Search

The identification of the constituents of inks can play an important part in the conservation and restoration of manuscripts. Capillary vapour phase chromatography was used to analyze old inks, following methanolysis and silylation. The technique was applied to two reference samples of old ink which weighed less than 100µg and several inks from various kinds of document were also analyzed. When the support of the documents was parchment, the nature of the ink was always identified: a more or less degraded gum was present in all the binding media, sometimes associated with other products. However, it was not possible to interpret the analysis of documents on paper. It is difficult to take samples of ink and they always contain a fragment of the support. The peaks from the paper overlap those of the ink, as can be seen by comparing the chromatograms of the support alone and the sample supposed to be only ink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By measuring the oscillation frequencies of atoms in the visible region, Raman spectrometry makes it possible to determine the polyatomic structure (ions, molecules, crystals) of organic or mineral compounds. The instrumentation has recently developed to such an extent that measurements can now be carried out on samples of very small dimensions (down to a few microns). This is done using the Raman laser microprobe, whose role in microspectrometry is briefly described. This method of analysis is non-destructive. It has been used successfully to identify various ancient pigments encountered on objects in course of conservation. The results obtained for samples of azurite and malachite are given, as well as a demonstration of the method's application for the identification of azurite on a fragment of illuminated manuscript dating from the fifteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]