The emerging conservator

Frances Lennard, Program Convenor for the MPhil in Textile Conservation at the University of Glasgow's Center for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History, introduced two of the dissertation research projects on the topic of wet cleaning synthetic fibers from students who graduated in 2013. These dissertation research projects demonstrated that wet cleaning could be a useful treatment for historic textiles and the process is commonly used for a wide range of objects made from natural fibers. Standardized wet cleaning tests were conducted on artificially soiled and aged test specimens of four different fibers, such as cellulose acetate, viscose rayon, nylon and polyester.