Archival Materials and Methods: Part 1 -The MATERIALS. - By: Bill Harvey

What a complicated subject this is! First off -it might be helpful to sort out the difference between things that are made to be archival and things that are made to protect things of archival value. For example, the paper you buy on sale at the office supply store to run through your Xerox machine or printer is NOT archival. But an expensive piece of art had better-dang-well-be painted or printed on a piece of paper that you can count on being around for a long time.

On the other side of the coin, there is the stuff you use to protect / store / display valuable stuff. Key word here is "protect." Suppose you carefully tuck your collectible away in a nice cushy bed of whatever and put it safely away for years and years. Then you take it out -or -let's be frank here- your heirs take it out even more years down the road- and find that the stuff you so conscientiously used for padding has dissolved into ugly goo and smeared itself all over your item. Your valuable collectible held up perfectly, but is now worthless -or certainly less valuable. This is actually the topic I want to address in this article, but a few words on archival materials is in order -then I move on to protecting collectibles with archival SAFE METHODS in parts 2 and 3.


ARCHIVAL MATERIALS
Everyone has heard of "acid free" and it sounds like a good thing. Acid is -after all- corrosive -it can burn you and this must be a bad thing. But it turns out that everything is acid. Or alkaline -which is the same thing -only the complete opposite. Your body is acid -slightly. All fruit juice is acidic, carbonated beverages -by virtue of that carbonation over-and-above the fruit juices they may contain- are acidic. Vinegar is a good strong acid -"acetic acid" by name. Lemons make you pucker-up because of citric acid -chemically right next to ascorbic acid -also contained in lemons. Ascorbic acid goes by a more common name -Vitamin C.

So why is acid in certain things bad -and conversely, why is 'acid-free' a good thing? Near as I can tell, things that get manufactured -paper for instance- are easier to manufacture if they have some chemistry done to them. Acid is certainly a sub-set of chemistry. You didn't learn about acid in your HS American Literature class did you? My point here is that things that are pretty much the way God made them are safe from self-destruction from the acids they contain. (This is not to say that there are not other ways for them to get messed up -remember that if God made it, He (She?) also made something that eats it.) But wood is probably not going to turn yellow and brittle like a cheap paper-back book. A real butterfly is not apt to curl up and crack like a decorative plastic one. An oil painting (linseed oil and ground mineral pigments on cotton or flax fabric) is not going to fade the way a movie poster does, made with cheap paper and printed with quick drying organic inks.

So what do you do if you have something you value and want to have around for a long time, but you are not sure it's made out of archival materials? Actually, there is not much you can do. Ask questions when you buy it, but does the seller look like they know their chemistry? There is one possibility. There are de-acidification sprays made to spray on paper (and photographs). Such things go on wet and do chemistry to your collectible. Are you a little hesitant to spray some chemical goo all over a valuable document or image? Don't blame you. One expert -Dennis Smith of ArchivalMethods.com says that such things in the hands of a casual user can do more harm then good. If it's this valuable, you would do well to go to a pro who knows the chemistry.

In Part 2, The CHEMISTRY of it All, I inflict a chemistry and vocabulary lesson on you. Toss some of these words around and -at the very least- salesmen will think twice about blowing smoke at you.

The first step to protecting your valuable collectible or antique is to know a little about what it is made out of. EveryTHING is made out of someTHING after all. These things react differently to moisture, light, air, and the big one- time!

Bill Harvey makes drawer and display cases for collectors and museums at Home-Museum.com.
He is also author of the Collector's HOW-TO series for dedicated collectors and hobbyists who wish to display and protect their very best stuff