Training school discusses conservation of organic cultural artefacts

Conservationists have to grapple with various problems in order to protect organic cultural artefacts, Christian Degrigny from the Malta Centre for Restoration (MCR) said yesterday.

The malfactors that museum curators and other professionals have to fight include high humidity, fluctuation of temperatures and light intensity, he added.

Works of art that are kept in a closed environment, such as St John's Co-Cathedral and its museum, and other sites suffer from such fluctuations, he pointed out.

"Sensors that give a visual measurement of the amount of light falling on materials made of paper and textiles, in particular, indicate the type of risk the artefacts are facing.

"Light affects the colours of textiles like tapestries and religious vestments, causing them to fade. Also in the case of books, parchment and paintings, humidity promotes moulds and insects that will destroy the artefacts.

"All this apart from shrinkage, which will mean you will have to pay a lot of money for preventive conservation," Dr Degrigny noted.

Dr Degrigny was speaking on how to conserve organic artefacts from the ravages of both natural and artificial light.

He was making these points during a training school being held at the MCR in Bighi.

Dr Degrigny, who lectures at the centre, is one of two Maltese delegates of this EU COST action G8 programme on analysis and testing of museum objects. Dr JoAnn Cassar from the Institute of Masonry and Construction Research, at the University of Malta is the other Maltese delegate.

The COST Action G8 training school aims to raise awareness among museum professionals of the effect of the environment on historic objects and to introduce them to some of the latest tools to monitor environmental parameters.

The delegates, conservationists, museum curators and scientists, are from the EU, the US, Israel and Australia.

Dosimeters, consisting of colour-coded strips of paper are used to read the deterioration of colour as a result of environmental light sources.

Dosimeters, used to monitor the museum environment, are increasingly being employed in conservation, especially in the implementation and planning of preventive conservation policies.

In between lectures, each of the delegates placed a dosimeter in various places around the MCR building to measure the light intensity, some over a number of hours and others over a whole day.

Once conservationists find out about the level of discolouration, they can put artefacts somewhere else out of the reach of the light and install shutters.

The name of the firm that has developed the product on a large scale is called Light Dosimeters Ltd and is based in London. The firm had to work closely with scientists to fine tune the product.

The production and marketing of dosimeters were requested by the EU Commission to see that the research is eventually applied in a practical manner.

The five-day training school is funded by the COST office. Cultural institutions had to apply to be able to run the school and the proposal put forward by the Malta Centre for Restoration was accepted.

"It is extremely important that such a school is organised in Malta because of the need of preventive conservation policies here.

"Museums here do not have air-conditioning systems and the atmosphere in them is the same atmosphere as that of the street.

"Representatives from Heritage Malta and lecturers and staff from Malta Restoration Centre will be learning from these experiences.

"Definitely, the atmosphere at the Fine Arts Museum and the Archaeology Museum, both in Valletta would harm organic objects, including wood and textiles.

"The Hypogeum now has a temperature controlled system because of the bio deterioration that was damaging the painting on the stone.

"Temperature control would cost a lot of money to install", Dr Degrigny said.

The five-day advanced course, which ends today, included lectures by world-class specialists who are either coordinators or partners of COST Action G8 or other EU-funded projects.