To clean or not to clean? This is one of the most frequently asked questions by conservators who deal with artworks made of softened plastics. The essence of this conservation puzzle is the process that takes place at the molecular level. Let’s imagine a space loosely filled with long polymer chains, which are the basic READ MORE
Author: Heritage Science
We announce the results of the PRELUDIUM project to museum professionals
On April 11, we hosted colleagues from Polish museums and heritage scientists in the beautiful scenery of the Wawel Royal Castle. The occasion for the meeting was a workshop on preventive conservation, which was organized in the cooperation with the Polish Consortium for Cultural Heritage Research E-RIHS.pl. Such a meeting had to start with identifying READ MORE
The grand final of the GRIEG-Craquelure project
The end of every project is a time for summing up, but also an extremely intense period of discussion, planning new experiments and considering new research directions. The GRIEG-Craquelure project, which has just come to an end, provided answers to many questions and aroused our scientific curiosity. We shared the project results with a group READ MORE
Fracture toughness of oil paints
Our colleagues had a unique opportunity to determine the fracture toughness of the 30-year-old oil paints from Mecklenburg’s Paint Reference Collection belonging to the Smithsonian Institution. The paper recently published in the Heritage Science journal provides new data for the analysis of fracturing and delamination in oil paintings and indicates that oil paints are much READ MORE
Reminiscences from London’s workshop
At the beginning of February, we actively participated in the Changing Climate Management Strategies Workshop “Sustainable Collection Environments and Monitoring Object Response” organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Getty Conservation Institute from Los Angeles, where we gave two invited lectures on “Fundamentals of acoustic emission” and “Fundamentals of speckle interferometry”. READ MORE
Craquelure development in panel paintings
We are delighted to share with you the latest publication about the development of craquelure patterns in panel paintings that is now available in the Heritage Science journal! Our colleagues built a 3D model of panel painting with a cracked pictorial layer of gesso and oil paint or tempera paint to investigate how the presence READ MORE
About glass crizzling
Today we would like to share with you a new topic of our ongoing research within the GoGreen Conservation project! Recently, our colleagues have focused on the analysis of cracking (crizzling) of historical glass using the acoustic emission technique. Acoustic emission involves detecting and analyzing the sounds generated by materials as they undergo deformation (swelling) READ MORE
Measurements at the Victoria and Albert Museum
After ten years, we returned to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London to “look” using speckle interferometry (ESPI) and “listen” using acoustic emission (AE) to wooden objects from the rich furniture collection. The research is conducted in cooperation with a group of scientists from the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles as part of their Managing Collection Environments Initiative. READ MORE
Meeting with panel of experts of the GRIEG-Craquelure project
In exactly one month, on the 8th of April, we will meet with experts to present the results of the GRIEG-Craquelure project ‘Model of paintings with craquelure patterns for evidence-based environmental control in museums‘ at the Royal Wawel Castle. The meeting program includes the following presentations: After the discussion on the project outcomes, we would READ MORE
Study on tempera paints now available!
We are delighted to share with you our newest article on the mechanical and moisture-related properties of egg tempera and distemper paints recently published in Heritage Science journal. We hope that our results will throw a new light on the mechanism of craquelure formation and support the evidence-based environmental guidelines for panel paintings which are one of the most vulnerable to climate variations among the heritage objects. We encourage you to read more READ MORE