperature;

9. Incorrect relative humidity.

Even though the last two aspects are most discussed

and looked at we still do not really understand

their impact very well. We can measure temperature

and relative humidity in air and we can reason that

this has an impact on an object. But we still know

very little about the speed of response, intensity

of deformation and fluid transport within an object.

We tend to focus on the measurement of the air

where we want to keep objects.

An example of the discrepancy between what we

know and can control, and what is happening to

objects in our charge, is a new very high-techno-

logy designed showcase, especially made for very

RH sensitive material. It is air tight and has a

standalone humidifier as well as a standalone de-

humidifier. As long as both machines indicated

an RH of 53% everything was supposedly going

1 prEN 15898, CEN, Milan Jan. 2010

2 R. Waller, “Conservation risk assessment: A strategy for managing resources for preventive conservation”, in Pre-prints of the Ottawa Congress, International Institute for Conservation, September 1994, International Institute for Conservation, London, 1994, pp. 12-16; also available on-line in “Preservation Framework Online”, Canadian Conser-vation Institute, URL.

PERSPECTIVES

e-conservation 23

well. After several weeks someone noticed that

more water was added into the humidifier than

was taken out of the dehumidifier. But because

the data of RH in the air were OK no action was

taken.

Clearly, water that is issued into an airtight con-

tainer and not taken out has to go somewhere,

probably into the object. The fact that more wa-

ter goes into a closed system than comes out of

it should ring an alarm bell.

This is exemplary for the fact that we all tend to

focus on things we can measure. By narrowing in

on the resulting data we lose the bigger picture.

The more aspects and unknowns we are confronted

with the stronger the urge will be to flee into these

false securities.

Concerning the nine causes for deterioration I

want to point out that agents 8 and 9, as well as

1, 3 and 4 are mainly physical by nature, and only

6 is (mainly) chemical.

5 more ‘categories’ could be added to these inter-

national accepted agents. They are useful as in the

first 9 there is some overlap but above all because

these causes need to be dealt with in an entirely

different way:

10. Logistics (how to get the object into the

building, out of the room, etc.);

11. The collection or the object itself;

12. The shelving, storage units, wardrobes, etc.

the collection is stored in;

13. The building itself, the “shell” around the

collection;

14. The organization working with the collection.

The latter agent is sometimes added to the first

nine under the title ‘custodial neglect’.

In the courses and workshops the Dutch company

Helicon Conservation Support has given over the

years, it is usual to start with an assignment to

get participants involved. They are asked to cate-

gorize the causes of damage they have encountered

into one of these 14 categories.

Figure 1 shows the overall results of these ques-

tionnaires.

Figure 1. Results of the questionnaire made to participants at the Helicon Conservation Support courses.

PERSPECTIVES

24 e-conservation

It is not that much of a surprise that our colleagues

in cultural heritage expect physical forces to be

the biggest cause of decay. It is an eye opener

that the organization is second, closely followed

by climate, logistic and the building.

It is good to know where causes of decay may come

from but the important is to prevent them from

damaging the works in our charge. To be able to

prevent these causes from actually ending up in

damage we need to know the sources and the ef-

fects of these influences and the sensitivity of the

objects.

The required knowledge and skills can be catego-

rized as follows:

a. Object/collection awareness, including manu

facturing, history, material, significance;

b. Physics, including about shocks, vibration,

water migration, characteristics of materials;

c. Management, including organization, finance;

d. Logistics, including means of transport, ma-

terials used, accessibility and routes to take;

e. Buildings, including structure, insulation,

weight distribution, structural integrity,

engineering;

f. Risk assessment, including statistics;

g. Environment, including macro and microclimates,

relative and absolute humidity,

h. Safety and security, including laws, rules and

regulations for objects as well as people, direct

and indirect (hazardous materials);

i. Information technology, including managing

huge amounts of data, interaction, variety of

resourses of data, accessibility of these data

now and in the future;

j. Communication, including written and verbal

presentations and ‘people skills’.

And every item picked out of this list will be influ-

enced by many others and have an impact on even

more. Everything is connected.

This list proves that preventive conservation is a

full fledged occupation. It is not something ‘looked

into while we are at it…’ or ‘taken care of in the

wee hours in between serious business’. Preventive

conservation is something to focus on, something

we deliberately chosen to do, something that

needs a proper focused education. Preventive

conservation could easily fill a full minor and

master’s program.

Going back to real life, education is expensive.

No country in Europe will ever need that many

new preventive conservation specialists every

year to make a focused dedicated program finan-

cially feasible. What can be done for something

that is need but which is too expensive for the

small niche it is aimed at?

Actually the solution is quite basic. Reduce the

expenses and broaden the market. Expenses can

be reduced by using bits and pieces already exist-

ing. For example, to do proper risk assessment

we need to be able to work with statistics. There

are plenty of courses on that. The technique of

Risk Assessment is the same for airports, football

matches and exhibitions. When we start looking

for it we will find programs galore on this topic.

Even though most of these programs will not be

given by universities they might very well have

university quality. Using existing programs is a

lot less expensive then tailor-making our own.

We will have to start thinking modular. What we

will have to provide is the translation to the spe-

cifics of our field, namely from the point of view

of the object, collection and cultural heritage.

Next to reducing our expenses we need to expand

our market. We will have to look across our nation-

al boarders and work at least on European level

on this.

All this will need coordination, planning and con-

trol. And since I am convinced this will move for-

PERSPECTIVES

e-conservation 25

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

e-conservation magazine is open to submission

of articles on a wide range of relevant topics

for the cultural heritage sector.

Next deadlines for article submission are:

for Issue 16, October 2010 – submissions

due 1st September 2010

for Issue 17, December 2010 – submissions

due 1st November 2010

Nevertheless, you can always submit your

manuscript when it is ready. Between the

receival of the manuscript until the final

publication may pass up to 3 months

according with:

- the number of the manuscripts on hold,

submitted earlier by other authors

- the release date of the upcoming issue

- the pre-allocated space in the magazine

to each section

Please check our publication guidelines

for more information.

ward to university and postgraduate degrees, I am

hoping that our universities will take this need in

consideration. But as we will also need conserva-

tion technicians and assistants specialized in pre-

ventive conservation, these universities will have

to coordinate with as many other educational pro-

grams as possible.

To be able to come up with something useful for

future professionals and our cultural heritage

everybody involved will have to start working and

thinking outside their well known and comfortable

structures. Think outside the box, involve the pro-

fessionals in the field, lure students leaving high

school, use commercial skills, knowledge and ex-

perience, allow creativity even in education.

JAAP VAN DER BURGConservator-restorer

Contact: j.vanderburg@helicon-cs.com

Website: www.helicon-cs.com

PERSPECTIVES

26 e-conservation

Jaap van der Burg is a conservator-restorer spe-

cialised in preventive conservation with over 35

years experience. He was one of two founders of

Helicon Conservation Support B.V. in Alpen aan

den Rijn (The Netherlands), company with a focus

on problem solving in preventive conservation

for collections and individual objects, including

collections management and recovery after dis-

asters. In the last 10 years he worked on over 500

projects including designing packing, couriering,

risk assessment, storage planning, courses and

workshops, registration, building and collection

integration.

inte

rvie

w

RISK MANAGEMENT AND CARE OF COLLECTIONS

IN THE BALKANS

Interview with Asterios Apostolidis, project manager of 'Collections Care Co.'

Collections Care Co (CCco.) is a private company based in Thessaloniki, Greece, and is

committed to the preservation of cultural material via the application of collections

risk management. The interview was conducted by the team of e-conservation magazine

by email in June 2010.

e-conservationline: What are the benefits of the

risk management approach?

Asterios Apostolidis: In a few words, risk manage-

ment gives a clear insight of the existing risks to

a collection. Further, it evaluates optimum and

cost-effective ways of blocking the agents of de-

terioration that cause damage to collections, and

greatly reduces future costs allocated to conser-

vation. The risk management approach is very

important for the reason that it prevents the

agents of deterioration from occurring, rather

than responding to material damage after their

occurrence. Finally, risk management draws the

attention of the staff to the necessary alterations

into museum policies and practices and leads to

strategic thinking. These are some of the benefits,

among others.

e-cons: What is the level of risk management in

the area of the Balkans?

AA: In the Balkans there is a good quality effort

from certain professionals, in the preventive care

field, to advance the level of risk management. I

think that it will take time to establish a decent

level of risk management approach for the pre-

servation of collections, for the reason that the

generation that would promote this idea is not

yet employed in major positions as that of a mu-

seum director. It is a hard task to alter people’s

approach to preservation management. Museum

staff feels that their institution’s status quo is

questioned. We, all the professionals involved,

have to show them clearly the long-term benefits

of this approach; and most importantly how to

motivate them to take part in the risk manage-

ment exercise.

e-cons: Is there any action from private institu-

tions, or companies, to train museum staff on risk

management?

AA: As I said, during the last few years there has

been a good quality effort taking place from cer-

tain professionals in the Balkan area (Serbia) in

order to advance and promote this method. At

this period we are preparing the ground in order

to make workshops in Greece on risk management

with the help and advice of various professionals

from Greece and abroad. We hope that we will

eventually succeed in doing so. We were honored

to participate and present our experience at the

ICOM-SEE workshop on risk management in Sofia,

Bulgaria, in June 2010. I have to say that the or-

ganizers did a really good job and we were very

pleased to see that the level of the workshop was

very advanced.

e-cons: How do you see the preventive care approach

to collections management in Greece?

AA: In my opinion, the preventive care approach

in Greece is not where it should be. This is not

because there are not professionals around, but

it has to do with the whole approach to preven-

tive care at all levels in Greece. People think that

preventive care requires state-of-the-art equip-

ment in order to create the ‘proper’ environment

for a collection. This is not true. An economical

approach, in-line with the structure of the build-

ing and its surroundings, can result equally in a

INTERVIEW

28 e-conservation

‘Collections Care Co.’ at the ICOM-SEE workshop on risk management in Sofia (Bulgaria) in June 2010.

safe environment for a collection. This is exactly

what CCco is trying to promote and it does that

by adopting the risk management approach to

collections management in Greece.

e-cons: How came ‘Collections Care Co.’ first into

existence?

AA: Our company was established in January 2009

aiming at preserving cultural material housed in

institutions or privately owned by collectors. The

initial thought started years ago when still as

students at Cardiff university, we had this idea

with Alexios Papapelekanos (now head scientist

of the company) to establish a private company

in Greece in an effort to offer preventive care

services.

e-cons: What are your services?

AA: In general, CCco. promotes the proper care and

preservation of museums’ and private collections.

We achieve that via three main services, which are:

care of collections, risk management and conser-

vation management. Apart from analyzing the en-

vironmental conditions for the display and storage

of collections, we also undertake the installation

of appropriate equipment to create the required

conditions. Our policy is to solve a problem with

the minimum cost.

e-cons: Finally, how do you see ‘CCco.’ in the

future?

AA: What is important for us is to advance pre-

ventive conservation in Greece and abroad. If we

succeed to bring in more professionals in the con-

servation field to promote the idea of preventive

care, that would be a great step. On a personal

level, and I think this also applies to my business

partners, I would like one day to look back and

see that we contributed into the establishment

of a good level of collections care in Greece and

abroad.

29e-conservation

RISK MANAGEMENT AND CARE OF COLLECTIONS IN THE BALKANS

e-conservation magazine offers the possibility to publish bilingual articles in the html version. Articles inEnglish may also be published in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, at authors request.

arti

cles

AREAS OF PUBLISHING

Conservation TreatmentMural Painting

Painting

Stone

Sculpture

Textiles

Paper / Documents

Photography

Metals

Tile / Ceramic / Glass

Furniture

Music instruments

Ethnographic assets

Archeological objects

Conservation ScienceScientific research

Material studies and characterisation

Analytical techniques

Technology development

Biodeterioration

State-of-the-art

Reviews

Preventive ConservationTheoretic principles

Case studies

Documentation in ConservationStandardisation

Documentation methods

Data management

Conservation TheoryEthics

Conservation History

Art History, Iconography,

Iconology, Chemistry, Physics,

Biology, Photography, Cultural

Management, Museology,

Computer Science, Legislation

and Juridical Processes,

Conservation Policies

and any other field applied to

Conservation and Restoration

of works of art.

