Condition

A collection of documents that had been stored together had fragmented, leaving a box of mixed partial documents.

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Treatment Aims

To identify which fragments came from which document and reattach them.

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Treatment

The ink was first tested for solubility in water, the result being negative. The pieces were then dry cleaned to prevent surface dirt becoming more ingrained during wet cleaning. They were then float cleaned, and attached to an appropriately sized piece of Japanese tissue paper with starch paste. 

Once the pages had dried, they were laid out according to handwriting. Smaller fragments were matched to larger pieces of the documents using the water marks and laid lines in addition to the unique shapes of the torn edges. They were then placed onto a light box to verify the match. The tissue paper on the smaller pieces was trimmed, and frayed to prevent excessive overlap covering information. They were attached using starch paste, then allowed to dry.