Paper Treatments: Part I

I went to a Paper Treatments workshop held by CBBAG a couple of weeks ago, which was very exciting. Here are a couple of pictures of some of the things we dealt with!

Measuring the pH of the paper to determine what treatments needed to be done.

We then washed the paper in three baths to remove tide lines and neutralize the pH of acidic papers.  The first was in just water to determine its state–it was interesting to see the different reactions of different papers in the bath; the faster the paper absorbed the water, the more broken down the size.  The second was done in a bath of water with alcohol to remove sizing, and the third in a bath of water with ammonia to raise the pH.

To avoid unwanted removal of images in delicate pieces, we float washed them and gave extra attention to areas that needed cleaning.

Sun bleaching images to return papers to their original colours–the results were pretty amazing!  We skipped the chemical bleaching, as none of us wanted to end up with dead white sheets of paper.

Setting our sheets to dry on the rack after sun-bleaching.

• CBBAG
• Conservation
• Paper Treatments