 And the floor over to Jenny Arena. Oh, thank you so much, Adam. Thank you all for joining us today. It looks like we have about 90 new people on the webinar today, and that number is slowly creeping up. So thank you. I'm going to start by giving a quick introduction to the online community and these webinars, and then we'll move on to our topic. So the Connecting to Collections Online Community was originally created in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History and with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Heritage preservation moderates the online community. And Learning Times, we're very fortunate, helps us with both website and webinar support. So the goal of the online community has always been to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and to also network with their colleagues like you guys are doing today. So to help you do that, we've compiled an extensive list of online resources that are broken up by topic on the online community. And you'll see those. This is a screenshot of the website. You'll see those under that topics menu, about the third one in. We also try to host regularly scheduled drop-in webinars like this one today that doesn't require preregistration like our online courses. On topics that we hope our members will find useful, as Adam said, a recording of all of our webinars. And now our online courses can be found on connectingtocollections.org under webinar archives. And they're also filed under the topics menu. So today's webinar will be archived under webinar archive. And our speakers have done a really, really fantastic job of compiling a truly comprehensive list of resources. So make sure to check that out after this. So we are so fortunate today. I am pleased to welcome our stellar cast of speakers to talk to you about caring for your leather and for our objects. We have on board with us Katherine Hawks, who is a conservator at the National Museum of Natural History at Smithsonian Institution. We have Beverly Perkins, the chief conservator at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming. And finally, we have Fran Ritchie, who is an Andrew W. Mellon Conservation Fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. So we are in really, really great hands today. Thank you, all three of you, for joining us. And thank you to our audience members for logging in. I am going to go ahead since we have a lot to cover today. And I'm sure you all have tons of questions. I'm going to move this out of the way. And I'm going to hand this over to our speakers. Excellent. Thank you, Kenny. My name is Fran, and I'm going to be speaking first. So as Jenny said, we are pressed for time. We have a lot to cover. So I'm actually not going to get too much into detail on the identification and manufacture of leather, especially because, as she mentioned, there are many resources that can help you understand leather and ID it. We have several listed on the resource page for this webinar. And I especially like the video from the Nebraska State Historical Society, as well as the book The Conservation of Leather and Leather and Related Material. They're both very comprehensive resources. But just to make sure we're on the same page, we'll touch on it briefly. I personally became intrigued by working with leather because I think it's fascinating that it turns from hide or skin of an animal into a preserved organic material that you can use. A very rough definition of leather is that the skin has been preserved through some kind of process that slows or eliminates microbiological decay, although there are so many ways of preserving the skin that it's difficult to make a more exclusive definition. There are even objects that are made from untanned raw hide or even what we call semi-tanned leather. So not all of them are even preserved completely according to the definition. The hide itself is made up of several layers that get cleaned away during the tanning process or, in the case of fur, the hair layer stays. The main layer that is leather is that fiber network layer that you see in the diagram. It's the thickest layer that you can see in the diagram. It's the thickest layer, and that's collagen or protein fibers that are long and interlocking one another. And then when you prepare leather, you're left with a grain side where the hair was removed, and it leaves a grain pattern, which is unique to each animal, which you can see in that top photo, as well as a rougher flesh side where it had been attached to the animal as you see in the bottom photo. So that's the same piece of leather that just flipped over. The organic makeup of leather, those proteinaceous fibers, means that it responds to changes in the environment, especially fluctuations in humidity, just like other organic things do like our hair, how it responds to humidity. So all organic objects wish to return to their natural form. So just like wood eventually curves again to be more like a tree, to a tree form, the leather will shrink or warp or curl to mimic its original shape from when it was actually on the animal. So it's very responsive. There are many different tanning processes, and even within the same processes, there can be many different ways of approaching it, depending on the individual. Some processes were used during specific points in history, but many of them have been used throughout time. So for example, you could find raw hide and parchment pieces in your historic collections or like in books or ethnographic collections. Semi-tanned leather is commonly thought of as brain-tanned leather or oil-tanned leather in ethnographic collections or alum-todd leather in historical collections. There's vegetable-tanned leather that was made using tannins from vegetable matter. And that's common in leather for books or bags or even ancient sandals. And then modern tanning agents like chrome tanning that's common for belts and shoes and several different pieces that have been made since the late 19th century to today. And fur can be made from different tanning processes as well. The only