Find out more: www.e-conservationline.com

e-conservation

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYESIN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

from the National Archaeological Museum of Spain

by Estrella Sanz Rodríguez, Angela Arteaga Rodríguez, María Antonia García Rodríguez, Marián del Egido and Carmen Cámara

Introduction

The identification of natural dyes present in his-

torical textiles can contribute to answer different

questions linked with the how, when and where

a textile was made [1]. Moreover, this analysis can

evidence past restoration processes and provides

key information for the application of an appro-

priate treatment in current interventions of res-

toration or conservation.

In all parts of the world, natural dyes have been

used since the most ancient times until the end

of 19th century when they were replaced by syn-

thetic dyes. The ancient dyestuffs were organic

materials obtained from plants, insects, shellfish

and lichens [2]. The classification of dyestuffs can

be based on their application method (direct, vat

and mordant dyes), according to their origin (nat-

ural or synthetic, animal or vegetal), their colour

(red, yellow, blue and purple dyes) and in relation

with the chemical constitution (chromophore

structure) of the dyestuff molecule. The different

chemical classes of chromophores present in nat-

ural dyes yield the following general classification:

anthraquinoid, flavonoid, indigoid dyes and tan-

nins. There are other chromophores existing, which

are not included in this classification because they

are less common [3-5]. This classification is use-

ful for the analyst in order to choose the right

sample extraction procedure to recover the com-

ponents from natural dyes [6]. The extraction step

is crucial, within the whole analytical method,

because identification of dyestuffs will be done

upon the extracted components. The standard

procedure for extracting natural dyes from tex-

tiles involved heating in 6M methanolic hydro-

chloric acid solution. This extraction method was

introduced three decades ago [7, 8] and actually

is still being applied as evidenced in recent works

[1, 9-11]. The process has the advantage of provid-

ing a high extraction efficiency for the majority

of dyes, particularly anthraquinoid and flavon-

oid types, excepting indigoids, which are poorly

extracted because they remain practically insoluble.

Moreover, the majority of yellow dyes and some

red and orange dyes are composed of glycosides,

which, when heated in strong HCl, are hydrolyzing

glycoside linkages, causing that only the aglycone

chromophore can be detected. As a result, most

information about the original dye components

and their plant source is lost [12, 13]. Other limi-

tations of this rather aggressive process are the

degradation of several labile compounds and the

chemical transformation of different chromo-

phores [14]. Recently, several investigations have

been carried out to overcome these problems.

The most noticeable with respect to improving

the solubility of indigoids dyes have been those

including an exclusive extraction step for these

The aim of this work was the identification of natural dyes employed in the manufacture of eight fragments of the collection of Coptic textiles from the Spanish National Archaeological Museum, using HPLC-DAD. Two extraction methods, the classical methanol/hydrochloric acid extraction and a mild extraction using 5% formic acid in methanol, were evaluated using several reference fibres dyed with a selection of red, yellow, blue, purple and black dyestuffs. In both cases, an additional step, extracting with methanol/dimethylform-amide, was employed. The results showed that the number of compounds detected is higher when the mixture with 5% formic acid was used, contributing to give more information about the source of the dye, although the extraction efficiency was lower in the most cases. The latter method was selected and applied for subsequent dye extraction from the samples. The dyestuffs identified in the fragments under study are in agreement with dyestuff commonly reported for Coptic textiles.

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYES IN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

33e-conservation

dyes using pyridine, dimethylformamide (DMF)

or dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) [15-17] solvents, in

which blue and purple dyes are more soluble, and

one proposed by Surowiec et al. [18], which is based

on HCl hydrolysis and involving an additional DMF/

Methanol (MeOH) extraction step. The introduc-

tion of this additional step offered a notable im-

provement for the recovery of indigotin. Regarding

preservation of labile compounds and glycosidic

linkages, the development of milder extraction

schemes is actually a tendency of general impor-

tance. Different approaches have been proposed

herein. More systematic studies focused exclusively

on dyed textiles were compared by Valianou et al.

in 2009 [19]. For example, Zhang and Laursen [20]

developed a mild extraction method in which HCl

was replaced by 5 % formic acid (HCOOH) in MeOH

solution, which is more efficient than the com-

mon HCl scheme when extracting anthraquinone

and flavonoid dyes from dyed silk, wool and cot-

ton fibres, further preserving glycosisdic linkages.

Although this method was successfully applied

to historical microsamples extracted from pre-

Columbian Andean [21] and Chinese textiles [22],

another study, focused on the extraction of Rubia

tinctorum L. components from wool fibres, reported

that classical HCl extraction provides the most

satisfying results [23]. In another investigation,

dyed wool was treated with aqueous solutions of

ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), oxalic

acid, oxalate, citrate and citric acid [24]. It was

reported that none of the five procedures was

better than the classical method, although the

oxalic acid extraction was comparable to HCl ex-

traction for alizarin and carminic acid. In their

study, Valianou et al. [19] compared five extrac-

tion methods, including the use of HCl, citric acid,

oxalic acid, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and a com-

bination of HCOOH and EDTA with respect to: (a)

number of compounds extracted, (b) relative quan-

tities of compounds extracted and (c) values for

the signal-to-noise ratio of the compounds ex-

tracted. It was shown that the TFA method pro-

vided in this sense the best overall results.

Since dyes are mixtures of organic compounds

and a fibre can be dyed employing various dyes,

those chromatographic techniques which are able

to separate very complex mixtures are the most

appropriate tools for this type of analysis. High

performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is

by far the most commonly used chromatographic

technique for analysis of natural dyes, enabling

the separation of dye components from a small

sample amount [25]. A HPLC system can be coupled

to different detectors. Because the vast majority

of dye components are strong chromophores, UV-

Vis absorbance detectors or, more usually, diode

array detectors (DAD) are commonly applied in

analysis of natural dyes in extracts from plant or

animal sources [7, 8, 26-28], from contemporary

dyed materials [29, 30] and from archaeological

textiles [9, 18-20, 31-35]. Employing DAD, the

detection can be done at any wavelength in the

UV or visible spectrum and a complete spectrum

of any substance eluting from HPLC column can be

obtained. As a result, dye molecules can be charac-

terised in terms of retention time from the HPLC

system and their UV-Vis spectrum. However, DAD

detectors have the disadvantage that they are

not very specific and similar compounds present

similar spectra. Therefore, identifying the particu-

lar components in the often complex dye mixtures

requires a more discriminating technique than UV-

Vis spectroscopy. For example, the flavonoid agly-

cones and their glycosides often show identical

UV-Vis spectra [12]. For this reason, the actual

trend goes towards the coupling of mass spectro-

metry detectors (MS) to the HPLC system, which

offers the mass spectrum of each component sep-

arated, thus allowing to characterise unknown

compounds. In fact, over the last years, most of

the research in this field tends towards uniting

and complementing all the information obtained

ESTRELLA SANZ RODRÍGUEZ et al.

34 e-conservation

by on-line coupling of these two detectors, DAD

and MS [1, 9, 13, 19, 21, 22, 36-40].

Egypt was one of the first countries where dye-

stuffs were used, and its climatic and cultural con-

ditions are favorable to conservation of archaeolo-

gical textiles. The literature about the characteri-

zation of natural dyes in Coptic textiles is relatively

extensive. For example, Wouters presented dif-

ferent studies using HPLC-DAD of extracts from

Coptic objects [7, 41, 42]. Later on, between 2003

and 2004, results about the natural dyes present

in Coptic textiles from National Museum in Warsaw

were presented employing HPLC-DAD [43], LC-

DAD-MS [44] and LC-DAD/fluorescence detection/

MS [45]. Other interesting research article was

presented by A. Verhecken [46], where the objec-

tive was to establish a correlation between the age

of a textiles from Egypt, Syria and Israel and the

dyestuff used in them. Further work was carried

out by R. Hofmann-de Keijzer et al. [47], where

the authors give an overview of dyes and dyeing

techniques used in the Late Antiquity in Egypt pre-

senting their results about an investigation of nat-

ural dyes in two Coptic textile fragments from the

Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Vienna).

The Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute (IPCE) re-

ceives numerous historical textiles from museums

and excavations for their conservation, technical

analysis and identification of their dye content.

Over the last years, the restoration of the collec-

tion of Coptic textile belonging to the National

Archeological Museum from Spain, dating from

IV AD to X-XI AD, was accomplished. This collec-

tion was studied in the framework of the project

“Technological and chronological characterization

of the Coptic textile productions: antecedents of

the high medieval Spanish textile manufactures”

[48]. Characterization of natural dyes present in

eleven of these fragments was carried out by thin

layer chromatography (TLC) in the IPCE laboratory

[49], finding the common natural dyes used in the

Nile Valley, such as madder, indigo (or woad), weld,

Figure 1. Sampling in a Coptic fragment code from the National Archaeological Museum: 15083. Photo by José Baztan.

35e-conservation

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYES IN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

lac and probably orchil. Madder, indigo (or woad)

and weld cannot be used for dating in the first mil-

lennium, but the presence of lac dye in one tex-

tile suggests that this textile was made later than

the VII century, according to A. Verhecken [46].

The objective of the present study was the identi-

fication of natural dyes employed in the manufac-

ture of another eight fragments belonging to this

collection using HPLC-DAD. Prior to analysis, two

extraction methods for dye were evaluated, using

several reference fibres dyed with a selection of

red, yellow, blue, purple and black dyestuffs ob-

tained from a reference collection of IPCE which

contains more than 300 dyed fibres, and from a

personal collection of Ana Roquero.

Experimental

Instrumentation

The chromatographic system used consisted of a

model 600E Multisolvent delivery system (Waters

Chromatography, USA) equipped with a Luna C18(2)

HPLC column (150 x 2.1 mm id, 5 µm particle size)

and a guard cartridge system (Phenomenex, USA).

Samples were injected by a 717 auto sampler (Wa-

ters Chromatography, USA). Separated compo-

nents of dyestuffs were detected with a 996 DAD

detector, scanning from 200 nm to 600 nm at scan

rate of 1 scan/second and with a resolution of

1.2 nm (Waters Chromatography, USA). The mo-

bile phase, pumped at 0.5 ml min-1, consisted of

0.1% trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) in water (A) and

acetonitrile (B). The gradient applied was the fol-

lowing: 10% B isocratic to 1 min, to 30% B (linear)

at 30 min, to 100% B (linear) at 50 min. The column

temperature was maintained at 35 ºC.

Reagents, reference fibres and samples

High-purity deionized water (Milli-Q Element sys-

tem, Millipore, USA), trifluoroacetic acid (TFA)

from Fluka (Sigma-Aldrich, Steinheim, Germany)

and acetonitrile (ACN), both from J.T. Baker (De-

venter, Holland) were used for preparation of the

mobile phase. Gradient grade methanol (MeOH)

from J.T. Baker (Deventer, Holland), formic acid

(HCOOH, 98%) and dimethylformamide (DMF) both

from Panreac (Barcelona, España) were employed

for sample preparation.

36 e-conservation

Figure 2. Sampling in a Coptic fragment code from the National Archaeological Museum: 1976/130/12. Photo by José Baztan.

ESTRELLA SANZ RODRÍGUEZ et al.

Extraction methods were evaluated using the ten

before mentioned reference fibres, dyed with Ameri-

can cochineal (Dactylopius coccus Costa), Brazil-

wood (Caesalpinia sp), madder (Rubia tinctorum

L.), weld (Reseda luteola L.), old fustic (Chloro-

phora tinctoria), saffron (Crocus sativus L.), in-

digo (Indigofera sp.), Tyrian purple (Plicopurpura

pansa L.), alder bark (Alnus sp.) and sumac (Rhus

spp.) on wool, except the Tyrian purple reference

fibre, which was dyed on silk.

