Conservation of Plastics pptx

[...]... study of degradation and conservation of plastics in museums has only been recognized formally as an important area worthy of research since the early 1990s (Grattan, 1993), while the conservation of plastics in modern art first became a specialist sub-group of international focus in 1998 (Hummelen and Sillé, 1999) Conservation of plastics is one of the newest disciplines of the conservation profession,... conservators and conservation scientists are full-time specialists in plastics degradation and conservation in Europe One consequence of the lack of expertise in relation to the growing number of degrading plastics is that progress in the field of plastics conservation is slow Concern for the longevity of plastics and the lack of established conservation techniques have initiated an increasing number of conferences... to lack of resources, development of conservation techniques for plastics has been impeded by: ● ● ● the challenge of applying traditional, ethical principles of conservation to new, short-lived materials the idea that conservation of plastics should be approached differently to that of more traditional materials, and the need to investigate copyright and the moral rights of artists prior to conservation. .. encourage the study of historical plastics and modern polymers in the form of fibres, rubber and elastomers The Historical Plastics Research Scientists Group (HPRSG) was formed in 1993 with the purpose of establishing the condition of plastics in museum collections and developing collaborative research projects to learn more about their conservation A measure of the recognition of plastics conservation as... The future of plastics and, thereby, of future collections is presented The relevance of the historical development of plastics to conservation professionals is largely as a tool to date or help identify the types of materials or technologies represented in collections Conservators and historians are also interested in the reasons and background to the development of plastics A brief history of the development... overview of the status of conservation of plastics is presented here The least stable plastics in museum collections have been identified and comprise cellulose nitrate and acetates, poly (vinyl chloride), polyurethanes and rubbers Due to lack of resources, these ‘high-risk’ materials have been the focus of research projects looking at how to prolong the useful lifetime of plastics, at the exclusion of others... include the study of plastics In addition to allowing the study of technical processes, collecting plastics provides associations with living conditions of the plastic workers, their health and level of education In 1995, the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology initiated a collaborative project known as Plastics in modern Norway’ Two of the project’s goals are to show how the use of plastics affects... ‘Saving the twentieth century: the conservation of modern materials’ held at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Canada in 1990 provided the first comprehensive overview of the extent of degradation of plastics in museum collections and the factors causing their breakdown (Grattan, 1993) ‘Polymers in Conservation held in 1991 illustrated the many applications of plastics in museum collections including... foams The particular instability of these four plastics has also been recognized in surveys of other large collections including ones at the National Museum of Denmark and the National Museum of Average results of condition surveys of objects containing plastics in UK museums 9 10 C O N S E R VAT I O N O F P L A S T I C S Scotland (Quye, 1993) Instability of the earliest plastics, cellulose nitrate and... J-P., Monod, S and Grevet, S (2003) A Guide to the Preventive Conservation of Photograph Collections Oxford University Press, Oxford Learner, T J S (2005) Analysis of Modern Paints Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles Morgan, J (1994) A survey of plastics in historical collections Plastics Historical Society and The Conservation Unit of Museums and Galleries Commission [online] Available from: . CHAPTER 1 PLASTICS IN COLLECTIONS 1 1.1 Collecting plastics 2 1.2 Condition of plastics in collections 8 1.3 Origin and development of conservation of plastics. 1.4 Status of conservation of plastics 15 References 16 CHAPTER 2 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PLASTICS 19 2.1 Development of semi-synthetic plastics 22