Washing an 18 ft scroll

As I’m sure everyone knows from dropping a book in the bathtub, getting paper wet can be bad. However, paper conservation often involves washing paper to help the object.

‘The purpose of washing paper is to remove or reduce soluble deterioration products such as acidic or discolored components, to make the paper more flexible, to reactivate fiber-to-fiber bonding, to remove attachments and/or adhesive residues, to flush treatment chemicals or other impurities from the paper, and in some instances, to reactivate the binder in media. Most papers show an increase in tear strength and folding endurance after washing.’ (Wilson et al. 1981)

While the general benefits of paper washing are known what you are trying to achieve must be tailored to each object. In the case of my 18th century Armenian Prayer Scroll my goal was to remove the linen lining and the animal glue adhesive from the paper which would allow the scroll to move better when rolling and unrolling. For this 18 foot long scroll the first thing to do was to disassemble the scroll by cutting the lining along the existing complete tears in the scroll. This gave me 12 reasonably sized sections of the scroll to wash.

I then humidified the scroll for 45 minutes before washing. This is an important step before any washing treatment as it relaxes the paper fibers and is a slow introduction of water to the object so that it is not ‘shocked’ when direct application of water is applied. Then I heated the deionized water to 28°C to give the water a bit of a fighting edge against the very strong animal glue.

Once the section of the scroll had been humidified and the bath prepared I used bondina as a sling to lower the section of the scroll into the water. The scroll was immersed in the water for 20 minutes while a brush was used along the edge to agitate the water and keep a light flow of water running along the scroll.

Then I removed the scroll from the water from and using a bamboo spatula lifted the linen backing off. The thickness of the animal glue adhesive that was revealed was shocking to everyone in the lab.

The glue is almost an entire layer in itself and needed to be scraped away from the back of the scroll with dental tools. Once the glue had been scraped away the scroll section went back into the bath for a rinse of remaining glue. The washing was beneficial to the scroll and it is now in a disassembled but clean state and will be rescrolled soon.

If you are curious about all of the intricacies involved in paper washing please check out the American Institute of Conservation’s wiki page(opens in a new tab) on it.

Wilson, William K., Ruth A. Golding, R.H. McClaren, and James L. Gear. 1981. "The Effects of Magnesium Bicarbonate Solutions on Various Papers." In Preservation of Paper and Textiles of Historic and Artistic Value II: Based on a Symposium Sponsored by the Cellulose, Paper and Textile Division at the 178th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C., September 10-12, 1979, edited by John C. Williams. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society. 87–107. https://doi.org/10.1021/ba-198...(opens in a new tab)