Lafrance, Jessica; "Efficiency and Quality in a Batch
Treatment: The Conservation of Over a Hundred Leather Shoes and
Fragments", in K. Straetkvern and E. Williams, eds., Proceedings of the 11th ICOM Group on Wet Organic Archaeological Materials Conference: Greenville, 2010. ICOM-CC Working Group on Wet Organic Archaeological Materials (2012) pp. 611–621.
PDF Abstract:
In late 2008 nearly 400 organic objects from the Old Songhees Reserve site in Victoria, British Columbia, arrived at the Canadian Conservation Institute for treatment. Over half of these objects were leather shoes and fragments covered with corrosion and heavily iron stained. The treatment of 112 of these objects is the topic of this paper. Treatment included individual mechanical cleaning of each shoe, followed by mass chloride removal, iron corrosion stain removal, impregnation with polyethelyne glycol, reshaping, freeze drying, and final consolidation and repair. Employing batch treatment methods for many of the conservation steps reduced time and material costs while careful planning, balanced decision making and monitoring meant that the quality of treatment was not reduced.