difference is that the fur was not removed before the process. And there are other kind of bonus leathers that you might find in your collection that have been painted or japaned and all of those have layers that have been applied to them which can create complications during changing. There's curaburi which is a boiled leather and that was rendered thicker for things like armor and water buckets but it also made it brittle. And then there's archeological leather that besides having the inherent problems of leather it also has issues relating to being buried in the ground or in the water. So a lot of faults and things that can be present. So a lot of different things. Those different tanning processes as well as how the certain individual or tanner process the leather can influence how it deteriorates or doesn't deteriorate over time. Some leather objects might be greasier than others. One brain tanned hide could be in great shape while the other one is crunchy and brittle. One vegetable tanned could be friable and spalling from red rot while another looks as good as new. In this leather object in the photo there are two different types of leather that are in different conditions although I realized it's kind of difficult to see. The leather strap is starting to crack and flake and you can see some brighter areas of the leather below the surface while the leather body more on the right side it appears to be in good condition. So it's a lot to know and a lot to take in but the main thing to remember with your leathers and furs is that despite the processes used for manufacture they're all organic materials and should be preserved with those special needs in mind which leads to our next important section on preservation. Thank you Fran and thank you for advancing the slide for me. This is Beverly and as a conservator in Cody, Wyoming I'm surrounded by people who live with leather. We all wear leather boots and have leather saddles but everybody else in town does. So I get a lot of advice on the care of our leather collection from visitors and the guards and the volunteers and everybody else. The interesting thing is the difference between the care of leather in the collection and the care of leather for something that you want to remain supple and usable. So I have a story of a collector who had one of those parade saddles from somebody like Roy Rogers and it has all of the silver on it and it's a very elaborate saddle and he was donated to the museum. In the parking lot he took his horse out, put the saddle on so the saddle is now on the horse's back and he put his rear end on the saddle and rode it up to the front entrance of the museum. The collections people all came out in their white gloves to take it off the horse and bring it in to the museum. And I use that story to illustrate how different it is once a piece of leather comes into a collection. We no longer necessarily care about the suppleness or the usability of the leather but we want to try to preserve it the best way possible and that's really by maintaining a very stable environment. So some key factors to that are you want to reduce light exposure and so you want to remember that light exposure is cumulative. So if you have a very low light level for a very long time for years and years that could be the same as a high light level for a short amount of time. So reduce the light exposure. If you want to keep your leather in a stable temperature and relative humidity temperature should be around 68, 70 degrees relative humidity around 50%. Now in Wyoming we live in a very dry place where really it can get very low the relative humidity. So we keep our leather at 35%. My point about this is if you have leather in one environment and you're going to take it to another environment you want to do that very slowly. You don't want to say I have to be at 70 degrees temperature 50% relative humidity and take those things and put them in a new building. You want to aim for the environment where they've been living over time successfully. So these are guidelines. They're not laws. You want to reduce the risk of water damage. We drape our collections with polyethylene sheeting. It's the same stuff that painters buy to drape your couch when they paint so you can get at our hardware stores or big box stores. In the lab at night before we shut the door we drape everything that's out on tables. This is just in case there is a water leak and that could be anything from the fire systems going off to a pipe that leaks to a wall. We have walls that every once in a while will leak. You want to avoid pest activity and that is just keeping people from eating near your collection, monitoring your collection and keeping it clean. They found in Katrina that collections that had just been recently cleaned and re-housed grew much less mold in a dangerous situation than collections that hadn't been monitored and cleaned recently. Sorry about the picture of Roy Rogers with his head cut off. You would think that maybe it's a picture of Trigger. But anyway moving on we're now going to talk a little bit about the environment. Thanks Bev. Hi everyone. This is Kathy. Actually I'm going to focus on reducing exposure to pollutants. There are basically three kinds, solids, liquids and gases. And solids are things like dust and soot that can accumulate on the surface of your specimens or objects and of your details and sometimes called abrasions. Their presence necessitates a lot of cleaning which can be hard on the objects. The solids also serve to either absorb or absorb gaseous pollutants and hold them on the surface of objects where the pollutants can cause chemical damage. Some solid pollutants also cause chemical damage in and of themselves. For example, direct contact with alkaline materials such as concrete particles from stuffed floors and even from overly buffered paper products can damage the proteins in skin and the pigments in animal hair. The most proteinaceous materials survive best in contact with neutral, very mildly acidic or very mildly alkaline materials. Most of the materials you