Subject: Iron gall ink with white residue
I am preparing to treat a collection of mid-18th century indentures in iron gall ink on paper, but some of the documents have a strange white residue that my colleagues and I have never seen before. It's almost clay-like, like a bole or ground, and it is consistent through the whole document, appearing around the perimeter of each letter. Only a few areas of writing in different hands (signatures, dates) lack the residue, as they seem to be written in a different batch of ink. The residue appears to absorb UV light the same as the iron gall ink. Under magnification, sometimes striations are visible. It doesn't seem to be crystals or salts, and it's not oily, waxy, powdery, chalky or any more friable than the degraded ink itself. It hasn't noticeably affected the way the ink has degraded the paper, for better or for worse. Does anyone have a suggestion as to what it might be? Images can be seen at these links, and more are available on request. <URL:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/ 3577/3546050189_59d2fa0bb2_b.jpg> <URL:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/ 3342/3546032311_f112fd3f3a_b.jpg> <URL:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/ 3330/3546839110_85a329042e.jpg> <URL:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/ 3330/3546857244_945abb90bf.jpg> **** Moderator's comments: The above URLs have been wrapped for email. There should be no newlines. Grace White Associate Paper Conservator Etherington Conservation Services 6204 Corporate Park Drive Browns Summit, NC 27214 USA *** Conservation DistList Instance 23:2 Distributed: Thursday, May 28, 2009 Message Id: cdl-23-2-023 ***Received on Wednesday, 20 May, 2009