Fiber samples were obtained from different colored

Coptic textiles from the National Archaeological

Museum in Spain. Figures 1-8 show the photo-

graphs of these fragments. A total number of 29

sub-samples were taken.

Extraction procedures

Extraction methods were applied according to the

following general schemes:

Method 1: HCl extraction + MeOH/DMF extraction

Samples were placed in a conic vial and were treated

with 250 µl of a mixture of H2O : MeOH : 37%HCl

(1:1:2, v/v/v) for 10 minutes at 100 ºC. The solvent

was then evaporated under a N2 current. A volume

of 250 µl of the mixture MeOH:DMF (1:1, v/v) was

added to the dry residue and the mixture was heated

for 5 minutes at around 100 ºC. Then, the solution

was transferred to 0.2 µm nylon filters Spin-X

(micro centrifuge filter) and centrifuged at 6000

rpm for 10 minutes. The filtrate was evaporated to

dryness under a N2 current and the residue was

dissolved in 50 µl of MeOH:DMF (1:1, v/v) solution.

After shaking it in vortex for 1 minute, the extract

was injected to the HPLC-DAD system.

37e-conservation

Figures 3-5. Sampling in Coptic fragments codes from the National Archaeological Museum. From up to down: 1976/130/14; 15059 and 15076. Photos by José Baztan.

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYES IN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

Method 2: HCOOH extraction + MeOH/DMF

extraction

Samples were placed in a conic vial and treated for

30 minutes at 45-50 ºC with 250 µl of a mixture

of MeOH:HCOOH (95:5, v/v). The solvent was then

evaporated under a N2 current. 250 µl of a solu-

tion of MeOH:DMF (1:1, v/v) were added to the dry

residue and the mixture was heated for 5 minutes

at around 100 ºC. Then, the solution was transferred

to 0.2 µm nylon filters Spin-X (micro centrifuge

filter) and centrifuged at 6000 rpm for 10 minutes.

The filtrate was evaporated to dryness under N2

and the residue was dissolved in 50 µl of MeOH:DMF

(1:1, v/v) solution. After shaking it in vortex for

1 minute, the extract was injected to the HPLC-

DAD system.

Results and discussion

Comparison between the two evaluated extraction

methods

The two extraction methods applied are based on

classical methanolic hydrochloric acid extraction,

with an additional MeOH/DMF extraction step as

proposed by Surowiec et al. [18] and on the mild

extraction proposed by Zhang and Laursen [20],

where 5% formic acid in methanol was used. Suro-

wiec et al. confirmed the greatest improvement

in extraction efficiency for indigotin when using

the additional step involving MeOH/DMF and Zhang

and Laursen observed the preservation of flavon-

oid glycosides. To the best of our knowledge, no

study has been performed comparing the method

Figures 6-8. Sampling in Coptic fragments codes from the National Archaeological Museum. From up to down: 15064; 15065 and 1976/130/11. Photos by José Baztan.

ESTRELLA SANZ RODRÍGUEZ et al.

38 e-conservation

proposed by Surowiec et al. with others, where the

acidic hydrochloric extraction has been replaced

by a mild extraction. The objective was to join the

advantages of both in one extraction method, be-

cause the sample amount available for an analysis

is always very small, therefore it is crucial to obtain

the maximum information in one analytical run.

The results obtained in this comparison are sum-

marized in Figure 9. As expected, the indigoid

dyes, indigo and Tyrian purple, were extracted in

a similar way because they are mainly affected by

the MeOH/DMF extraction, which is identical in

both methods. Four reference fibres, dyed with

brazilwood, old fustic, alder bark and particularly,

saffron, were extracted more efficiently employ-

ing the mild extraction, or Method 2. As expected,

when saffron was extracted using Method 1, no

peaks were detected because crocin and crocetin,

its principal components, are decomposed by hy-

drochloric acid to compounds non-detectable by

HPLC-DAD. Regarding the rest of reference fibres,

for those dyed with American cochineal, madder,

weld and sumac, Method 1 was able to extract

more efficiently the dyestuff. The difference for

weld was not very high (with Method 2 a 95 % of

what has been achieved with Method 1), for Ameri-

can cochineal, madder and sumac, the sum area

of detected compound employing Method 2 was

40 %, 70 % and 1.5 %, respectively, compared to

results using Method 1. This indicates that anthra-

quinone dyes and ellagic acid are poorer extracted

with formic acid. For madder, this effect was also

observed by other authors [23]. However, the

total number of compounds detected was higher

when Method 2 was employed, with the exception

of only two dyes: American cochineal and sumac.

These results were attributed to the milder con-

ditions, the ones with which the glycosidic link-

ages were preserved, and, thus, the number of

detected compounds increases. To set an example,

the number of compounds increases from four to

eight, from seven to eleven or from four to twelve

for weld, madder and alder bark respectively. If

the extraction efficiency is acceptable, the criteria

to choice the best method would be the extrac-

tion of a maximum number of compounds, which

will offer more valuable information about the

origin of the dye.

Consequently, Method 2 was selected as optimum

and applied for subsequent dye extraction from

the Coptic textile samples.

Figure 9. Comparison between the two extraction methods evaluated. Nº upon bar= nº detected compounds.

39e-conservation

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYES IN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

Table 1. Results obtained applying the optimum extraction method for identification of dyestuffs employed in the Coptic textiles.

Application of the optimum method for dye

extraction from the Coptic textile samples

The results obtained applying the optimum extrac-

tion method to dyestuffs from the Coptic textiles

under study are summarised in Table 1.

Indigotin was identified in five blue samples, eight

green samples and five purple samples. These

results indicate that the dye employed for these

samples was in all cases indigo (Indigofera sp.) or

woad (Isatis tinctoria L.), whose main component

is indigotin, therefore the differentiation between

the two species was impossible.

Colour Samples Detected compounds Identified dyestuffs

Yellow 4, 20 luteolin-7-O-glucoside

apigenin-7-glucoside

luteolin

Flavonoid luteolin-type yellow dye,

probably weld

Blue 2, 3, 6, 8,16 indigotin

indirubin

Indigo (Indigofera sp.) or woad (Isatis

tinctoria L.)

Red and

pink

1, 14, 16B, 22,

24, 11, 13Munjistin (?)

alizarin

purpurin

Madder A

Orange 7 luteolin-7-O-glucoside

luteolin

alizarin

tannin

Flavonoid luteolin-type yellow dye,

probably weld

+ Madder A + Tannins

Brown 19 tannin

indigotin

indirubin

Tannins +

Indigo (Indigofera sp.) or woad (Isatis

tinctoria L.)

Purple 12, 15, 21, 23,

25alizarin

purpurin

indigotin

indirubin

Madder A +

Indigo (Indigofera sp.) or woad (Isatis

tinctoria L.)

Green 1 5, 17, 18 indigotin

Indirubin

luteolin-7-O-glucoside

apigenin-7-glucoside

luteolin

Indigo (Indigofera sp.) or woad (Isatis

tinctoria L.) +

Flavonoid luteolin-type yellow dye,

probably weld

Green 2 28 tannin

indigotin

Indigo (Indigofera sp.) or woad (Isatis

tinctoria L.) +

Tannins

Green 3 9, 10, 26, 27 indigotin

Indirubin

flavonoids (trace level)

Indigo (Indigofera sp.) or woad (Isatis

tinctoria L.) +

Flavonoid quercetin-type yellow dye

ESTRELLA SANZ RODRÍGUEZ et al.

40 e-conservation

41e-conservation

In red, purple, orange and salmon-pink samples,

the red dye found always contained alizarin and

purpurin as main components, indicating a mad-

der source. According to some authors [46, 47],

the two madder species most frequently employed

in the manufacture of the Coptic textiles were,

probably, the Rubia tinctorum L., whose principal

component is alizarin and Rubia peregrina L.

(wild madder), where purpurin is the main com-

ponent. In mentioned publication the term “mad-

der A” is used for dyeing which contains alizarin

as the main dyestuff and “madder P” for those

which contain mainly purpurin. In this study,

alizarin and purpurin were found to be within the

range of 60-99% and 2-12%, respectively, and the

type of madder detected was “madder A”, closer

to the composition of Rubia tinctorum L. Luteo-

lin-7-O-glucoside, as main component, luteolin

and traces of a glucoside of apigenin were detec-

ted in two yellow, three green and one orange

samples. Although there are numerous plants

which may contain these components, the most

important yellow dye originally found in the Medi-

terranean region and in West Asia was weld (Re-

seda luteola L.) which presents this composition

and is the major yellow dye found in Coptic tex-

tiles. Consequently, this dye can be identified

as weld.

Another yellow dye, though at very low concen-

tration, was detected in three green samples. This

dye had a flavonoid glycoside as main component,

probably a quercetin-type flavonoid, but yet un-

identified.

Presence of gallic and ellagic acids in the brown

sample indicate the use of tannins as dye, prob-

ably obtained from oak galls because the main

component was gallic acid. Moreover, in this

sample indigotin and indirubin were detected,

indicating the presence of indigo (Indigofera

sp.) or woad (Isatis tinctoria L.) in the mixture.

Finally, in one sample of dark green to brownish

colour, beside indigotin an unknown component

with absorption in the UV range only, presenting

one strong band at 253 nm and one shoulder at

275 nm, was detected. This absorption is possibly

due to condensed tannins, although more studies

are necessary to achieve concludent data.

Conclusions

The optimized method successfully achieves

marked objectives since it employed a single ex-

traction process. High efficiency was obtained

for the indigoid dyes while labile compounds and

glycosides were preserved. The efficiency for ex-

traction of certain compounds, like anthraqui-

nones, and especially carminic and ellagic acid

shall be improved in future investigations.

Dyestuffs identified in the fragments under study

in this work are in agreement with commonly re-

ported dyestuffs for Coptic textiles, in particular

madder, yellow flavonoid dyes, tannins and indigo

or woad. One yellow dye present in mixture to raise

green colour in three samples remains unidenti-

fied because it was present at very low concentra-

tion. Unfortunately, as the identified components

were employed all over the first millennium AD,

the gathered information does not provide clues

for a more precise dating of these fragments.

As the amount of investigated samples was rather

limited, the obtained results may be not very rep-

resentative. Nonetheless, they provide valuable

information, especially when compared with re-

sults obtained by other authors dedicated to an-

cient dying techniques applied in the Nile valley.

Besides these results, this study represents the

first milestone of an ongoing systematic charac-

terisation by HPLC-DAD of the principal compo-

nents used for dying of the textiles contained in

the IPCE´s fibre reference collection.

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYES IN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

42 e-conservation

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Spanish Ministry of Culture

and the Complutense University of Madrid for the

establishment of the agreement of collaboration,

in the frame of which the present study has been

developed. Ana Roquero is also gratefully acknow-

ledged for her important advice on dyed fibres

belonging to the Reference Collection of the IPCE

and for providing us reference fibres dyed with

Reseda luteola L. and Rubia tinctorum L. from her

personal collection. We would like to thank to the

staff of the Textiles Department of IPCE for their

collaboration and valuable help.

