This is Dürer's Triumphal Arch which has
been in the British Museum since 1837.
It is the largest print that we have measuring
some four square meters and the
challenge has always been the storage
and preservation of it. Clearly this is a
print designed in paper. It was designed
for decoration and it would have been
coloured and posted up in baronial halls
and courts of the Holy Roman Empire.
When it arrived in the department it was in
five long strips. Thereafter it was kept
in portfolios until the 1890s when it
was assembled into one sheet as was the
original intention. Since then it has
been on permanent display which is an
extremely long time for anything of
this fragility. And it is just recently
that we have the opportunity to remove
it from the frame and we have now got the
opportunity with a generous donation of
funds to preserve it and to think about
its long-term storage.
The first stages of conservation were
really mapping the damage. So we used
clear plastic sheets to draw on and
we started to get an idea of what we'd
have to deal with.
The problem we faced was actually accessing the
middle of the print and this was a
problem that we also saw them dealing
with in Copenhagen when they were
working on their version of the print.
And we took their idea and ran with it
which was to have the large roller
sitting on the top of the table and the
print moving along the table and down
onto a secondary roller underneath the
table. Using this two roller system we
firstly cleaned the paper which we call
dry cleaning which means using erasers
to take the surface dirt off; If you
don't do that any subsequent treatment
using moisture or water would fix that
dirt into the paper.
The print had been exposed under glass
since 1970s but before that time it had
been displayed unglazed with the coal
fires that you find in the early 20th
century. So we're expecting and we found
quite a bit of surface dirt.
The print moved along the table and round and down
onto the roller. At that stage we were
able to take more photographs and map
more details of the condition of the paper.
So today I'm trying to find out what
adhesives were used on the Triumphal
Arch print because the conservators
want to take off the backing so they
want to know what adhesives
are there.
FTIR Fourier Transform Infrared
Spectrometer. By analysing the
difference between the infrared light
that we shine through the sample and the
infrared light that gets to the detector
we can then see what the characteristic
material is.
The adhesive underneath was starch. We turned the print over and
started to remove the lining. We did some
tests on what to use for this using
various types of humidity and the best
one we found was holding the humidity in
a gel which was cellulose based and that
we could just put in small areas on the
back and wait till the moisture just
worked its magic on the starch adhesive
and then we could peel the textile off.
And we realised that the print
itself was quite weak once you took the
lining off so we had to then separate
the sheets at the same time because we
didn't want to go through the second
roller scenario because that would be too damaging to the weak paper.
At that point we discovered that the
print had been chamfered along the edge
as we tried to separate them
somebody had very carefully shaved the
edge of the paper off. This made life
quite difficult because the paper lost
more than half its thickness. We are at
the stage where we have 36 individual
sheets of paper and two small columns at
each side of the bottom that are
separate. The adhesive that was left on
the back of the prints was very
discoloured and the print surface itself
was quite absorbent and some of
the prints were noticeably discoloured
so with that scenario with prints
there's a process of removing
discolouration by washing. The big
advantage of doing this is that you
remove soluble acidity which over time
is harmful to paper. So using our special
cellulose poultice again we applied this
to the back of all the prints
using it to swell the starch
adhesive and remove it with very smooth
bone folders just to scrape it very
lightly because we didn't want to
affect the paper itself. At the stage
where we had removed as much adhesive as
possible we then put the print in a bath
of warm water well supported
and with two people handling them.
The warm water was at the temperature that
would dissolve the starch and after a
couple of changes of water we could see
that the yellow discolouration coming out
of the paper into the water was
decreasing and at that point we took the
print out and we left it to dry.
We did that with all the prints and they're all
more or less quite a harmonious colour
although some of them are slightly
discoloured and they're much more... they
appear to be much more like the colour
they would have been originally. There's
a bit more strength in the paper as well.
We are now at the stage of repairing any
tears and considering how we will
support areas like this that are very
thin or where there are small holes and
we've decided to use repair called pulp
which is how paper is originally made
from paper pulp and it's just taking
that in a very more controlled way by
using a solution of paper; a tone to the
right colour in water and a suction
table, and to mask out an area that we
want to fill like this skinned area. And
effectively we're making a small strip
of paper ourselves which we will then
lay on the print and it makes a very
harmonious repair which remains quite
flexible and is ideal for small holes as
well. After the repair of the skinned and
the missing areas on the print we are
going to line all the sheets with a very
thin Japanese tissue which will support
them.
And it's the first stage to potentially
joining the print back together again.
How we go about this and how it ends up
is still open for discussion but it will
be joined visually in some way if not
physically. So the prints will remain in
the conservation studio and be perfectly
safe here and in good condition until
such time as we make a decision.