buy from conservation suppliers would be fine. If you're in doubt about the pH the material used to store objects made of skin consider using a barrier between the object and the storage material. Here at the National Museum of Natural History we tend to use pH neutral blotting paper as a barrier. Liquid contaminants will always cause some sort of damage whether it's by stains or through chemical deterioration. There's some classic examples of water whether it's from a leak or a flood or beverages of any kind which is another good reason to keep them away from your collection. One type of bob liquid that's often overlooked is the aerosol droplets from spray cleaners. These enter the air as a finely divided mist and they can settle on a lot of objects and specimens. Depending on the type of cleaner involved these can do a great deal of damage. For example, some spray cleaners for glass contain ammonia which is very alkaline. And the popular green cleaners often contain plant oils that can leave a kind of scum on the surface of specimens that will attract dust and may themselves also cause stains or chemical damage. So it's important that housekeeping and exhibits maintenance staff spray the cleaner into a rag rather than spraying towards any surface. Ideally, even spraying into a rag should be done at some distance from your collection. The dark stain on the kayak in this image resulted from the chemical breakdown of a pest control chemical that was put into storage with the kayak and in this effort to reduce pest problems. Unfortunately, the dichloro-strip inside the small round container blew liquid phosphoric acid as it aged, leaving a hole through the kayak skin. Gas-based pollutants can come from a variety of sources. We have already discussed ammonia and the damage it can do when incorporated into liquids but it's important to keep in mind that ammonia vapor can be a threat to proteins as well. Freshly poured concrete will exude a great deal of very alkaline vapor as it dries so you want to keep your collections away until floors are fully cured. Sulfur gases from outdoor air pollution can react with moisture to form sulfurous and sulfuric acid. And these sulfur pollutants have been linked to the deterioration of vegetable canned leather used in things like bookbinding, causing the condition of plants called red rocks. Peroxides that are off gas by wood, wood products, and poor quality paper products are powerful oxidizing agents. That is, they will increase the rate of oxidation of organic materials like skin and hair and that equates to accelerated aging. Hair pigments are readily altered by peroxides, something anybody who's ever been to a hair salon should know. And these undergo a sort of orange shift. The light pigments become yellower and the dark pigments become increasingly red, something they would normally do as they age, but something that is accelerated by peroxides. So careful choices for storage and exhibit materials, enclosure of objects and good quality containers, and if necessary, the use of pollutant scavengers can help reduce problems from gaseous pollutants. I did that. Okay, it's Beverly back again. I definitely have a Roy Rogers theme going here. This is probably a TV set, but some museums also have their artifacts very accessible to the public. And I think it's very important to reduce any possibility of handling. If you're aware that the public can and does get access to your collection, it's definitely worth trying to mitigate that, in other words, trying to deal with that and move the object so that the public can't get to it. And a little later, I'll show you how to keep the staff from getting to your collection. Just kidding, but not really. On the left is yet another Roy Rogers saddle, and it's in this beautiful pristine vanilla state. And here it is in a case. Poor guy can't get to a saddle now. But that's important, because unless he had gloves on, if he handled that very much or actually even probably wore it in one parade, it would never be the same object again. Here we are. This is how to help your staff how to keep the collection safe while you're handling them. We want to look at the collection and we want to examine it. Curators want to have access to the collection so that they can mount exhibits and know what they have. These are fabulous mounts that were made for shoes and gloves. They're very little adhesive. Absolutely no tape was used. Pencil was used to write on the board. And then there's a substance called twill tape that actually isn't tape because it has no adhesive on it, but it's cotton ribbon. And we use that to make boxes and also to hold the objects into their boxes. So let's say I want to go in and I want to look at the shoe collection. Now I can handle these trays and boxes instead of handling the actual object. You'll also notice that fragile areas have been lightly padded with tissue. Tissue is great for youth. Sometimes after a few years you can rotate that tissue out and put new tissue in. The one thing you want to avoid is a really zealous person overstuffing thing. So you want to lightly stuff your collection. And if you see things that are overstuffed, that's a good time to examine them and take some of that stuffing out. Especially in Wyoming with all the advice I get on how to take care of the leather in the collection, people always want to feed it. They want to feed the wood and the leather. Now it's not hungry. The leather and the wood in our collections are really not hungry. So we really don't put coatings on our wood really or our leather. We have the luxury of having an excellent environment. So that's how we take care of our leather. We don't put things on it. I mean there are hundreds of dressings out there on the market and they contain oils, waxes, resins, all kinds of different materials that can affect the leather. So we don't use any of that. Sometimes I get the public and the guards calling me to say your leather is molding and I've had so much experience with this now I don't run up there in a state of panic because what I think is really going on, of course they go and check it, is that there is a substance called bloom on the leather. And that is actually the leather dressing. The oils and waxes that were put on hopefully during its use or in past years in care in the museum. And what happens is when the temperature gets cooler that leather dressing, that is kind of oozed out onto the surface of the leather, crystallizes. So it's no longer liquid, now it appears as a white powder. So from a distance it looks like mold. It actually even looks on this photograph like mold from the pattern. But the way to tell mold is a down and dirty easy Wyoming way. The best way to do that is to have magnification. You can buy the highest reading glasses at Costco and you'll have three pair for you and all of your volunteers. If you look at it, mold should look almost like a little plant and not be hard and crusty. If it's active mold and you take a small water color brush and take a poke at it, it will kind of smear like wet, active mold. Then you have a problem and you do have mold. But let's say that it doesn't smear, it powders away very easily that could be dry mold. Then you would clean that off. But let's say it's bloom and you're in luck. Bloom can be wiped off with a nice cotton rag and if it's harder to get off, you can actually use a hairdryer to gently warm that leather and take it off with a cotton cloth. Now the problem is if you put that object back in a cold environment, that bloom is likely to come back. If you're afraid, you know what it is now and you can wipe it off. I like this slide because I was looking for I was looking for bloom on leather and this picture was on the internet and that's actually bloom, it's not mold, so don't panic and you can always email one of us with a photograph of your object. But this is why they don't put dressing on their leather in Alaska. We wrote this little diatribe on why not to feed your leather. Thank you. I'm going to go on to the next slide. There you go. Thank you Fran. So before performing conservation work on an object, it's important to just remember and know the history of your object to know if that dirt and dust is present from the object's time in the museum or if it's something that's evident of the object's use or maybe its significance. So let's say you have a charcoal smudge mark on your leather saddle. If that's something that a museum goer put on there and it's almost vandalism, you'd probably want to remove it, but if it's something that Roy Rogers put on his saddle then you wouldn't want to remove it from your case. There are many different ways to approach ethical decisions when you're doing cleaning, so I'm not going to say any concrete rules, but just be sure to think about it, research it, talk to people before acting on anything. In this photo you can see that I'm cleaning a fencing vest that's made of leather. Notice the personal protection equipment that I have on, the gloves and the apron and this is to protect the object from me as well as protect me from the object. My hands could have oils on them that could contribute to deterioration but also as Kathy touched on some of these collections were coated with pesticides that I wouldn't want to then be transferred onto my hands, so I'm also protecting myself especially with the apron as well and the dust mask. The dust mask is also good for badly degraded leather pieces if you must handle them to inspect them or to put them in better storage situations. Some of those pieces might come off and you wouldn't really want to breathe that in and you also don't know what the pollutants are on your object if this was stored in someone's attic where there was asbestos before it came into your collection or things like that. You just don't really know, so you want to take it away and then to get onto the cleaning since exposure to water can negatively impact leather, the conservation of these materials relies on dry methods. I always like to begin with vacuuming that removes those loose pieces like dirt and dust that you wouldn't want to embed into your surface. As Kathy was talking about the pollutants that can be in dust and dust is also hydrophilic so that means that it will attract moisture and can cause mold like Bev was saying. It can be oily, etc. Make sure first to inspect the surface to make sure that it's in good enough condition to withstand vacuuming. For example vegetables hand leather that's exhibiting red rot could be flaking fine pieces of leather off that you wouldn't necessarily want to vacuum all of it up. You need to use a soft bristle brush to gently brush the surface of the object and you brush it into a vacuum. It's best to hold the vacuum parallel to the surface of the object so you don't risk sucking in the object and this is demonstrated in that top photo on the left. I also like to cover the end of the vacuum using a piece of screen or a piece of cheese cloth and you'll definitely thank yourself for doing that. If a piece that you didn't realize was loose is actually sucked up by the vacuum and as you can see I often improvise and just use the materials that I have on hand which the day I was doing this was a hair tie that I used to secure the cheese cloth onto the vacuum. A lot of conservation labs are usually fortunate to have a variable speed vacuum like this Nilsisk brand vacuum in the bottom corner and that's good because you can set it on a lower setting of suction once again so you have more control over things and you don't accidentally suck up your object but if you don't have a variable speed vacuum they're pretty expensive that's okay just hold the nozzle farther away a little bit higher from the object so that you have your control in that way. The next thing would be sponging. If the surface isn't good enough condition and it isn't too fragile you can further remove accretions and dirt and whatnot using sponges. The two that I use most frequently are soot sponges and cosmetic sponges. Soot sponges are made of vulcanized rubber and they're extremely effective at removing fire damage. They're also sold as smoke sponges and this is good especially for museums that were heated with coal furnaces and have a layer of soot on their collection and I've worked in a couple different institutions that had this. These though sometimes they leave behind small fragments of the sponge so you need to be sure that you vacuum those areas after you sponge them. The cosmetic sponges are literally the ones that you find at a drug store in the makeup section and they're made out of polyether polyurethane. You can gently rub these onto the surface as well and I found that using the vacuum with the cosmetic sponges over top works really well and seems to grab more dirt and that's demonstrated in a bottom right photo. This was especially good for embellished leather objects like Native American objects with beadwork and quills and embroidery and whatnot. And to help control your sponging movements I recommend only moving in one direction so you're less likely to press too hard and rub at the surface. The next would be brushing and swabbing. If there are reflections on the surface that are easily that are able to brush off without really rubbing you can use a slightly stiffer brush the one that has a little less give than your soft vacuuming brushes but definitely not a very stiff brush or metal wire. I've also worked on leather pieces that had corroding metal components. The photo in the middle it's a little difficult to see but there's a green waxy corrosion around the copper boots lace liners and I was able to reduce that using cotton swabs or just q-tips and while in storage for several years this waxy green corrosion transferred to the leather that was adjacent to the metal and I was able to reduce that corrosion with a cotton swab and the brush on the leather and it didn't braid the surface or anything. And finally picking out pest evidence I just want to mention that it's good to remove pest evidence like moth casings or odd beetle larvae casings and you can do this by using tweezers or brushing the surface into the vacuum or whatnot and it's good to remove the evidence so that you'll know in the future that any more casings are new casings. So it's just a good part of your integrated pest management practices. I think it's also really great to be able to use those storage mounts that Bev mentioned they can be very helpful for supporting tears and splits or other things in your leather objects without using adhesive. The cotton twill tape or that woven cotton ribbon that we mentioned or using Teflon tape which is plumbing tape but it's inert so it won't react with materials and it's kind of statically sticks to itself which is really great even though there is no adhesive on it. You can use those along with thin foam pads to make splints for your leather objects and so once again you just inspect the surface so you know if it can handle the pressure from a gentle splint and then you can use the foam pads underneath the tape to help distribute the weight from the cotton twill tape or from the Teflon tape especially if your leather surface is soft. We even use this type of passive intervention in the lab where I was recently working there were four conservators on staff so we were able to repair the split in the leather but what we decided not to and we decided to bind it instead using these materials so that it would be stable for long term storage and there were several different factors that went into that but that's ultimately what we decided and you could do that as well if you're waiting to contact the conservator or if that's what your long term result is going to be. So just a couple more leather cleaning don't just to reiterate some of the points don't proceed with cleaning or any other handling without inspecting the condition of the leather just know where those loose components are know what kind of conditions it's in you know gently handle it a little bit to get a feel for it before you do any kind of rehousing or things like that just patting out. Don't brush it with metal wire brushes that could abrade the surface these materials are organic and they're very you need to be gentle with them. Don't immerse them in water because the water can reverse some of the canning processes or it can cause those collagen fibers to shrink and that's irreversible there's nothing you can do if that happens. But I wouldn't recommend using dressings dressings were typically used to keep leather pliable and when you have those leather boots that are in your collection if they become a little stiff that's okay because people aren't going to be wearing them they're not going to be putting them on and off so I think it's better to go ahead and have slightly stiff boots in your collection that will be around for many years than to apply dressings that could cause deterioration and actual fibers of the leather and cause irreversible damage in the future. Don't do anything that you don't feel comfortable doing I think that's an important tip for anyone working in museums and then also don't forget to document what you've done so that future museum employees will know whether or not something's been cleaned or if there were moth casings on a certain object and things like that so just tips to remember. Kathy? Thank you. And I think that Fran was making a very good point here about when in doubt there are times when you really need to get yourself a conservator one example here is those green spots on those tanned fur skins those truly are mold and if you're faced with a situation like that where you have a major mold infestation it is probably not something you should attempt to address on your own by the same token if you've got large scale water damage, tears, void significant distortion those are all instances when you need to get professional help if you want to treat the object. The small specimen there with those funny white deposits on his paws those are actually not bloom either those are deposits of an arsenical soap that we used on the inside of the study skin. It might be possible to remove the growth residue from the outside of the specimen the problem would be that in doing so you would probably also remove evidence that's important to scientists so again it comes back to when in doubt and use these some professional help unfortunately the American Institute for Conservation or AIC offers a find a conservator tool that helps you locate an appropriately qualified conservator in your area the skills of the conservators on this list have been vetted by their peers so you can have confidence in their ability that you may will result in several names with contact information always arranged to interview the conservators at least by phone or electronically before making some sort of selection also the AIC site has a useful information has useful information on how to select a conservator for a specific project AIC recently established a collection of AIC's and a research and care network help produce a host of new resources that will be useful to anyone caring for cultural property among these will be a site called dash s-t-a-s-h which stands for storage of technology, art, science, and humanities collections it will have a large number of storage designs for individual types of objects and specimens for updates on this and other resources thank you are there some questions? I see there are thank you yeah we do have some questions and our speakers have been great and have been answering a lot of them in there so hopefully you guys get attention because there are some great answers in there so Kathy I'm going to go ahead and ask you questions a question about pesticides Marsha is curious she's heard that many artifacts were treated with pesticides for storage do you have recommendations for correcting for damage related to this? um actually she's correct many organic materials were treated with pesticides in the past that's because museum storage methods were fairly primitive and household storage methods weren't much better so people tended to use pesticides in lieu of good storage design the problem trying to remove pesticide residues is that it varies greatly with A the pesticide and B the substrate that it's on so for instance um if you have a taxidermy mount that was treated with say arsenic the arsenic would have been applied on the inside of the skin you can by vacuuming the exterior with a HEPA filtered vacuum remove a great deal of the non-chemically bonded arsenic that may have effloresced through the skin over time that makes it much safer to handle the objects with your gloves and other protective equipment but remove all of it no you're probably not going to be able to one of the reasons many of these work is that they did chemically bond to the skin or hair we're working now here at this museum as are a number of other museums on some techniques to mitigate some of these pesticides but reality is you probably can't rid anything of all of it completely so taxidermy precautions raise your gloves to begin with usually nitrile gloves are great for handling skin, leather for skins and so on thank you Kathy I know we did have a question about using cotton gloves and folks using nitrile gloves I believe Bev answered it but for your own safety it sounds like using the nitrile gloves are best is that correct? right if you're not sure about the preparation history or the past treatment history it's probably a big precaution to wear the nitrile gloves okay and Bev I have a question for you if you have Pam in Long Beach California is curious you know obviously the best situation is to have a good environment but if you don't have the luxury of a great environment would you recommend then using dressings? I actually would I'd be curious to know what the other presenters think but I would still recommend against using dressing first of all what do we mean by dressing you know there are so many different dressings out there and some of which if you buy a can in the store or on the internet you're not really sure what's in that but I think we've seen a lot of evidence where the dressing has become a huge problem part of the object so I think it's a great way to fight for a better environment for your collection and I would not put dressing on what does everybody else think? I agree I'm also wondering if you could maybe at least in your budget be able to have humidifiers and dehumidifiers and fans to get air flow and things like that that would help as well That seems to be a better way to go than applying leather dressings because we know the dressings are simply a treatment that has some long-term bad implications Great and then just to kind of continue that so Fran I'm going to pose this to you since you talked a lot about cleaning Glory had a follow-up question so if you're not recommending using the dressings on leather and what if you do need to clean leather and how would you clean it, what would you use an example would be something that Soilder has a paint spot on it Something that's like really embedded perhaps yeah, especially with the paint spots Those are those are tricky because I know sometimes the techniques that we would use in the conservation lab would be to use solvents or to pick off like little specks of paint or something like that but when you do that, I mean you risk if you pick off a little speck of paint then you risk taking off some of the leather surface with it and then also when you use solvents of course you risk staining the surface or things like that I know I would say I'm not quite sure how much I should get into that if I should recommend specific solvents what, Bev and Kathy what do you think well I just typed in sorry oh I would say I would recommend exactly what you've just written call a conservator if you're dealing with if you're dealing with spots and things like that where you don't necessarily know again the entire preparation history of the material and the exact nature of the spot or stains it's conceivable that you could do a lot of damage trying to treat it yourself without the proper analytical tools to find out the information you need and without the knowledge of the proper technique great and also contact