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fluorescence analysis of early synthetic dyes”, Journal of Chromatography A 1157, 2007, pp. 260-272

[31] J. Wouters and N. Rosario-Chirinos, “Dye analysis of pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles with high-performance- liquid-chromatography and diode-array detector”, Journal of the American Institute of Conservation 31(2)7, 1992, pp. 237-255

[32] W. Nowik, S. Desrosiers, I. Surowiec and M. Trojanowicz, “The analysis of dye stuffs from first- to second-century textile artefacts found in the Martres de Veyre (France) excavations”, Archaeometry 47, 2005, pp. 835-848

[33] G.G. Balakina, V.G. Vasiliev, E.V. Karpova, and V.I. Mamatyuk, “HPLC and molecular spectroscopic investi- gations of the red dye obtained from an ancient Pazyrik textile”, Dyes and Pigments 71, 2006, pp. 54-60

[34] I. vanden Berghe, M. Gleba and U. Mannering, “To- wards the identification of dyestuffs in Early Iron Age Scandianavian peat bog textiles”, Journal of Archaelo- gical Science 36, 2009, pp. 1910-1921

[35] I. Degano and M. P. Colombini, “Multi-analytical techniques for the study of pre-Columbian mummies and related funerary materials”, Journal of Archaeo- logical Science 36, 2009, pp. 1783–1790

[36] M. Puchalska, K. Polec-Pawlak, I. Zadrozna, H. Hrysko and M. Jarosz, “Identification of indigoid dyes in natural organic pigments used in historical arts objects by high performance liquid chromatography coupled to electro- spray ionization mass spectrometry”, Journal of Mass Spectrometry 39, 2004, pp. 1441-1449

[37] G. C.H. Derksen, H.A.G. Niederländer and T.A. van Beek, “Analysis of anthraquinones in Rubia tinctorum by liquid chromatography coupled with diode array UV and mass spectrometric detection”, Journal of Chroma- tography A 978, 2002, pp. 119-127

[38] I. Karapanagiotis, Y. Chryssoulakis, “Investigation of Red Natural Dyes Used in Historical Objects by HPLC- DAD-MS”, Annali di Chimica 96 (1-2), 2005, pp. 75-84

[39] K. Pawlak, M. Puchalska, A. Miszczak, E. Rosloniec, M. Jarosz, “Blue natural organic dyestuffs-From textile dyeing to mural painting. Separation and characteri- zation of coloring matters present in eldberry, logwood and indigo”, Journal of Mass Spectrometry 41, 2006, pp. 613-622

[40] R. Marques, M. M. Sousa, M.C. Oliveira and M.J. Melo, “Characterization of weld (Reseda luteola L.) and spurge

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYES IN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

43e-conservation

ESTRELLA SANZ RODRÍGUEZConservation-Scientist

Estrella Sanz Rodríguez (MSc, PhD) studied at the

Faculty of Chemistry in the Complutense University

of Madrid (UCM), graduating in 1996. After first

degree obtained in 1997 with the work “Identifi-

cation of dry oils in paint layers by gas chromato-

graphy-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)”, she worked

during three years as an analytical scientist in the

Department of Analytical Chemistry, carrying out

investigations about the identification of organic

and inorganic materials in historical samples by

high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)

coupled to ultraviolet detection, Raman spectro-

scopy and GC-MS. From 2000 until 2003 she worked

in the Spectroscopy Research Assistance Centre

of the UCM. Subsequently she carried out her PhD

in the group of trace analysis, speciation and met-

allomics (UCM), dedicated to the development of

new methods for arsenic species extraction from

environmental samples by HPLC and inductively

coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), work

which she completed in 2007. From 2006 until

present, she works as UCM investigator in the

Laboratories of the Spanish Cultural Heritage

Institute (IPCE). Her research interest include

the development a new extraction methods for

natural dyes from historical and archaeological

textiles samples and their analysis by liquid chro-

matography coupled to array and mass detector

(LC-DAD-MS).

ANGELA ARTEAGA RODRÍGUEZConservation-Scientist

Angela Arteaga Rodríguez received her CINE-5b

(1972) in Chemistry by the School of Industrial

Masters of Madrid. Since 1992 she develops her

professional work in the Area of Laboratories of

the Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute (IPCE).

flax (Daphne gnidium L.) by high-performance liquid chromatography–diode array detection–mass spectro- metry in Arraiolos historical textiles”, Journal of Chromatography A 1216, 2009, pp. 1395–1402

[41] J. Wouters, “Dye analysis in a broad perspective: a study of 3rd to 10th century Coptic textiles from Bel- gian private collections”, Dyes in History and Archae- ology 13, 1995, pp.38-45

[42] J. Wouters, “Kleurstofanalyse van Koptisch textiel (Dye analysis of Coptic textiles)”, in Koptisch Textiel (Coptic Textiles), Publicaties van het Provinciaal Ar- cheologisch museum van Zuid-Oost-Vlaanderen, site Velzeke, A. De Moor (ed.) 1993, pp. 53-64

[43] J. Orska-Gawrys, I. Surowiec, J. Kehl, H. Rejniak, K. Urbaniak-Walczak and M. Trojanowicz, “Identification of natural dyes in archeological Coptic textiles by HPLC-PDA”, Journal of Chromatography A 989, 2003, pp. 239-248

[44] B. Szostek, J. Orska-Gawrys, I. Surowiec and M. Tro- janowicz, “Investigation of natural dyes occurring in historical Coptic textiles by high performance liquid chromatography whith UV-Vis and mass spectrometric detection”, Journal of Chromatography A 1012, 2003, pp. 179-192

[45] M. Trojanowicz, J. Orska-Gawrys, I. Surowiec, B. Szostek, K. Urbaniak-Walczak, J. Kehl and M. Wróbel, “Chroma- tographic investigation of dyes extracted from coptic textiles from the National Museum in Warsaw”, Studies in Conservation 49, 2004, pp. 115-130

[46] A. Verhecken, “Relation between age and dyes of 1st millennium AD textiles found in Egypt”, in Proceedings of the 4th meeting of the study group. Textiles from the Niley Valley, 2005, Antwerp, 16-17 April, pp. 208-209

[47] R. Hofmann-de Keijzer, M.R. van Bommel and M. de Keijzer, “Coptic textiles: dyes, dyeing techniques and dyestuff analysis of two textile fragments of the MAK Viena”, in Proceedings of the 4th meeting of the study group. Textiles from the Niley Valley, 2005, Antwerp, 16-17 April 2005, 214-228

[48] L. Peinado, A. Cabrera, P. Borrego, E. Parra, C. Herrero, L. Turell, R. M. Martín Ros, A. Arteaga, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Plan Nacional I+D+I (HUM2005- 04610), 2005-2008

[49] A. Artega, P. Borrego, M. Moreno and A. Platero, “Te- jidos del Valle del Nilo del Museo Arqueológico Nacional”, Patrimonio Cultural de España 1, 2009, pp. 279-288

ESTRELLA SANZ RODRÍGUEZ et al.

44 e-conservation

Her work consists in the analyses of natural dyes,

binding media from works of art by different tech-

niques like FTIR, TLC and HPLC-DAD. She has also

participated in several publications, congresses

and other professional meetings, both national

and international.

MARÍA ANTONIA GARCÍA RODRÍGUEZConservation-Scientist

María Antonia García Rodríguez received her MSc

(1991) in Analytical Chemistry from the Complu-

tense University of Madrid. From 1992 to 1997 she

developed her professional work in the Laboratory

of Doping Control in Madrid (The Sports Council,

CSD). In 1998 and 1999, she collaborated with the

Laboratory of Public Health of the Community of

Madrid. Between 2001 and 2005 she worked as

technical attendance in the study of instrumental

techniques applied to the Investigation and docu-

mentation on artworks in restoration process in

the IPCE, where since 2006, she belongs to the

technical staff in the Area of Laboratories. Her

work consists in studies related to mural paintings

and archaeological material, as well as the analysis

of organic materials in other art objects. She is

author of several articles that appear in various

publications.

MARIÁN DEL EGIDOConservation-Scientist

Marián del Egido received her MSc in Physics from

the Complutense University of Madrid in 2003.

From 1995 to 2000, she worked as researcher in

the National Museum of Science and Technology

(Madrid), where she participated in projects re-

lated to documentation and publication of his-

torical collections of scientific instruments and

she was attending national and international

meetings organized by the Scientific Instrument

Society and the International Union of the His-

tory and Philosophy of Science. She is author of

several publications on History of Science and

History of Scientific Instruments. Since 2000,

she is Head of the department of Scientific Con-

servation of the IPCE. During this period, she has

participated in national and international projects

related to scientific conservation of cultural her-

itage, has coordinated and directed several inter-

ventions and researches on scientific methods in

conservation and organized many courses and

seminars.

CARMEN CÁMARAChemist

Carmen Cámara is a professor in Analytical Chem-

istry at the Complutense University since 1992.

She is the leader of the Research Group of Trace

Determination and Speciation, belonging to the

department of Analytical Chemistry. Her main

research interest is focused on the development

of new analytical methods for trace metal speci-

ation, emergent contaminants, bioaccumulation

studies of trace metals and organic compounds in

zebra fish embryo, proteomics and other topics

related with a wide variety of samples. She has

coordinated more than six European and several

National projects. She has also participated in

more than 30 European projects. Carmen Cámara

has extensive experience within quality assurance,

development of validation methodologies and

the use of hyphenated techniques, among oth-

ers. She has published more than 250 papers in

international journals, was invited to held plen-

ary lectures in the most relevant international

meetings related with her activity and helds two

patents. She has also been, from 2005 to 2009,

the president of the Spanish Analytical Chemistry

Society.

IDENTIFICATION OF NATURAL DYES IN HISTORICAL COPTIC TEXTILES

45e-conservation

LASER CLEANING IN ART CONSERVATION

by Rui Bordalo

Part I: Laser Fundamentals

This article is the first of a series devoted to the application of lasers to art conservation, mainly

focused on the cleaning process, and it will cover notions from the basics of lasers to its application to

paintings and other works of art.

Introduction

The laser just turned 50 years-old. It has, since

long, been part of our daily life and it made pos-

sible many technologies that many of us couldn’t

live without, from dvd readers to telecommunica-

tions. But the laser has also been an important

development for art conservation. During the

development of laser technology the interaction

between the laser and the irradiated material

has been of the utmost interest in several fields

of knowledge. Among its many applications, in

art lasers can be used mainly for analysis, when

integrated in analytical devices such as spectro-

scopy, and for cleaning. Laser technology should

be always considered as an alternative tool to solve

specific problems, when traditional methods are

not a viable option.

Lasers in Conservation

50 years after the first laser was built there are

more than 10,000 laser wavelengths known. Laser

technology has a great potential in the develop-

ment of alternative procedures for conservation

mainly due to particular properties of the light

beam but also due to its controllable and reprodu-

cible technique. Its application in the conserva-

tion field includes a wide spectrum of uses, namely

surface cleaning, removal of overpaintings and

other layers, and analysis of art materials.

Laser has always captured much attention due to

its potential over traditional cleaning techniques,

either chemical or mechanical ones. It became the

first tool that did not interact physically with the

artwork, minimizing thus the contact with the

surface and the stresses or damages that can be

inflected during normal procedures. This minim-

um contact respects the “minimal intervention”

principle that every conservator aspires to follow.

Research in laser cleaning is focused on the de-

velopment and optimization of the controllable

removal of surface selected layers.

Although in the beginning laser technology could

have been seen by some as a new fast technique

to clean any material, soon it was obvious that the

technique required much research before being

applied to works of art. Nowadays its potential is

to complement the established traditional tech-

niques by overcoming their disadvantages and

limitations.

Although conservation is traditionally a conserva-

tive field, scientific research is very active in both

the material characterization and the development

of new technology to the cultural heritage field.

Traditional cleaning techniques employed by paint-

ing conservators are either of mechanical or chem-

ical nature. The use of solvents presents several

disadvantages such as the difficulty to control

their degree of penetration into the paint layers,

interfering thus with the chemical stability of the

original, and their toxic nature. It was attempted

to overcome the former disadvantage by the de-

velopment of gels instead of the liquid form, al-

though this technique is also not exempt from

disadvantages. An important factor is that some

Laser scanning device. Lasers can be used to scan 3D objects of any size, from coins to building facades.

