Chemical Stabilisation of Weathered Glass Surfaces
Conservation Journal
July 1995, Issue 16
The conventional approach to the conservation of weathered decorative glass includes the examination, cleaning and repair and, if necessary, the consolidation and/or stabilisation of the weathered surface. These methods of conserving weathered glass have arisen largely from empirical procedures, whereby the relative efficiency and performance of various procedures and treatments have been assessed and evaluated by practising conservators. More recently, the increasingly large field of conservation science and research has challenged the intuition and experience of conservators, and has in many cases enabled a more systematic study of corrosion mechanisms, the effect of composition and environment and the long term performance of conservation treatments. This has occurred mainly through the use of a selected number of techniques including accelerated ageing and/or mathematical/computer modelling. For obvious reasons, the majority of such research is carried out on analogue samples where significant contributing factors such as raw material variability, manufacturing technology and wear from use are, for practical purposes, usually sidelined1 . However, the failure to consider both the limitations of analogue materials and the generally non-scientific experience and approach of the conservator can lead to problems. The number of factors influencing the degradation of any material is extensive, and the isolation of any one factor for study is not a trivial problem. To illustrate the point, a list of factors affecting degradation of glass objects can be seen below:
