Conservation Science

86 Chapter 4 The bulk of the fibre consists of the cortex. The elongated cortical cells are composed of crystalline proteins wit ...

Textiles 87 located within the amorphous bulk of the keratin, comprise the proteinaceous regions of the cortical cells. The amor ...

and elasticity. Wool is often degreased to remove the natural oils (lanolin in the case of sheep’s wool) that coat it and give i ...

Textiles 89 As the formation of disulfide bridges between proximate cysteine residues plays a particularly important rôle in phy ...

90 Chapter 4 5.4 Assessing the Condition of Wool by Microanalytical Techniques Electron microscopy can provide valuable informat ...

the textile conservator, the constituent materials of the artefact have to be char- acterised to give an appreciation of their c ...

Chapter 5 Leather ROY THOMSON Consultant in Leather Science and Conservation, Oundle, Peterborough PE8 4EJ, UK 1 INTRODUCTION It ...

Leather 93 nature of the skin chosen and on the processes employed. It has been the skill of the tanner throughout the ages to m ...

94 Chapter 5 Many indigenous peoples treat skins by impregnating them with fats. They are then allowed to dry under controlled c ...

Leather 95 it shrinks dramatically to about one-third of its original area. The temperature at which this change occurs is calle ...

96 Chapter 5 skin’s leather-making fibres, the nature of their putrefaction and the proper- ties of the wide variety of material ...

Leather 97 The presence of the ring-structured imino acid residues imparts kinks into the protein chain and the fact that there ...

98 Chapter 5 2.3 Tanning Materials The chemical structure of collagen, a long-chain protein with significant quan- tities of fre ...

Leather 99 Formaldehyde was utilised to produce washable white leathers from the end of the nineteenth until the last third of t ...

100 Chapter 5 the skins. Thus traditionally alum-tawed materials cannot be classed as true leathers. However, if the aluminium c ...

Leather 101 leather from earliest times. It has been suggested that these were first used to impart colour to oil-tanned or pseu ...

102 Chapter 5 The condensed tannins consist of flavinoid groups (Figure 6) containing various combinations of phenolic hydroxyl ...

Leather 103 they would have similar tanning properties. The first commercially success- ful products were produced by sulfonatin ...

104 Chapter 5 With the replacement of formaldehyde with such polymerising agents as urea, dimethyl methylene and ether and the i ...

Leather 105 leather, as well as for other purposes, long before the pre-dynastic Egyptian period. It has been suggested that veg ...