LASER CLEANING IN ART CONSERVATION

47

layers to be removed are partial or completely in-

soluble to strong solvents that can endanger the

paint layer and the integrity of the painting. Mech-

anical cleaning is performed most of the times

with a scalpel, which is probably the most charac-

teristic tool used by conservators, but which pres-

ents the associated hazard of the direct physical

action over the paint layer that can damage the

surface. The choice and control of these techniques

is directly dependant on the individual skills of the

conservator, as the borderline between optimum

cleaning and over cleaning is often very thin.

Laser technology, and more particularly, laser

cleaning provides advantages such as selectivity

(it is possible to remove unwanted layers without

removing the original material with appropriate

parameters), non mechanical contact (enabling

the treatment of highly sensitive surfaces), envir-

onmental friendliness (avoiding the use of hazard-

ous chemicals or solvents), precise action and

reliability.

Historic background

Lasers are based on the principle of stimulated

emission which was first deduced by Albert Ein-

stein in 1917. This principle is simply the process

by which electromagnetic waves of a certain fre-

quency can induce (or stimulate) an excited atom

or molecule to decay from a high to a low energy

level, emitting thus more electromagnetic waves.

In the early 50’s, Columbia University researcher

Charles Townes thought that he could induce mo-

lecules to emit at certain wavelenghts. In 1954

Townes and his colleagues built the first device

based on that principle. The device was named

‘maser’, which stands for Microwave Amplification

by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and it was able

to emit at a very precise unique wavelength in the

microwave region. This breakthrough was then repro-

duced by others, originating several modifications.

In 1958, Townes and Schawlow [1] proposed that

the emission could also be done in the infrared

48 e-conservation

The electromagnetic spectrum shows a general sequence of all the possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation,

from gamma rays to radio and long waves. Shown above is a detail of the visible region which is the one the human eye

can see. This region is approximately between 400 nm and 700 nm. Below and above those values are the ultraviolet (UV)

and the infrared (IR) regions, respectively. Most lasers used in conservation are in those regions, in wavelengths that

typically vary between 150 nm (UV) and 1100 nm (IR).

Some rights reserved, available at Wikimedia Commons.

RUI BORDALO

and visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Two years later, in 1960, the first light-emitting

maser was constructed by Maiman [2] using a flash-

pumped rod of ruby. The name of this light-emit-

ting maser was changed to Light Amplification by

Stimulated Emission of Radiation, or laser. After

that, lasers development was soon directed for

industrial applications.

In short, lasers are devices that produce and am-

plify an intense beam of highly coherent and highly

directional radiation by stimulated emission in spe-

cific frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The first application of lasers to art conservation

happened in the early 70’s by a team leaded by

John Asmus [3, 4]. He was invited by geophysicist

Walter Munk to produce high-resolution holographic

records from marble sculptures for archival pur-

poses using laser technology in Venice, Italy be-

fore further degradation. For the job, the team

used a ruby holographic laser, the most powerful

in existence at the time. In 1972, and after having

produced over 50 holograms, Asmus was introduced

to the difficulties of cleaning crumbling marble

sculpture by restorer Giulia Musumeci. Asmus had

previous experience with laser ablation due to past

research on using lasers for space exploration and

came with the idea of using the laser to ablate the

black crusts from the marble with minimum dam-

age [5]. The initial holography program turned

then into a laser cleaning project of stone statues,

the first of a new area of research.

However, before starting to clean sculptures, it

was required to assess the safety of the use of

lasers for this purpose. Further research funded

by the Samuel Kress Foundation and the Smith-

sonian Institution between 1972 and 1974 found

that laser could be applied to clean countless ma-

terials used in works of art such as “marble, lime-

stone, oolite, sandstone, stucco, concrete, terra

cotta, most metals, leather, velum, paper, cotton,

wool, silk, moleskin, and wood” [5]. Ruby and Nd:

YAG lasers had limitations back then, among which

the low pulse repetition laser, low reliability, high

costs, etc., that prevent them from being extens-

ively employed [6, 7]. Although promising, there

was few research developed in the field in the 70’s

and 80’s.

Diagram showing population inversion in a typical three-level laser energy. Diagram by Bob Mellish, Some rights reserved, available at Wikimedia Commons.

49e-conservation

Laser cleaning of a metal object using a Nd:YAG laser that is portable and can be easily managed through a hand gun. Photo taken at the workshop 'Saving Sacred Relics of European Medieval Cultural Heritage', Romania, 2006.

LASER CLEANING IN ART CONSERVATION

The 80’s was still an incipient period, although

lasers were produced with increasing technological

advancements. Their use involved a very high cost

when compared with the traditional cleaning prac-

tices and their precise short- and long-term effects

on the works of art needed further research. The

fact that lasers were normally located in industrial

environments was not adequate to the cleaning

of works of art. During that period this new tech-

nology faced scepticism from the conservation

community and it was mainly thanks to the work

of Asmus and colleagues that research continued

[8, 9].

It was only in the 90’s, with the progressive devel-

opment of laser technology, that this slow paced

research field met a new interest from European

researchers. More studies begun. mainly backed

up by European Programs funding, and several re-

search groups arose [10-14]. In this period, stone-

based materials were the focus of research and

the success cases contributed to the debute of

research in other areas to start, mainly in paper,

textiles, glass, metals and paintings.

Due to the increasing interest in laser applications

to conservation, an international workshop was

organised in 1995 gathering the main researchers

of the area. The meeting was so successful that it

turned into a biannual conference with the name

LACONA (Lasers in the Conservation of Artworks),

and has become one of the most relevant inter-

national meetings in this field of research. Since

then, laser technology has continue to evolve and

is now much better known by conservators and

other professionals. Its research and use has been

consolidated by a permanent interest from several

research groups, mainly located in Europe.

50 e-conservation

Schematic representation of the laser cavity.

Detail of a manuscript during cleaning. Lasers are so precise that can be even used to erase ink from paper. The red laser dots in the image are from a secondary laser used for locating the area to be removed as the cleaning laser is not visible.

RUI BORDALO

Laser Fundamentals

Lasers are devices that can produce and amplify

coherent radiation by stimulated emission in spe-

cific frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Nowadays lasers can emit in a large range of the

electromagnetic spectrum, namely at wavelengths

from the long infrared to X-ray regions [15].

Principles of Laser Radiation

The theoretical basis of lasers was presented in

1917 by Einstein [16] when he described funda-

mental concepts of emission and absorption of

light by matter: stimulated absorption, spontaneous

emission and stimulated emission of radiation.

Spontaneous emission is the process when excited

particles transit to a stable state of lower energy

resulting in the spontaneous emission of a photon.

Stimulated emission occurs when energy of the

same frequency of the spontaneously emitted radi-

ation is incident on the material forcing the parti-

cle to undergo a level transition emitting radiation.

In this particular case, however, the photons emit-

ted by stimulated emission have the same phase,

same frequency and direction of propagation as

the incident radiation. The resulting radiation

beam is therefore considered coherent, mono-

chromatic and highly directional. It is the most

low-divergent and monochromatic light source

that is known to man.

Lasers emit radiation at several wavelengths cov-

ering a broad range of the electromagnetic spec-

trum, from the microwave to the soft X-ray region.

Each laser can only operate at a specific wave-

length, except for free electron lasers that have

the potential to operate at all wavelengths. The

most important regions for most applications

are the infrared, the visible and the ultraviolet

regions.

Basic Structure

A basic standard laser requires the same 3 basic

components: a power source, an active medium

and a resonance cavity.

The active medium must have a metastable state

in which the electrons can be trapped. After ex-

citation of the active medium by energy pumped

from the power source, the active medium particles

tend to achieve an excited metastable state with

51e-conservation

Typical laser set-up at a laboratory during research. Although not all lasers are small and portable their characteristics may be very useful for the interaction with certain materials. Testing the interaction of laser with several materials is an important step of research in order to minimize possible unwanted effects.

Example of a Nd:YAG laser. In this particular case the laser beam exit by the top and is redirected by a mirror into the target.

LASER CLEANING IN ART CONSERVATION

is unblocked, the energy is released in a single

and very high peak pulse. This technique makes

possible to produce laser beams with different

lengths (τ) depending on the switching frequency.

Lasers are complex devices and their explanation

can sometimes be hard to comprehend. However,

it is required to understand the principles by

which they function in order to understand how

they can operate and how they can be later used

for conservation purposes.

The next article of this series will continue intro-

ducing the application of lasers in conservation.

It will contain, in detail, the interaction of the

laser radiation with matter, exploring why it is

so convenient for cleaning procedures, and the

most used laser types in conservation.

a consequent inversion of the population. The in-

version of the population occurs when the majority

of the particles (atoms, ions or molecules) are in

an excited state rather than in a low-energy state.

This condition is critical as the radiation is emitted

when the particles decay from energy level.

The active medium is contained in the resonance

cavity, the main mechanism of the laser, where the

light is amplified. The cavity has two mirrors at its

extremities, opposite to each other. While one is

totally reflective, the other is partially transmitant

making possible the exit of the light beam from

the cavity.

After the spontaneous emission of light is produced

in all directions, the photons that travel in the par-

allel direction of the resonance cavity axis can start

the emission of other photons. The light amplifi-

cation is achieved by successive reflections in the

mirrors on the referred axis. When the amplifica-

tion exceeds the loss of the cavity, a coherent beam

of light is produced.

Operational Modes

Lasers operate in two fundamental modes: con-

tinuous or pulsed (either normal or Q-switched).

As self-explained, continuous mode is when trans-

mission from the resonance cavity emission is con-

tinuous in time and pulsed mode is when transmis-

sion is made intermittently. The pulsed mode can

be originated by the device set-up or it can be in-

duced mechanically by means of a switch (called

Q-switch).

Q-switching is a technique used to obtain strong

pulses. In the normal laser configuration the en-

ergy drains out of the population inversion as fast

as is pumped in. However, if the feedback of the

light to the mirrors is blocked, the energy is stored

until a certain level is reached. When the feedback

52 e-conservation

Example of the laser set-up during testing. The laser beam can be shaped by a mask and a lens before irradiating the paint sample. Previous research in several conditions is an important step before the actual cleaning of works of art.

Bibliography

[1] A.L. Schawlow, C.H. Towens, “Infrared and optical masers”, Physical Review 112, 1958, pp. 1940-1949

RUI BORDALO

53e-conservation

Rui Bordalo is a conservator-restorer specialised

in easel paintings. He has a particular interest in

the study of art materials and in the application

of new technologies to conservation. This interest

led him to pursue a PhD at the Courtauld Institute

of Art in the application of laser technology in the

cleaning of paintings.

He currently teaches several disciplines of the

conservation course at Portucalense University,

Porto. He is a board member of the Portuguese

Association of Conservator-Restorers (ARP) and a

Committee member of the European Confederation

of Conservator-Restorers' Organisations (ECCO)

since 2005. He is also one of the founders of e-

conservation magazine, where he is currently

the editor-in-chief.

[2] T.H. Maiman, “Stimulated optical radiation in ruby”, Nature 187, 1960, pp. 493

[3] J. F. Asmus, G. Guattari, L. Lazzarini, G. Musumeci, R. F. Wuerker, “Holography in the conservation of statuary”, Studies in Conser- vation 18, 1973, pp. 49-63, URL

[4] J. F. Asmus, S. G. Murphy, W. H. Munk, “Studies on the interaction of laser radiation with art artifacts”, in R.F. Weurker (ed.), Developments in laser Technology II, Proc. SPIE 41, 1973, pp. 19-30

[5] R. Bordalo, “John Asmus, from Lasers to Art Conservation”, e-conservation magazine 3, 2008, pp. 12-19, URL

[6] A. Martini, “Utilità del laser nel restauro della pietra e del marmo”, Quaderni della Soprin- tendenza ai Beni Artistici di Venezia, Venezia, 1978, pp. 151-152

[7] L. Lazzarini, La pulitura dei materiali lapidei da costruzione e da scultura, Cedam, Padova, Italy, 1981

[8] J. F. Asmus, “More light for art conservation”, IEEE Circuits and Devices Magazine, March Issue, 1986, pp. 6-14

[9] J. F. Asmus, “Lasers in conservation”, Con- servation News 34, 1987, pp. 9-10

[10] M. Cooper, Laser cleaning in conservation: an introduction, Butterworth-Heineman, Oxford, 1998

[11] A. C. Tam, W. P. Leung, W. Zapka, W. Ziemlich, "Laser cleaning techniques for removal of sur- face particulates", Journal of Applied Physics 71, 3515, 1992, doi:10.1063/1.350906

[12] S. Georgiou, V. Zafiropulos, D. Anglos, C. Balas, V. Tornari, C. Fotakis, “Excimer laser restoration of painted artworks: procedures, mechanisms and effects”, Applied Surface Science 127-129, 738, 1998, doi:10.1016/S0169-4332(97)00734-4

[13] R. Oltra, O. Yavas, F. Cruz, J. P. Boquillon, C. Sartori, “Modelling and diagnostic of pulsed laser cleaning of oxidized metallic surfaces”, Applied Surface Science 96-98, 484, 1996, doi:10.1016/0169-4332(95)00500-5

[14] C. Fotakis, “Lasers for Art’s Sake”, Optics and Photonics News 6 (5), 1995, URL

[15] M. J. Weber, Handbook of Lasers, CRC Press, 2001

[16] A. Einstein, “Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 18, 1917, pp. 121-128

RUI BORDALOConservator-restorerContact: rmbordalo@e-conservationline.com

LASER CLEANING IN ART CONSERVATION

case

stu

dy

THE NEW DISCOVERIES OF RESTORATION AND ARCHAEOLOGY

in the church of King St. Stefan in Žilina, Slovakia

by Jozef Dorica

National cultural heritage, the Church of King St.

Stefan is the oldest sacral building in Žilina in the

district of Dolné Rudiny in Slovakia.

The church was built in the Late - Romanesque

style likely in the first third of the 13th century.

It was created as a compact building as we know

it until today. It has an oblong nave, a square choir

and a semicircular apse. The church is located in

an enclosed area bordered with a roofed fortifi-

cation wall with an entrance gate and embrasures.

A field chapel was built after the year 1700 in the

south-eastern part of the ground. Originally the

church was surrounded by a cemetery. In 1995

foundations of the razed Chapel of the God’s Body

were discovered on the outer southern side of

the choir and apse of the church. According to

the archaeological survey it is possible to date its

creation back to the break of the 14th and 15th

centuries and its demise within the first half of

the 16th century.

The Church of King St. Stefan went through a num-

ber of changes on the interior decorations and also

through minor adjustments of architectonic de-

tails during its existence. Only in the year 1762 a

greater rebuilding was performed in the interior

of the church nave. The original flat wooden beam

(joist) ceiling was replaced with a baroque brick

vault. The small late-Romanesque windows which

were positioned in the height were bricked in and

on the wall under them they were replaced with

larger baroque ones.

In the interior of the choir and the sanctuary are

wall paintings. They are the most valuable part of

the church decoration. In the year 1949 they were

discovered by the academic painter Mojmír Vlko-

laček (28.12.1915 – 25.10.2007). As he stated in

various texts, he performed on his own the first par-

tial uncover, on the 6th of January 1950. His keen

painting restoration activity was from the year 1955

Graphic record of the openings from the fortifying beams.

THE CHURCH OF KING ST. STEFAN IN ŽILINA, SLOVAKIA

e-conservation 55

professionally guaranteed by the academic painter

Peter J. Kern (31.1.1881 – 25.3.1963), who belongs

to the first representatives of the professional res-

toration in Slovakia. The overall uncovering of the

wall paintings was done in the period between

5.10. and 16.12.1955. The final approval report

about the completion of restoration works is dated

12.12.1956. The minutes from one of the meetings

state: “The paintings were uncovered from under-

neath two layers of plaster, locally up to 8 cm thick.

Under the plasters there were paintings also covered

with a coat of lime”.

In the past a few specialised surveys were carried

out in the church. Besides their specialised assign-

ments, they always involved the architectural-

historical survey of the church. In the year 1988

the heritage survey of the whole area, based on

visual analysis, considered the possible develop-

ment of the building in two stages. The sanctuary

and the choir are considered to be the older build-

ing parts and the nave to be the newer extension.

The archaeological surveys from the external side

from the year 1995 and in the interior of the church

made in 2000 were aimed also at the survey of the

building foundations in the touch point of the choir

with the nave and discovered one building stage.

Since the discovery and restoration of the wall

paintings, the first precise restoration survey was

only executed in the year 2008. Unquestionable

finds of the survey proved the conclusions of the

archaeological survey about one stage of building

- historical development. Further, together with

the following restoration of wall paintings in the

year 2009, they brought new and revealing finds

in iconography, which significantly changed a part

of its look as it was known since the restoration in

the 50ies of the 20th century until now.

The restoration survey used all required methods

for assessment of the technical state of the wall

paintings, verification of their historical develop-

ment and definition of the extent of restoration

View of the sanctuary before restoration.

JOZEF DORICA

56 e-conservation

interventions in the past century. It was widened

by the cooperation with specialists from the field

of natural sciences. It was oriented at the survey of

the paintings in infrared reflectography, ultraviolet

luminescence, survey of the plasters on walls and

vaults with thermography and onto a large physi-

cal-chemical survey of the compound of the used

pigments. The wooden historical constructions

of the church and the finds of historical wood in

the masonry underwent a dendrochronological

survey. The ornithological - osteological survey

studied further finds which were related to the

historical existence of the church. From the art-

historical point of view the painting was the sub-

ject of a large analytic-synthetical study.

The whole survey proved that the decoration with

wall paintings in the church‘s sanctuary was real-

ised in four time varying stages. It was preserved

in different technical qualities and extents.

After the restoration in the 50ies in the conch of

the apse, considering the time of their creation, two

of the most distant paint layers were presented

at the same time. In historical order, the fourth

one – the newest painting of the four figures, likely

Hungarian saints – partially covered the first one

– the oldest paint layer, which in a linear way of

painting, pictures the basic parts of a Gothic build-

ing construction and decoration – blind arched

frieze, rustication (brickwork) and ribs with a key-

stone in the peak of the vault.

In the choir space of the vault there are three

painting layers. The oldest, first linear painting

Non-invasive survey of the paintings in ultraviolet luminescence.

View of the sanctuary after restoration.

THE CHURCH OF KING ST. STEFAN IN ŽILINA, SLOVAKIA

e-conservation 57

is related to the oldest layer in the conch of the

apse. On the sides of the vault a second layer of the

painting is covered in historical order with the fig-

ures of the 12 apostles - 8 on the northern and 4

on the southern side. In the peak of the vault the

third layer by order is the least preserved paint-

ing of Christ Pantocrator in mandorla, which is

carried by angels.

The survey found that the painting of the 4 figures

of saints in the conch was painted on multiple

layers of lime coats which already at the time of

its creation covered the oldest linear layer of Gothic

architectural parts. The figures were preserved

only fragmentally in the extent of ca. 20 – 30%.

Until now their known aspect was due to the res-

ult of the artistic reconstruction from the first

restoration.

On the keystone of the peak of the conch in the

apse we found important iconographical finds –

the painted keystone, which had the shape of

Christ solar symbol was an over painting. The ori-

ginal is the blessing Master’s Hand in the middle of

its semicircle. The “sun flames” around the key-

stone were also over paintings. Originally they were

four dog heads with the ribs coming out from their

mouths. These finds are related to the oldest lin-

ear painting. Their symbolism, and so their whole

oldest painting decoration, can be assigned to the

influence of the order of Dominicans, who were

active in Kláštor pod Znievom before the second

half of the 13th century (1243 – 1248).

Painted keystone in the peak of the conch of the apse before restoration (right) and after restoration (below).

JOZEF DORICA

58 e-conservation

One of the most important developments was the

find of the uninterrupted continuation of the old-

est linear paint layer - small rustication on the

only preserved stone cornice on the northern

corner of the nave’s arch of triumph and of the

choir of the church. At the same time it was found

that on the corners of both arches of triumph

(nave - choir, choir - sanctuary) there are frag-

ments of cut off stone cornices from the same type

of stone. According to the finds they had also iden-

tical profiles. They were different only in size. They

prove the 'one building stage' of the sanctuary,

choir and of the nave of the church.

The results of the restoration survey were the base

for processing the new method of presentation

of the paintings in the conch of the apse. With

the aim to restore the original artistic-historical

aspect of the sanctuary, the preserved extent and

quality of the original enabled us to decide in fa-

vour of the presentation of only the oldest linear

painting decoration. The process of restoration was

chosen so that fragments of the paintings of the

figures were not removed, but fixed and covered

with lime coat.

Even during the restoration works we recorded

further important finds.

During the removal of the secondary interventions

from the repairs on the figures of the apostles we

found bricked-in openings from a wooden beam

which connected opposite sides of the arch of tri-

umph on the corner of the nave and of the choir.

The openings from the beam get wider deeper in

the wall and continue into both corners of the

eastern wall of the nave. In the corners they turn

and continue in the northern and southern wall

of the nave. Originally reinforcing beams, which

probably rotted out, were placed there. Again,

the openings are a proof about the creation of the

whole church at the same time.

In the openings vomit was found from barn-owls

(Tyto alba). According to the ornithological – os-

teological survey the owls nested there for at least

20 years. That means that further in the past in a

period not yet determined on the timeline the

church was not used for a longer period.

During the final cleaning of the oldest preserved

plaster layer from the newer plasters on the north-

ern and southern part of the eastern wall of the

nave an important completely new find was dis-

covered. Two until then unknown consecration

crosses were found there. They are a further im-

portant piece of evidence of the architectural

unity of the whole church already since the be-

ginning of the 13th century. Their discovery, be-

sides the finds in the conch of the sanctuary,

brought a further new and outstandingly inter-

Find of the oldest linear rustication decoration on the northern cornice and its aspect after restoration.

THE CHURCH OF KING ST. STEFAN IN ŽILINA, SLOVAKIA

e-conservation 59

esting document about the unique iconography

of the church of King St. Stefan which was not

met yet in Slovakia. Both newly discovered 'crosses'

have no transverse arms. The northern one has

only a vertical and the southern only an horizontal

arm. In this way they disprove the existing idea

about the consecration cross in the sanctuary

regarding to the fact that it also has only one arm,

which was considered to be unfinished or damaged.

All three together, lead to the conclusion about

a possible unknown meaning content and sym-

bolism of these one armed crosses.

The find increased the number of the medieval

consecration crosses discovered until now in the

church to five. The other two consecration crosses

on the northern and southern walls of the choir

known from before are typologically different. It

is possible to assign the difference to their shape

and colour adjustment, which is newer.

In the peak of the vault choir is, according to the

timeline of the creation, the third paint layer. Ori-

ginally it portrayed Christ Pantocrator in mandorla

which is carried by angels. The scene is preserved

only in fragments. The reason of its damage was

the plaster falling off in the past. The restora-

tion in the years 1950 – 1956 only conserved its

torso.

During the restoration research in the year 2008

other small parts of the original mandorla scene

The find of the one-armed consecration cross on the southern side of the eastern wall of the nave, before and after restoration.

Christ in mandorla in the peak of the choir vault before restoration.

JOZEF DORICA

60 e-conservation

Christ in mandorla in the peak of the choir vault after the restoration.

THE CHURCH OF KING ST. STEFAN IN ŽILINA, SLOVAKIA

e-conservation 61

were found which were not involved during the earli-

er restoration. After the removal of the fillings and

proper final cleaning of all the painting remains,

it was possible to realise the shape reconstruction

of the angels. The central scene with the figure of

Christ Pantocrator is preserved only in minimal

fragments. Due to the need to reach visual and

contextual unity of the painting, which is located

in the living organism of the church, it was decided

in cooperation with the methodical advisor from

the Regional Heritage Office in Žilina to realise

its hypothetic shape and colour reconstruction.

In the row, the second historical paint layer with

the figures of the apostles on the lower parts of

the choir's vault is the art-historically most valu-

able artistic realisation in the interior of the church.

The restoration survey on the figures did not bring

any fundamental changes. It proved large extent

of damage and large losses of the original in the

past. The reconstruction of a part of draperies of

the apostles’ clothing belongs, from an artistic

point of view, to the best managed realisation of

restoration in the 50ies. That is why, after our The apostles on the northern vault of the choir after restoration.

Details of the apostles on the northern vault of the choir during restoration.

JOZEF DORICA

62 e-conservation

agreement with the methodical advisor, we de-

cided to accept this artistic part. However, the

low quality of large areas of fillings required their

replacement. We copied the reconstructed parts

of the draperies. After the replacement of the

fillings the drawing was remade.

On the northern part of the vault of the choir, dur-

ing the removal of the fillings we recorded an in-

teresting find. In the placing mortar of the vault’s

masonry we found imprints of the original wooden

moulding of the vault. They have shown that the

moulding was built from various split wooden

beams. The find cleared the reason why the sur-

face of the vault is so distinctly uneven.

Their extent was large enough to enable us again

to return the original aspect to the figures and

their draperies in a larger extent and more closely

to the restoration performed in the 50ies of the

20th century.

The art-historical analytic-synthetical study which

is a part of the research evaluates the painting

decoration of the apostles with these words: “The

wall paintings in the church of King St. Stefan in

Žilina with regards to the proposed dating of the

oldest layers (before 1250, respectively second

half of the 13th century) belong to the most valuable

evidences of medieval art preserved in Slovakia. The

drawing of such quality and from this period as it

is represented by the apostles from Žilina has no

comparison not only in Slovakia or in surrounding

countries. With their style, they represent the tran-

sitional phase between Romanesque monumental

Surface survey in direct light (right) and ranking light (below).

THE CHURCH OF KING ST. STEFAN IN ŽILINA, SLOVAKIA

e-conservation 63

Conch of the apse before restoration.

Conch of the apse after restoration.

JOZEF DORICA

64 e-conservation

painting developing forms passed on through

drawing templates and early Gothic style which

manifested on them in livelier drapery, tendency

to linear and more flowing drawing, communica-

tion among the figures and finally also with the

decorative architectonic frame of the arcades”.

An exhibition about the intervention and discov-

eries at the Church of King St. Stefan organised

by the city of Žilina, Zbor Žilincov (Žilina Patri-

ots) will take place between 4 August 2010 – 16

September 2010 at the Old Town Hall, Mariánske

námestie 1, Žilina, Slovakia.

Credits:

Partners: Považské Museum in Žilina,

Král Steffanus fine wines

Preparation of the exhibition: Acad. painter Jozef Dorica

English translation: Mgr. art. Barbara Davidson

and Stevin John Davidson

Photographs: from archive sources and from the

authors’ archive

Archaeological survey in the years 1995 and 2000

by Mgr. Jozef Moravčík

Restoration research in the year 2008:

by Acad. painter Jozef Dorica

Technical cooperation: Pavol Santa

Methodical advisor for restoration for the Regional Heritage Office in Žilina:Mgr. Emília Michalcová - Borošová

Cooperation for the restoration research: Dr. Dušan Buran, RNDr. Miroslav Hajn, Ing. Eva

Kľučková, Ing. Tomáš Kyncl, Ing. Ján Obuch

Restoration in the year 2009: Academic painter Jozef Dorica, Head restorer,

Mgr. art Július Karcoľ, Mgr. art Jana Koníková,

Mgr. art Denisa Petrlová, Mgr. art Zuzana Wei-

glová, Milan Bagin, Róbert Tibenský, technical

cooperation Juraj Dorica.

Cooperation for the Roman-Catholic church: Ing. Ladislav Štefanec, church caretaker

Specialised cooperation by the preparation of the exhibition: Mgr. Jozef Moravčík, Ing. Miroslav Pfliegel, Mgr.

Peter Štánsky

Curator of the exhibition: Academic painter Jozef Dorica

The restoration of the wall paintings was financed

from the grant system of the Ministry of Culture

of the Slovak Republic “Obnovme si svoj dom” and

by the Roman-Catholic church, parsonage Žilina-

city.

JOZEF DORICAConservator-restorer

Academic painter Jozef Dorica (1949) is a conser-

vator-restorer specialised in wall, panel and easel

paintings. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts

in Bratislava, department of Painting Restoration

under Prof. Karel Veselý. After graduation in 1975

he was active mainly as artist in fine arts. Between

1981 and 2002 he worked as restorer in the Slovak

National Museum – Museum Bojnice. In 1990 he

co-founded Restorers' Union (Obec reštaurátorov),

of the Slovak Union of Fine Arts and in 1994 he

cooperated in the establishment of the Chamber

of Restorers (Komora reštaurátorov), from which

he was the president for two mandates (2001-

2005). At present he is the head of the Restoration

commission as the advising body to the General

Director of the Heritage Office of the SR in Brati-

slava. For his work he was awarded twice the

annual prize of the Pamiatky a múzeá (Heritage

and Museums) magazine and three times with

the Fénix - cultural heritage of the year prize by

the Foundation of the Slovak Gas Industry (SPP)

and the Ministry of Culture of the SR.

THE CHURCH OF KING ST. STEFAN IN ŽILINA, SLOVAKIA

e-conservation 65

www.prorestauro.com

heri

tage

in d

ange

rFORGOTTEN HERITAGE The 18th Century Wooden Church from Ursi Village, Romania

By Anca Nicolaescu

with scientific input from Gheorghe Niculescu and Oana Chachula

E-conservation magazine from June 2009 (10th issue) published an article regarding the endangered

rural heritage from Romania encompassing the South and North areas of the Carpathian Mountains

chain. In that paper Ovidiu Danes described the delicate situation of the wooden churches as being

“Ignored by the village communities and deemed as minor patrimony by the governmental authorities,

just a few wooden churches were preserved in their intact initial condition in terms of architecture,

paintings, icon collections, furniture, ceremonial objects, etc. But they have actually vanished from our

own awareness.”

The project which was described at that time has

already had two years of field and archive researches

done by dedicated art historians Luiza Zamora and

Ovidiu Danes and photographers who struggled

to identify and record the wooden churches from

the mentioned areas. During those years they were

basically rediscovering many of those monuments,

which were never systematically studied except

during a partial inventory from 1960.

Throughout those field researches a vast documen-

tation has been gathered and used in a series of

exhibitions and seminars willing to draw the at-

tention of local communities and administrative

officials in charge of the national heritage pre-

servation to this grave issue in order to proceed

with their emergency conservation.

But the only result was a volunteering campaign

organized by Dala Foundation and The Architects'

Chamber of Romania (OAR) presided at that time

by Serban Sturdza, with students from the Univer-

sities of Architecture from Timisoara and Bucharest.

During the 2010 summer 30 churches were docu-

mented from the architectural point of view, being

mapped with notes regarding the conservation

ANCA NICOLAESCU

68 e-conservation

Figure 1. General view of Ursi church.

evaluation. One of them without mural paintings,

almost in ruin, was moved to a monastery ensemble.

An itinerant exhibition was organized by Dala Foun-

dation and OAR and seminars accompanied it.

Again the responsible authorities were not too

much moved or interested in this action, nor in

its continuation.

This introduction was necessary for the readers to

better understand the context of an irreparable

event that has occurred meanwhile – the partial

collapse of Ursi Church from Romania, Valcea county,

on June 13, 2010. One of the most valuable from

this group of rural monuments, an example of fine

craftsmanship of both the wooden architecture

and mural decorations done in al fresco technique,

which survived almost 300 years due to its high

technical qualities and not the maintenance it

deserved, became this summer almost a ruin.

This is the reason for the publication of the present

article, which is an updated version of the paper

“Degradations and conservation strategies for an

XVIII century wooden church from Oltenia County,

Romania” by Gheorghe Niculescu1, Oana Chachula1

and Anca Nicolaescu, presented at the 41st Annual

Meeting of the International Research Group on

Wood Protection (IRG), COST focus meeting, in May

2010 at Biarritz, France.

The article was written after a research campaign,

which took place in November 2009 involving an

interdisciplinary team of conservators, physicists

and biologists from different Romanians Institutes

like the National Research Institute for Conserva-

tion and Restoration and the National Institute

of Research and Development for Optoelectronics

(INOE). The team made an effort to go in situ in

November in order to set up as fast as possible an

emergency strategy trying to rush all the proced-

ures for an actual intervention which could have

at least protected the church until the beginning

of further complex conservation treatments. The

research also encompassed, beside the conserva-

tion assessment of the wall paintings, the analysis

of the component materials and a thorough bio-

logical attack assessment.

All those efforts, done during an unwelcoming

weather and without any financial support, were

again, in vane. The bureaucratic difficulties, the

lack of interest and therefore of founding, lead to

postpones of the emergency intervention having

as result the partially church collapse.

Therefore we are dedicating a few pages in e-con-

servation magazine to this sad example of deserted

rural heritage, which unfortunately, despite its

Figures 2 and 3. Pictures taken by the Arch. Stefan Balici after the collapse of church's ceiling, June 13, 2010.

FORGOTTEN HERITAGE

e-conservation 69

1 Researchers at the National Research Institute for Conserva-tion and Restoration, Calea Victoriei 12, Bucharest, Romania

value, has been left out of any conservation policy

by the local or national authorities. Unfortunately

this is not an isolated example, the destruction of

the rural heritage occurring constantly and in-

creasingly every year.

Historical background

The church from Ursi village, Popesti, Valcea dis-

trict (figure 1), was built in the year 1775, follow-

ing the model of timber houses. The church has

a simple rectangular plane, with apses on three

sides, and is divided into altar, narthex, exonar-

thex and open porch, in accordance with Eastern

Christian tradition. The simple and low volume

of the church was protected by the large eaves of

the shingle covered roof. The construction system

is a traditional one, the monument being erected

on a wooden base by arranging oak logs joint to-

gether in spigot at the ends. The exonarthex and

narthex interiors are semicircular vaulted, while

the altar has a quarter of calotte vault.

Mural painting

The church has been adorned, inside and outside,

with al fresco paintings of a rare artistic and icono-

graphic value, finding here some rarely represented

themes like Protecting Veil of the Mother of God

(The Mother of God with Angels Wings), painted

on the west gable of the exonarthex. This icono-

graphic scene is found in the neighbouring area

only at Govora Monastery, monument of traditional

Brâncovenesc style. Following the specificity of

XVIII century paintings, the painting of Ursi church

has a deeply human character, with picturesque

scenes included in the biblical ones (soldiers, peas-

ants working the field, chancellors wearing epoch

costumes).

The inside of the vault level has been painted in

a secco technique directly onto the wood, without

any preparation layer, the fresco being only ap-

plied on the walls as far as the beam level.

Taking into account the severe deterioration state

of the whole monument, the preservation of frag-

Figure 4. Altar before the collapse of the ceiling. Photo by Ovidiu Danes.

70 e-conservation

ANCA NICOLAESCU

ments of original painting indicate a very good

knowledge of the fresco technique by the artist.

The high professional grade of the master painter

is evident especially in adjusting the fresco tech-

nique to a wooden support. The arricio layer, meant

for levelling the wall, was eliminated, and the in-

tonaco layer is very thin, about 5 mm, sometimes

only 3 mm. The same support layer, made of lime

and tows, is observed in the logs joints, which

sometimes reaches 1 cm thickness. The thinly

applied intonaco layer could result in a deficient

pictorial layer (powdery, without coherence), but

in this case, despite the precarious state of con-

servation of the mural ensemble, the still existing

pictorial layer is in an unexpectedly good condi-

tion. The detachments of the colour layer, espe-

cially scales like ones, are visible mainly in the

areas affected by deformations or/and displace-

ments of the wooden support, so these are due to

mechanical causes and not to a technical deficiency.

