AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

The current state of paper conservation is a often a dichotomy: respect for the history of the object and a desire to be more conservative in treatment decisions often conflicts with the intrusiveness of treatments that are used to achieve an acceptable aesthetic outcome. Our onus of reversibility, while striving for perfection, can cause the conservator to choose inaction over action. What about when action is warranted? How do we quantify a "good” treatment, first for the steward of the artwork, then for ourselves? Years of study have produced a treatment corpus that has steadily evolved, refining techniques to produce careful and successful reduction of damage. Yet, many of these techniques are invasive, perhaps unavoidably. The authors aim to show that invasiveness can be set to a scale. Working toward a theory of "in-and-out”, treatments can be tailored to reduce the conservator's imprint on a work of art. This paper will compare recently available techniques to those that are traditionally taught and used in paper conservation. For instance, overall discoloration treated with calcified water versus water adjusted to specific pH and conductivity; or, tidelines treated with sodium borohydride versus chelator gels. The hypothesis is that less invasive treatments can be carried out with excellent aesthetic results.