Language of the Fan
•Download as PPT, PDF•
1 like•1,072 views
This was a presentation from the 2002 International Institute for Conservation meeting in Baltimore. This paper conservation project was part of the preparation for an exhibit at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Problems with the animation forced me to delete this from my slideshare account a few years ago.
Recommended
More Related Content
More from Valinda Carroll
More from Valinda Carroll (8)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Language of the Fan
- 1. The Language of the Fan a composite object case study Valinda Carroll and Pamela Young Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
- 2. Procedure Historical overview and provenance Identification of materials Evaluation of treatment techniques and exhibit materials Treatment Construction of exhibit mount
- 10. rivet and washer
- 13. chain lines ribs
- 18. discoloration
- 19. Experimentation Peroxide treatment for lead white Evaluation of acrylic adhesives for mending Oddy testing of Plastazote foam
- 22. parchment
- 29. Treatment
- 40. Acknowledgements Linda Baumgarten, Curator of Textiles John Davis, Curator of Metals Catherine Anderson and Patricia Silence, Conservators for Preventive Conservation Emily Williams, Conservator of Archeological Materials David Blanchfield, Conservator of Metals Emily Olhoeft, Paper Conservation Intern Susan Schmaltz, Textile Conservator, LA County Museum of Art Marshall Steel Sr. Foundation
Editor's Notes
- Good Afternoon, Today I’m going to present a case study of the problems encountered and practical solutions created for an 18th century folding fan in the collection of the the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a living history museum which operates numerous historic houses and three museums in Williamsburg, Virginia. The biggest challenge with any composite object is that at least one part of that object lies outside of the expertise of any one member of the museum staff. For example, fans are costume objects, which means that the textile curator is responsible for interpreting their meaning and importance, although many of these complex artifacts are composed primarily of paper.
- I will present a very brief historical overview to establish the context for the fan. Second I will give a description of the fan, including the factors influencing the treatment. This will be followed by a discussion of the testing undertaken to select treatment procedures and exhibit materials. Then the treatment will be summarized, and the construction of the mount will be explained.
- This fan entered the collection in 1992, before there was a paper conservator available to assess its condition. The objects conservator who examined it at the time made note of the deterioration and recommended that it be examined by a paper conservator in the future. Well, the future is now, because six fans were selected for the upcoming costume exhibit, The Language of Clothing, opening at the Dewitt Wallace Museum of Decorative Arts in October 2002. All of the fans exhibited some physical damage, but, as you can see, this particular fan could not be exhibited without treatment. The textile curator had identified it as a wedding fan, a fan carried by the bride or gift from the bride to a member of the wedding party. It was believed to date from the 1780’s based on the style of clothing and hairstyles in the illustration on the fan.
- The fan had descended through the Bland family, which included three important statesmen who served in the House of Burgesses. The Burgesses, Virginia’s colonial legislature, met at the capitol in Williamsburg between 1699 and 1781.
- In order to ensure the we are all using the same vocabulary, I will go over the parts of the fan. Please bear in mind that there may be as many as three different names for these structures.
- The typical elements of the folding fan are the leaf, made of cloth, paper, or skin; and the sticks, made of ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, bone, or wood. The two outer sticks are called guards. They act as stretchers when the fan is open, and they protect the fan when it is closed.
- Decorative banding may be applied to the edge of the leaf. It is usually called a ribbon, even when it is made of colored paper, or metallic foil. The bordered sections within the leaf decoration are called medallions or cartouches. Please note that this fan has a printed leaf. It is an etching with engraving and hand-applied watercolor. Printed fans became popular in England during the eighteenth century. Many fans were produced quickly to commemorate historical events. Few of these fans have survived, because the paper leaf was often removed and replaced with a new leaf, reflecting changes in fashion and taste.
- Printed leaves were produced in large quantities, making fan ownership more accessible to large numbers of people. The painting on this fan is nearly grisaille, painted in shades of gray. The skin and hair of the figures are the only areas with bright colors. Such somber tones are more typical of mourning fans than wedding fans; however the figure of the Greek god Hymen and the Putti, combined with the costumes worn by the man and the woman are typical for an eighteenth-century wedding fan.
- The curator suggested that a wedding fan would contain precious metals. The fan is decorated with metal sequins, metallic-looking ribbons, and iridescent paints. An investigation into these materials might show whether or not silver was used on the fan.
- The Bland wedding fan is two-sided, with leaves pasted to both sides of the sticks. The only design on the reverse leaf is a small wreath of foliage. The mother of pearl washer on the rivet can also be seen on the back of the fan.
- Looking closely at the front of the sticks, one can see that the rivet is simply a pin with both ends hammered into place. The highest quality fans had a rivet designed like a cylindrical bolt, threaded to receive a decorative jewelled attachment. The loop handles and tassels, which many of us associate with fans, did not become common until the nineteenth century.
- Testing was conducted both to provide assistance to the curator in her research and to direct the treatment procedure.
- Transmitted light permits the viewing of structures which are difficult to see with normal light. The ribs are thin flexible extensions to the rigid bone sticks. They are usually made of wooden splints which can twist slightly as the fan leaf is opened and closed. In damaged areas, the sticks protrude from the paper. Transmitted light makes it easier to assess the condition of the ribs where they are concealed by the leaf. Transmitted light also reveals the structure of the paper. On the surface this paper seems very smooth and uniform, but you can see the laid and chain pattern from the paper mold with transmitted light. The thickening on either side of the chain lines is characteristic for antique laid paper.
- In this detail of the x-radiograph, the relative densities of various materials are clearly visible and help to confirm the identity of the media. The carbon black printing ink is transparent to the x-rays, so it cannot be seen. The lead white pigment is rather opaque to the x-rays, so it appears much lighter than the iron gall ink in this photograph. The joints between the bone and wood portions of the fan were also revealed by the x-rays.
- Based on what I learned about English printed fans, it seemed likely that the sticks were bone, because that would have been consistent with the less expensive techniques used to produce the leaf and to attach the rivet. Ivory has a pattern of lines, called Schrager lines, which can be seen as opaque white cross-hatchings on a cross-section of the slightly translucent material. Bones contain tiny blood vessels whose vestiges can be viewed under magnification. Often these canals, called Haversian pits contain remnants of discolored, dried blood. The presence of these structures confirmed that the sticks were bone, rather than ivory. In this photo, taken through the stereomicroscope, you can see the Haversian pits in the sticks.
- The sequins appeared to be copper with white metal plating. They were made from a sheet of copper, rolled into a cylinder, cut into disks, and coated with white metal. According to metals curator John Davis, the method of manufacture was consistent with tin plating rather than silver, based on eighteenth-century metalworking technology. To confirm the presence of either silver or tin, metals conservator, David Blanchfield, and conservator for preventive conservation, Patricia Silence, conducted micro chemical spot tests. No silver was detected in the inks, paints, or sequins. Ms. Silence and I later retested a sequin, confirming that it was tinned copper. As you can see, the brittle thread had broken in several places, causing many sequins to be detached.
- The appearance of the x-radiograph suggested the presence of lead white, and the pattern of orange and gray discoloration was also consistent with lead white. The Plumbtesmo color indicator paper was used to confirm the presence of lead.
- Here we see dark brown halo stains associated with the iridescent brownish ink. The discoloration is also visible on the verso of the paper. The presence of iron gall ink was confirmed with microchemical testing. This finding caused us to question the wisdom of doing an aqueous treatment given the current thinking concerning the treatment of iron gall ink.
- In order to finalize the treatment proposal, we needed to decide three things. First we needed to know how or whether to treat the discolored lead white. Second, we needed to select an adhesive for mending. We also needed to be sure that we were not causing increased corrosion of the tinned copper sequins, nor increasing iron migration in the paper. Third, we needed to design an exhibit mount which would prevent further physical damage.
- Quantofix strips were used to detect hydrogen peroxide in two sets of mock-ups. It was important to use a method which introduced a minimal amount of moisture, however, safety concerns directed me toward the use of 2 propanone as a peroxide carrier instead of ether, as described in an article by Vincent Daniels.
- After testing, it was determined that the cosmetic gain was not worth the risk of introducing additional oxidizing agents which could damage metallic design elements.
- The next area of testing involved the selection of an adhesive. The desired adhesive was required to be flexible, stable, colorless, and easily removed. This parchment mend on a different fan the costume collection is rather obtrusive. You’ll notice that the ribbon is a replacement adhered over the old mend.
- This unsightly 1980’s era repair was also applied over the design layer.
- The question we asked ourselves was how to treat the fan so that some conservator twenty years from now won’t stand in front of an audience complaining about what we’d done. With the complex mechanical structure, we knew that we needed an adhesive that would set fairly quickly, so that we wouldn’t need to use heavy weights while the adhesive was drying. We thought that a tacking iron would also be impractical, so solvents and slight pressure were the only means available to activate the mending adhesive. After reviewing the literature, I surveyed the adhesive collection in the lab. It seemed that either Lascaux 360HV or 498 HV (polymethyl methacrylate polybutyl methacrylate aqueous dispersion) or a mixture would be acceptable. I was interested in knowing whether weakening the adhesive with methylcellulose would be effective in increasing reversibility.
- A Blind conservator taste test was performed as I secretly replaced Senior paper conservator Pam Young’s regular brand with an acrylic dispersion adhesive.
- Sample papers were attached to strips of adhesive-coated thin Japanese kozo paper by activation with ethanol. The blind conservator was only informed that one or more acrylic dispersion adhesives had been used, in order to mimic the situation encountered when a conservator is presented with a previously-treated object. The most dramatic result was the difficulty encountered with the methylcellulose mixture. It was not readily swelled by solvent vapor, nor relaxed with heat. The best result, in terms of good adhesion and easy removability was a 50/50 mixture of Lascaux 498 and 360 HV.
- Within our preventive conservation program, Oddy testing is regularly conducted on exhibit and mount-making materials. Here, Patricia Silence and I are preparing test tubes with samples of Plastazote and Volara, as well as control tubes without sample material. I was interested in using Plastazote cross-linked polyethylene foam, after reading about its use for fan mounts in the Museum of London.
- The slight tarnish on both copper coupons enclosed with Volara samples was the only change observed in any of the coupons. Some conservators have reported that hygroscopic slip agents have been found on samples of Volara, possibly explaining this result.
- We went to the textile curator with our findings, making some amendments to the treatment proposal.
- The tear edges had to be aligned to permit mending. Upon considering humidification, a decision was made to simply leave the distorted areas between blotter strips and paper clips or clothespins for several days at ambient relative humidity. Additional humidity might have increased corrosion of the sequins, and possibly exacerbated the other damage to the media.
- A Mylar polyester template was used to shape inserts. The inserts were toned and creased before attachment to the losses in the paper.
- The tears were mended and the inserts were attached with small strips of the Lascaux-coated Japanese tissue, activated with ethanol and inserted between the layers of paper.
- The inserts were only minimally toned on the verso. You can see that slight planar distortions remain in the paper.
- When the paper treatment was completed, we still had a fan with two large sections missing from the guard sticks, allowing the paper to flop about when lifted. There were also three loose sequins which required reattachment.
- The process of selecting a mount design was complicated by the fact that the exhibit designer and the curator were worried about the looks of the mount, while the conservators were concerned about its function. The curator desired access to the back of the fan, and our initial design with a viewing window was eventually rejected.
- Two other fans in the collection had been attached to mounts which were causing or aggravating mechanical problems with the structures. The existing designs were forcing the fans to be flattened out or distorted. Here you can see the distortion in the sticks caused by the tension of the thread attaching the fan to a perfectly flat mount.
- Here, I’ve highlighted where flaps of paper have torn away from the leaf where the peaks of folds in the fan are distorted. There were at least three previous repair campaigns, two of which were used as examples of undesirable mends, so I feel fairly confident that these tears occurred after 1983, when the mount was attached.
- We ended up with a mount carved from Plastazote and covered with sueded polyethylene, which has a pressure-sensitive acrylic adhesive. The mount will not be attached to the fan, so we have limited the angle which the exhibit designer can use to 30 degrees. Metal pins covered in polyethylene tubing will hold the guard sticks in place. The curator is happy, because she had not wanted to have the fans sewn to the mounts.
- And now the fan is happy, because it is back in one piece. After much discussion, a decision was made to cast the inserts for the sticks from Golden high solid gel and extra heavy gel acrylic media, toned with Golden acrylics. The original treatment proposal called for cast epoxy resin; however, Catherine Anderson, the managing conservator for preventive conservation, recommended the acrylic dispersion gels. They were allowed to dry and off-gas for two days prior to being cut to fit the fan. They were more flexible than I had anticipated, so I stiffened them with a strip of Mylar polyester film adhered with 10% B-72 (poly-ethyl methacrylate/methyl acrylate) in a 2-propanone/ethanol solution. The three loose sequins were reattached through existing holes in the fan with strands of stabiltex, a polyamide monofilament textile. Instead of using a needle, I stiffened the ends with B-48N, a rather stiff acrylic resin, and used the ends of the thread as self needles, as suggested by Patricia Silence
- While we were afraid of getting into a sticky situation, Pam and I felt that this was a great opportunity to explore the use of synthetic adhesives. We would like to thank all of the people who made this project possible