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Getting ready for our big days « The Polar Museum: news blog

The Polar Museum: news blog

Getting ready for our big days

This week it finally happens – the event that Christina and I, along with colleagues from the other University of Cambridge Museums have been planning and organising for over a year. We are holding an international conservation conference called “Subliming Surfaces: Volatile Binding Media in Conservation”. If that sounds rather specialist – well it is! But for conservators in pretty much every specialty volatile binding media are very exciting. They are amazing chemicals which can be applied to objects and then sublime like dry ice on their own, leaving no trace. As we spend a lot of time trying to find materials for treating objects which have the least possible impact on the original material, this just sounds like magic.
Of course the reality is a bit more complicated than that. Volatile binding media (or VBM) have been around for 20 years and conservators have come up with dozens of ingenious uses for them, and have also learned some of their shortcomings. We will spend 2 days celebrating 20 years of VBM by discussing them in depth with our colleagues from around the world – I’m really looking forward to it.
In the run-up to the conference it is all hands to the pump. Colleagues from the other museums have been roped into stuffing delegate folders:

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The day after the conference we are also holding a workshop day, where Christina and I will give 36 conservators the chance to play with VBM. I have been making samples at home. These look like meringues but are actually plaster tokens:

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And these are painted wooden samples for spraying, squirting, painting and drawing on:

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Even my husband has been put to work sanding the wood samples:

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It promises to be a very intense and rewarding three days!

 

Sophie

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