Fun art conservation resources (that are also informative and reliable), part 2.
Why do conservators sometimes go bare-handed when handling objects? This is probably the most thorough video I’ve seen explaining the rationale behind using gloves or not.Â
They only went into a few of the reasons why white cotton gloves (which has become cultural shorthand for pretentious anyway) are obsolete. First, human hands are big oozing mitts of oils and acids and cotton gloves are too porous to contain all that effectively, especially if they’re not washed after every use. So it doesn’t protect the object in addition to not protecting the conservator working on potentially contaminated material. There is a lot of hazardous material, like asbestos and magnesium corrosion products, in the collection I work with, for example. Second, it’s more difficult to get a snug fit with cotton gloves compared to nitrile gloves so you lose a lot of sensitivity in your hands and fingers. Lastly, woven fabric gloves are a risk when you’re handling objects with protruding bits or uneven surfaces (which is almost every object), because it’s so easy for threads to catch or fabric fibers to be left behind.
I work with a lot of metal objects and am never without gloves. I think a lot of people believe that metal is probably the most durable material, but it’s actually one of the materials most vulnerable to damage from ungloved hands. This short article from the V&A Museum discusses the experiments they did to determine the rate of corrosion and amount of metal loss resulting from fingerprints on sterling and fine silver. They concluded that “if a hallmark stamped onto silver to a depth of half a millimetre on a silver object was cleaned to remove the fingerprints every couple of months, it would disappear in just over 40 years, along with any engraving the silver object may have had.”
Continuing on to an excellent ten-part series on the conservation of a Romano-British glass urn with archaeological conservator Dr. Duygu Camurcuoglu at the British Museum. I like this because she goes into detail about what materials she’s using and explains the decision-making process for her choice of these materials. Here’s the first part. To watch the other nine parts, here is the playlist.
Also check out the Corning Museum of Glass’ playlist. The head conservator Stephen Koob is a preeminent expert on glass conservation and literally wrote the go-to book on the topic. This livestream is a good overview on the deterioration and conservation of glass, from ancient to contemporary:
