AIC's 47th Annual Meeting

Synthetic papers are making their way into the art world and can be seen on exhibit and in the permanent collections of museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art and the British Museum, yet these materials introduce significant conservation challenges. Study of the surface topography and chemical composition of four synthetic papers suggests that polymeric papers are highly susceptible to degradation, posing questions of handling, display, and storage. Four types of common synthetic paper were studied: YUPO (Yupo Corporation), Denril (Borden & Riley), TerraSkin (Design and Source), and PLIKE (Gruppo Cordenons). These materials are advertised as being recyclable, sustainable (“tree-free”), and acid-free, while retaining paper-like qualities that are compatible with artists’ media such as watercolor, acrylic, oil, pen and ink, and digital printing ink. However, these alternative “papers” are not paper in the traditional sense, but rather blends of polymers with coatings, offering an analogous surface receptive to diverse applications. Investigation using traditional conservation practices of examination, documentation, and scientific analysis provided valuable information about the chemical composition and physical structure of these papers. Methods employed were technical imaging, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscopy / energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), and pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS).