1089th General Monthly Meeting
Conservation and the Scientist
Associate Professor Bob JonesDepartment of Chemistry, Materials and Forensic Science,
University of Technology, Sydney
Date: Wednesday 3rd May, 2000
Time: 6:00 pm
Venue: Building 4, Harris St,
University of Technology, Sydney
Until fairly recently, conservation of culturally significant items was very much a craft based profession with considerable emphasis on restoration as opposed to conservation. However, with a continuing shift to conservation and an increase in the nature and range of objects to be conserved, there is an increasing need for conservation to be based on a scientific understanding of the degradation processes of materials.
Museums reflect the society in which they are located and, with increasing awareness of preserving the past, museums now tend to collect a far greater range of objects than ever before. Many modern objects are generally of complex design, were never intended to have a particularly long life, and are highly susceptible to environmental degradation. On top of this, conditions of display of significant objects can vary enormously depending, generally, on the wealth of the community in which the objects are located. Irrespective of the community, as soon as an object is declared "culturally significant", that object is now supposed to last forever! Therein lies the problem - thermodynamics indicates that most objects will undergo change under quite mild conditions at normal temperatures, and one of the tasks for the conservator is to modify the kinetics of the degradation to an acceptable rate and, if possible, reverse the degradation that has occurred already whilst at the same time preserving the history of the object. Clearly, the conservator must have an understanding of the degradation mechanism of a particular material in order to implement treatment to preserve the object - the conservator must become a conservation scientist, or scientists must become involved in conservation.
The talk will mainly consider work that has been carried out on the conservation of metallic and metallic/timber composite objects (such as aircraft and sunken ships), and will survey a range of current conservation problems that will highlight areas where scientists can make contributions to the preservation of our heritage.
Following a BSc (in chemistry and pure maths.) at the University of Melbourne, Bob taught at the Preston Technical College (now Latrobe University) for about 4 years before embarking on a PhD in corrosion science at the University of Cambridge under the late T P Hoar who, himself, had been a student under U R Evans in the "Cambridge Corrosion School". Following his PhD examining the electrochemistry of stress corrosion cracking of mild steels in strongly alkaline solutions and a further period of post-doctoral work at Cambridge examining caustic cracking of stainless steels, Bob then commenced a long association with UTS. Up until fairly recently, Bob's main research interests have been in the area of corrosion of stainless steels ( fostered by a 15 month break at the research laboratories of Sandvik AB in Sweden) and in the development of corrosion inhibitors.
As a result of a serendipitous consultancy in the early 90's examining structural steel work at the old Eveleigh Locomotive Workshops in Sydney, Bob's interests turned to the preservation of historical artefacts, particularly metallic objects. Bob has since had periods of study leave at the Treloar Centre of the Australian War Memorial (which has some magnificent, large objects to conserve!), the Canadian Conservation Institute, the Department of Marine Archaeology at Texas A&M, the Queensland Museum and the WA Maritime Museum. The work at these centres has produced a delightful conjunction of art, history and science directed at preserving our heritage.