Editorial

The biggest event in the British conservation calendar of the last three months was surely the presentation of the first ever 'Conservation Awards'. The Awards were organised by the Conservation Unit at the Museums and Galleries Commission and sponsored by the Jerwood Foundation. The presentation ceremony was held at the National Portrait Gallery within a wine-spill of some beautiful works of art. Opinions on the judges' ability to detect quality, novelty, uniqueness and usefulness fluctuated wildly as the announcements were made. On balance their judgement must be considered sound, as the V&A was associated with three of the final 20 nominations. Graduates from the RCA/V&A Conservation Course came first in one category and were runners-up in another.

The award for young conservator of the year was shared by Phillippa Mapes and Mark Sandiford, students of Historic Wallpaper Conservation, who graduated from the Course last year. The conservation of Chinese wallpaper from Penrhyn Castle was described as 'an extremely impressive, well-presented project'. Megan Gent and Jacqui Rees, who also graduated last year, shared the position of runner-up in the innovation category for a project that 'combined the skills of an analytical chemist specialising in x-ray fluorescence analysis with those of the experienced photographic conservator'. (Preliminary results of this project appeared in V&A Conservation Journal No.8.) The third V&A nomination was for the development of radiotelemetry for environmental monitoring, a collaboration between the Science Group and Meaco Sales & Marketing (see Journal No. 4).

One of the keys to success in the awards seems to have been collaboration. Inter-disciplinary collaboration is one of the main aims of ARSAG (Association pour la Recherche Scientifique sur les Arts Graphiques), which held its second international conference in Paris during May. The subject was the effect of the environment on the conservation of graphic and audio-visual documentation. It was stimulating to see such agreement and enthusiasm amongst politicians, civil servants, conservators, scientists, librarians and archivists.

I attended this meeting because in October I shall be starting a year of research leave to write some guidance for conservators on predicting the costs and outcomes of their decisions. Decisions made by conservators range from specifying particular environmental parameters for storage and display, to deciding which object out of the many millions is chosen for treatment, to which is the longest-lasting treatment. This requires an inter-disciplinary approach combining knowledge of science and conservation and using methodologies that have been developed in economics and medicine.

To make reasonable predictions it is necessary to understand the mechanisms and rates of reactions between objects and their environments. To make use of the predictions it is important to define what qualifies as unacceptable change in an object. We know that some change is inevitable and we have many qualitative terms for types of change, e.g. flaking, fading, cockling, cracking. Some of these changes are reversible, some do not interfere with the use of the object, some may add interest or value. Many are deleterious and irreversible but there are few quantitative means of describing the degree of damage.

A number of these problems were aired, if not fully answered, at the ARSAG conference. During discussions about the permanence of paper it was obvious that there was not yet, and possibly could not be, a single definition of permanence (predicted absence of change). Colour and brightness may change without any change in mechanical properties. Increased brittleness does not prevent legibility. In trying to define whether gamma-ray treatment of paper to remove biological infestation is harmful to the paper, what measure of damage is important? If there is no visible change and no detectable alteration to mechanical properties, does a detectable alteration to chemical properties indicate real or potential damage or can it be ignored, especially when compared with the damage caused by biological attack?

Questions of this nature can only be settled by inter-disciplinary debate and research. A new forum for such collaboration has been establishing in South Kensington. The constitution and aims of this aptly named South Kensington Forum, are discussed in this issue.

Notes

Erratum: In the 10th issue of this Journal, Dr Susan Wilsmore was incorrectly described as coming from 'the University of Hertfordshire'. Dr Wilsmore is a consultant from SJW & Associates International, 27 Queen Court, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 3BB. Dr Wilsmore expended a great deal of time and energy in the organisation of the Ethics Workshop described in that issue and it is regrettable that the editors did not detect this error.