Another very important technical detail, as in time

it became a degradation factor, is the wooden beam

incision in order to improve the pictorial layer

adherence to the wooden support. By a thorough

inspection of the pictorial surface it was noticed

that these incisions (initially just cuttings of wood

fibres) grew in volume, expanding under the ac-

tion of humidity, penetrating in the support layer

Figure 6 and 7 (above). Example of flaking occurred in the areas of the wooden support affected by mechanical degradation.

e-conservation 71

Figure 5. Detail of a mural fragment inside of the log joints.

Figure 8 (below). Wooden beam incisions done on the whole surface to improve the adherence of the plaster to the wooden support.

FORGOTTEN HERITAGE

detachments. So, by successive volume variations,

the free wood fibres built an internal pressure,

eventually resulting in local detachments or even

expelling of fresco fragments.

Degradation causes

The main cause of deterioration of the church has

been the improper maintenance in time. In 1850

great earthquake damage has been reported. The

year 1913 marks the beginning of its gradual neg-

lect, due to the building of a new masonry church.

This is the moment of the wooden church abandon,

which will be used only occasionally, as cemetery

church for burials or offices for the dead.

Repeated cycles of rainwater infiltrations, due

to successive and unsolved deteriorations of the

roof, led to cyclic deformations of the wooden

Figure 9. Eastern facade tilted to the north.

72 e-conservation

support (expansion and contraction of the wood).

The accumulation of infiltration humidity, com-

bined, in the lower part, with capillarity one (the

church lacks a drainage system and the vegeta-

tion grows in the vicinity of the walls), favoured

and maintained the biological attack.

The wooden structure has been attacked and de-

teriorated, losing its resistance and severely af-

fecting both the church structure (see figure 9,

the church volume is twisted, the west façade is

tilted to the south and the east one to the north)

and, inevitably, the painted decoration.

The first detachments of the fresco layer presum-

ably took place at the level of logs joints, gradually

leading to a total loss of the paint on a 4 cm sur-

face on the joints trajectory, expanding on larger

areas in certain badly affected parts. This accu-

mulation of humidity led to the biological attack.

ANCA NICOLAESCU

Figure 11. Massive losses of the painted surface on the level of log joints.

The bacteria and fungi developed on the pictorial

layer, together with the other deterioration agents,

played in time an important role in the destruc-

tion of the mural painting on a significant area.

At this moment the attack is inactive, resulting

just in some colour and structural changes on the

painted surfaces. We took biological samples and

identified species known as biodegradation agents

of the fresco, as: Aspergillus flavus, Mucor sp.,

species of Penicillium and Alternaria alternata.

Conservation state and strategy of preservation intervention

The degradation causes had an interdependent

evolution, starting with the lack of a minimal

constant maintenance of the church, which re-

sulted in immediate mechanical degradation –

the roof gradually deteriorated making way to

infiltrations in the upper part, combined, with

capillarity in the lower part, also due to negli-

gence and allowing vegetation and earth deposits

to accumulate at the base level.

e-conservation 73

Figure 10. Damages caused by water infiltrations on the iconostasis.

FORGOTTEN HERITAGE

74 e-conservation

Figure 12. Detail of the rotted wood.

ANCA NICOLAESCU

Thus, physical and chemical degradations appeared

in the wood structure as a consequence of humidity.

Eventually, the rise of humidity level in the whole

church and in their constitutive elements (wood)

led to a biologic attack. The wood weakening, more

and more severe structural deficiencies were the

natural result of the conditions in which the monu-

ment existed for some decades.

The painting degradation appeared gradually also,

especially at the ground level. From simple fissures

and cracks to lacunas and detachments, some of

them very large and severe, in form of sloping roof

or swelling, displacement or slipping of the sup-

port layer, maceration and fragmentation on large

areas. Biological attack also affected the mural

painting due to the high level of humidity main-

tained over long periods of time inside the church

as a consequence of pluvial waters penetrating

through the destroyed roof.

The selection of the preservation intervention had

to take into consideration this chain of events and

their negative effects in order to be efficient in

time.

Until now a thorough research or specific inter-

ventions to remediate the existent deteriorations

had not been carried out, with the exception of

some local interventions on the roof level (the

last replacement of the shingle was done in 1943),

followed by the covering with tar paper (also de-

teriorated since). Some interventions were done

by supporting the rafters’ ends with inclined poles

in order to transmit the efforts from the roof di-

rectly to the ground, avoiding the stress on the

walls, already badly damaged, which could led to

the collapse of all building.

e-conservation 75

Figures 13-15. Damages of the murals at the support layer caused by structural deficiencies of the architecture.

FORGOTTEN HERITAGE

Experimental Methods

Physical analysis

The pigments and support layer composition were

determined by X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy

(XRF), on a portable apparatus Innov-X Alpha

Series, with a wolfram anode X-rays tube, work-

ing at 40 kV and 100 mA. The detector is a Si-PIN

detector, cooled by Peltier effect. Seven samples

were taken from different locations (outside –

northern wall N, eastern wall E, exonarthex V and

exonarthex ceiling) aiming to cover all the pig-

ments used in the wall painting execution.

By X-ray fluorescence analysis the characteristic

pigments for fresco (green earth, ochre) were de-

termined, as well as some pigments from an earlier

intervention (Titan white, chromium green) (fig-

ures 17 and 18). The blue hue was obtained by mix-

ing carbon black with lime white, a technique

usually used in fresco painting. Also, the migra-

tion of soluble salts as CaSO4.2H2O was revealed.

Biological analysis

The samples from the paint layer have been seeded

in aseptic conditions on culture media: Sabouraud

medium for moulds. The incubation has been per-

formed for a time period of 7 to 14 days at 28˚C.

The identification of fungus was performed by a

stereomicroscope Nikon SMZ1000, a microscope

Nikon Eclipse LV100 and reagents (cotton blue,

Figure 16. Image with the church supported by inclined poles.

Figure 17. Vault decayed by the Macromycetes.

ANCA NICOLAESCU

76 e-conservation

ethanol, KOH). Wood decay fungi (Huckfeldt and

Schimdt 2006) and microfungi (Tanase 2002) were

identified.

Concerning the wood biodegradation the situation

is as it follows. The roof, as well as the other res-

istance structural elements (rafters, logs) are af-

fected in a proportion of 80% by the attack of the

Basidiomycete species like: Coniophora puteana,

Fibroporia vaillantii, Hyphodontia breviseta and

Serpula lacrymans. In some places the resistance

logs are completely destroyed, even collapsed.

The iconostasis and the altar doors, made of fir

wood, are also affected by the xylophage attack,

inactive at this moment. One can see big flight

holes, 4 to 5 on square centimeter.

At the same time the base and the floor are com-

pletely affected, with some parts even lacking

(figure 20). Except for the oak structures, all the

wood is attacked by xylophagous insects.

Figure 18. XRF spectrum of the green sample – Ursi church – outside, east wall.

Figure 19. XRF spectrum of the green sample – Ursi church – inside, pronartex west wall.

FORGOTTEN HERITAGE

e-conservation 77

Recommendation for an emergency intervention on the mural painting

Architectural solutions for the stabilization of the

severe structural damages should be chosen so as

to avoid risky operations for the existing pictorial

layer, such as detachment and remounting.

Beside the usual operations in cases of prophy-

lactic preservation of the pictorial layer, the plan

for the architectural rehabilitation should give

a special attention to the materials used in the

consolidation of the support layer. This is neces-

sary due to the fact that it is not advisable to use

the same consolidation materials as those em-

ployed for a mural painting on masonry. The con-

servation state of the wooden support already

damaged by biological attack is conditioning the

selection or preparation of the materials in this

situation. Thus, some criteria were established

regarding the injection material for the situation

of Ursi church, such as:

- the use of a minimum amount of water; its un-

controlled use could lead to new deterioration of

Figures 20-22. Decay of the massive timber floor and different areas of the paint layer affected by biological agents.

Figure 23. Micromycetes identified in laboratory out of the drawn samples.

ANCA NICOLAESCU

78 e-conservation

the wooden support or could worsen the existent

problems;

- the fluidity; a condition difficult to reconcile with

the above mentioned one, but necessary, as the

intonacco layer is very thin and , in most areas,

could not allow the total penetration of a consoli-

dation material with a too high content of aggregate;

- quick setting, taking into account the poor me-

chanical resistance of the support layer damaged

by the humidity.

Ursi Church has survived as much as it possibly

could. It has enjoyed when it was brought to the

attention of art historians by a traveler photo-

grapher and heritage lover, who has captured its

beautiful frescoes -- not only the interior, but also

the exterior ones, which had survived not because

they were well cared for by those whom it served

for so long, but only because they were well done.

Now it seems that only nature is still close to it and

tries to recover it as long as no one else is interested

in what it once represented. Grass is slowly covering

its socle and birds store their winter supplies be-

tween its beams. A very sad image, but apparently,

very much alive, awaiting for some solution.

ANCA NICOLAESCUConservator-restorer

Contact: anca.nicolaescu@e-conservationline.com

Anca Nicolaescu (BA, MA) is a conservator spe-

cialised in mural painting. She has received her

Master degree from the National Art University

in Bucharest, Romania. Her professional experi-

ence includes coordination of various projects at

Restauro Art Grup (conservation enterprise she

co-founded) and international participations at

conservation projects in UK, Turkey, Uzbekistan,

Japan, India and Denmark. Presently she works

as freelance conservator in Paris, France.

She is a co-founder and editor of e-conservation

magazine.

OANA CHACHULABiologist

Contact: oana_chachula@yahoo.com

Oana Chachula graduated from the Faculty of Bi-

ology Al. I. Cuza, in Iasi (Romania) in 2002. She

is currently pursuing her PhD in Animal Taxonomy

field at Biology Faculty, University of Bucharest.

She has been working at the INCCR as a biologist

for 3 years, her current work responsibilities in-

cluding the biological investigation of movable

objects and historical buildings.

GHEORGHE NICULESCUConservation-scientist

Contact: niculescu.geo@gmail.com

Gheorghe Niculescu is the director of the National

Research Institute for Conservation and Restora-

tion (INCCR) and physics professor at the National

Art University in Bucharest, Romania. He has over

30 years of experience in the research of historic

monuments from Romania.

FORGOTTEN HERITAGE

e-conservation 79

Acknowledgments

Project participants involved in the saving of

Ursi Church:

• Luiza Zamora, Art Historian

• Ovidiu Danes, Art Historian, president of Dala

Foundation

• Arh. Serban Sturdza, president of The Architects'

Chamber of Romania at that time

• Serban Bonciocat, Mihaele Dumitru Tranca

and Sorin Onisor photographers

• Caroline D’Assay, president ProPatrimonio, France

• Oana Chachula, Biologist, and Gheorghe

Niculescu, physicist, director of the National

Research Insitute for Conservation and

Restoration

• Roxana Radvan National Institute of Research

and Development for Optoelectronics (INOE)

• Simona Patrascu, Mural Paintings Conservator

• Prof. Gabriel Panasiu and volunteer students,

5th year, University of Architecture, Bucharest -

Costin Octavian, Manafu Marius, Oprisan Silviu,

and Smanatana Sergiu, among others.

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e-conservationline

No. 15, July 2010

ISSN: 1646-9283

Registration Number125248

Entidade Reguladorapara a Comunicação Social

Propertye-conservationline, Teodora Poiata

PeriodicityBimonthly

CoverDetail of mural painting from the

18th century wooden church from Ursi village, Romania.Photo by Anca Nicolaescu

Executive EditorRui Bordalo

EditorsTeodora Poiata, Anca Nicolaescu

CollaboratorsAnca Dinã

Daniel Cull

Graphic Design and PhotographyAnca Poiata, Radu Matase

ExecutionTeodora Poiata

Address Rua de Santa Catarina, nº 467, 4D4480-779 Vila do Conde, Portugal

www.e-conservationline.com

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