Silk Bed Hanging | bvportfolio

This embroidered silk bed hanging from the early 18th century is from a private collection. The owner had a flood in her home which caused tidelines, staining, and dye bleed in the lower portion of the otherwise impeccable embroidery.

Due to the nature of silk and bleeding dyes, a very cautious approach was needed. Aside from this, either from a contaminate in the flood water, or the calcium carbonate from the buffered tissue interleaf, the area which had been exposed to water had become crunchy and brittle.

The basic premise of conductivity based cleaning is that once you know how conductive your textile/stain are, you can match your solution to the same conductivity in order to prevent as much swelling of the fiber as possible, mitigating a significant amount of damage. Within that, you can also use porous gels to prevent all of the cleaning solution from being released at once, and as gels and textiles both create capillary action, the gels will also absorb the material which comes out of the textile. This was the method chosen for this cleaning project.

Solubility tests as well as pH and conductivity comparisons of the stained and unstained satin were made, in order to identify a working methodology. Different pH and conductivity adjusted waters as well as deionized water were suspended in agarose gel. Tiny plugs were cut and tested first along the hem of the textile and then along the tideline.

Because the textile is heavily adorned with both brightly colored silk and metallic yarns, it was necessary to apply a barrier material along the perimeter of these vulnerable areas so that the stains in the satin could be cleaned without affecting the needlework or allowing the dyes to bleed. For this purpose, the barrier cyclomethicone, compounds D4 and D5, were used. These compounds are safe for the object and totally sublimate, leaving no residue. D4 and D5 have different sublimation periods and were used depending on need. The cyclomethicone was painted onto each area with a small brush preventing any dye bleed.

Working along the darkest area of the tide line first, small pieces of 4% Agarose gel in deionized water were applied to the front surface and left in place for 30 minutes. When the gel pieces were removed, brown staining that had been absorbed was visible in the gel.

After the darkest tideline staining was reduced with the agarose gel, two pancakes of 5% Agar gel in deionized water were cut to the exact size and shape of each area of satin, to include the pre-cleaned tideline as well as the lighter stained area in the wake of the tideline. The shaped pancakes were placed above and below the satin in the exact footprint of the area to be cleaned. The capillarity of the two pancakes had the desired effect of controlling the deionized water moving from the gel into the satin and back out again without much lateral wicking into the satin.

Due to the size of the textile, the damage is hard to see in the overall photo, so I have included mainly details.