and even you know that doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to come and take the object away and treat it in their lab I mean they can come and just talk to you in person and help you inspect it and give you some recommendations based on that specific case and I bet every day I get at least two email inquiries which are great because then they can send me photographs yes and that's really fun for me and it's a wonderful way to start a conversation great guys let me see I have a question from Tracy and Bev I think you addressed it Sofraine and Kathy I'll ask you as well she's curious for small institutions that don't have a budget for archival foam for boots do you have any recommendations on things they could use otherwise she has full noodles covered in unbleached cotton is that an option do you guys know of affordable options well I really like Tracy's problem solving there I like the few thinking outside the box but I think for me what I would do is probably just pat it with unbleached cotton fabric and make sure to wash that first and make sure that it's clean but then use fabric and maybe some unbuffered tissue and things like that what do you think Kathy I'd be inclined to agree first I'm not quite sure what the full noodles are made of but there's absolutely nothing wrong with well washed cotton fabric and using especially an unbleached muslin using that stuffing material would be great as Bev said stuff lightly and Fran I'm going to pose this next question to you as well you did cover a lot of the cleaning Marcia is curious how you would recommend cleaning suede I think I think you can use the same techniques for suede I think that the surface is of course different than other leathers and embossed leathers and things like that it's the same kind of thing just make sure that you inspect the surface to see that it's not too deteriorated that pieces aren't going to come off if you use a light brush you have your light brush for cleaning and start in one very small inconspicuous section and make sure that it's stable enough and then just continue on with techniques as well maybe not the sponges because they are a little bit rougher but try a small area with the cosmetic sponge to see how that works and especially the cosmetic sponge that's been applied over a vacuum and feel free everyone else to chime in on that but since I'm on here I will go ahead and say that I saw also the question on whether or not the cotton swab I was using had a solvent on it and it actually didn't I was able to remove that waxy green corrosion from the copper components of those boots by using just a plain dry cotton swab great let's see and we have some questions for Beth about red rot and treating that originally someone had asked about using linseed oil and you had recommended actually methyl cellulose I hope I'm saying that correctly can you kind of explain how that works like you might have already yeah actually I didn't see the linseed oil but linseed first of all linseed oil is really not a concern so it would in my simple way of explaining it would kind of wet up the surface and make me feel better but in the end that is another dressing so I wouldn't recommend that it's not a stable material as you know from I'm trying to think of other oils that oils are not stable methyl cellulose is a pretty easy material to use it's a very gentle, consolidant and it's a stable material so we use it a lot in conservation on what I'm calling matte surfaces so if you think of a pastel I wouldn't use it but a very matte surface it's a light consolidant that is not heavy-handed anybody else want to weigh in on my attempt to describe actually that's the way I use methyl cellulose and what I like it for great it's really interesting to see the chat box actually so pool noodles have been deemed safe according to a couple of our participants the conservation institute has a whole page on it Christine says North Carolina CDC just did a project and you can use them unless they're pink I would agree with that, the anti-static coating is not wise thank you we have about 10 more minutes so please keep your questions coming and I have a few more I'm just going to post an evaluation for the webinar and please consider filling it out because we do look at it and it does help shape our future events and we're especially interested if you have ideas for future webinars so let's see I have a question from Dana, I'm not sure who posed it to but she's curious how you clean your brushes I'll just take that usually when I'm vacuuming once I'm done I will vacuum my brushes and then if I feel like it's something that needs more than that then I'll just use distilled or deionized water or not tap water to clean them and then just make sure that I let them air dry really well I've never really used anything more than that but you could maybe use like a dishwashing detergent but just make sure that you rinse it really really really well because you don't want to deposit any of that onto your objects during the next cleaning and if you have collection that has pesticides on them perhaps you should have some cleaning brushes that you use only for the pesticides objects and then brushes that you know are for objects that don't have pesticides so you don't have cross-contamination great and also it's best to use, you know you might have mentioned this because I was typing but to use what am I trying to say not a natural brush but a plastic bristle brush they clean better like the nylon bristle brush thank you, thank you so let me, I have some more questions, Beth I'm going to pose this to you since your picture is with a taxidermied animal so we have someone in Colorado actually sorry California, Ansley is curious their big issue is taxidermy on display that's not in cases the public cannot touch but she's worried that it does get infested and she's curious how often should it go into a freezer oh, well I, you know there's not like freeze it, well you guys let me know what you think but there isn't a cycle of freezing but there's a cycle of monitoring so what I would do is monitor it and if you're getting an infestation periodically then I think you have to deal with the initial problem of the infestation right, I think it's more important to find the source of the problem than to continue to freeze something and certainly one thing to do when you're monitoring a taxidermy mount is to look carefully if they have horns not so much antlers but horns and look around the base of the horns and around the base of the hooves because those, the horn and the hoof are far more attractive to most tests than the skin or even the hair except for the moths who seem to love the hair and so you can easily inspect by going first to those areas if you're not seeing anything there chances are good you don't have a major problem and if you don't have a problem, don't freeze don't freeze or do anything else you may want to vacuum occasionally to make sure that there's no dirt on the surface that would help attract them so I have a question from Wendy I'm going to go ahead and ask you this she's curious they have a urinate and seal hide that is in really rough condition she's curious if you could give her advice do you think something like this should be removed from the collection to pose a danger to the rest of the items in the collection I don't think I would want to remove it but one thing you might want to do is box it in a good quality storage box so if it happens to be off gassing anything either as a function of its past treatment or the way it's deteriorating at least it's not going to have much impact on anything else there's no reason not to do this you might also want to call a conservative to take a look at it and see if there is something that could be done to stabilize it let's see let me grab another question for you guys Megan in Falls Church Virginia so nearby to me at least is curious if you have any special tips for stabilizing archeological leather Kathy do you want to answer this one or feel free to pass it off well I think in the main I'd be really careful about that because depending on the context in which the leather was removed for instance if it came from a very wet environment you know treatments can be very damaging to it or allowing it to dry out can be very damaging to it so it's more a question of why does it matter from a research standpoint and is it and what do you know about the context in which it came then you can make some better decisions generally the less treatment involves the better all will be we do have a great question which I assume probably comes up for a lot of people and working in collections and Fran I'm going to pose this to you do you have any advice on removing sticky column number labels and old barcodes from leather book bindings so you just leave them be is the question yeah that's a tricky one because you wouldn't want to leave something sticky on the surface because that just attracts more dust and dirt and what not but once again it's kind of like removing other embedded things in the leather you just need to be careful because you don't want to do something that will end up staining it or shrinking it or things like that I'm trying to find that I think that she said it was on display right I'm sorry if it's on display you might have to leave it be until you're able to talk to a conservator about different methods you could use for that particular object and then of course if it's in storage just make sure that you put it in a storage box a storage container so that it does protect it from any excess dust or things like that okay and Bev is doing a great job of answering some of your questions because we're running out of time so I'm going to pose one more question to you guys and hopefully most of them have been answered in the chat so it's yay let's see so Gloria had a question she's curious what do you do about leather that has been scraped, is curled and is still connected to the cover of a leather book but it used to be reattached what would you use to reattach the leather, wheat paste or what or would you recommend to a conservator if you call them okay I would at the very least consult with a conservator okay it sounds like a conservation treatment to me and I'm an object's person I would send it to a maybe a book conservator yeah that's what I was going to say I mean books are their own special bag of tricks because you have this organic responsive material that's attached to something more rigid that you use to reattach it and I think definitely just try to stabilize it and maybe that's when you would gently apply some of those cotton twill tapes or teflon tapes just to prevent it from warping too much while you get advice from someone else because it sounds like you would need to do a little more invasive treatment than to just reattach it if it's curling great so it is two o'clock I'm going to post my email address in this chat box so if you feel like you had a question that wasn't answered or we weren't able to get to it feel free to email me and I can pass these along to our speakers they're kind enough to answer questions after the fact so just to remind you a recording of this webinar and all the related resources there really are a ton of them so please check it out it will be available in the online community the page is up right now the recording will be available soon and you'll just click on webinar archives and it'll be there it'll pop right up and you're also welcome to continue this discussion on our discussion board a great place to post questions to get answers and see what other folks are doing and I also want to invite you all to our next hour long webinar so this isn't like the courses you can just drop in and join the conversation without registering ahead of time it's going to be Wednesday October 2 at 2pm eastern and we will be talking about some really important collections management policies and how that shapes your decision making so a great topic Fran Kathy and Bev thank you thank you so much this was so wonderful thank you thank you everyone yep thank you all have a fantastic afternoon bye bye