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Historic works on paper, illuminated (painted) or unpainted manuscripts, and textiles are fragile and nearly impossible to sample. Non-invasive techniques such as visible microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, Raman, and reflectance spectroscopy are commonly used to determine the artist material present. Recently, nonlinear optical ultrafast pump-probe microscopy was shown to provide non-invasive, high-resolution mapping of pigments in historic paintings to investigate paint stratigraphy. In this paper, we combine our pump-probe contrast with nonlinear fluorescence and second-harmonic generation contrasts exhibited by fibrous supports composed of natural bio-materials (cellulose, collagen, or lignin). Hence, our multi-modal nonlinear microscope is able to simultaneously investigate pigments in conjunction with their support in three dimensions with micrometer-scale spatial resolution. Here we examine the utility of nonlinear pump-probe microscopy by studying a series of mock-up samples, including indigo-dyed cotton cloth, ultramarine blue painted on various types of paper, and papers painted with mixtures and layers of the two pigments. In each case we find that we can combine pump-probe pigment contrast with nonlinear optical fiber contrast to obtain spatial information that is otherwise unavailable to the conservator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, members of three research teams, namely the Turfan Project of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Berlin-based research project on pigments in Central Asian paper manuscripts, and the Hamburg-based project on the history and typology of Central Asian paper manuscripts, present some of the results of their cooperation. The investigated manuscripts belong to the Berlin Turfan Collection. On the basis of different examples the contribution of scientific methods to philological scholarship within a multidisciplinary approach is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]