The Brazilian Legal Amazon region is divided into at least 155 ethnic groups and has the largest concentration of Indigenous people globally. It represents one of the most extraordinary levels of ...human, cultural, and artistic diversity, but its material culture is one of the least well-studied. This is especially true in technical art history and conservation science, largely due to (1) the limited international awareness of the richness of materials and techniques used by these Indigenous people and (2) the limitations of knowledge access for many scientists to literature usually published in Portuguese within social sciences and humanities. One result is that these arts are marginalized within technical art history, conservation, and conservation science. To address this knowledge gap, the authors explore 70 materials—among them pigments, dyes, binding media, and varnishes—used for paint production and coloring processes, including syntheses. The authors facilitate research possibilities within technical art history, conservation, and conservation science by presenting data from historical texts from the 18th and 19th centuries and more recent scientific literature. The work aims to build a more global, inclusive, and decentralized vision of art history and to create a more pluralistic narrative of Indigenous art history from South America.
Analysis of purple dyestuff from a tin labeled “1 oz. Cudbear, No. 1 N. F. Powdered”, marketed by the American business S. B. Penick & Company, “Manufacturers of fine drugs and chemicals”, confirmed ...that the material was indeed a lichen dyestuff. It contains the same major orcein components identified in several other lichen dyes and dyed samples dating from the mid-19th century to today. These dyestuffs were analyzed using several analytical techniques. Fluorescence and fiber optic reflectance spectroscopic data for all the samples were similar. High performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection coupled to mass spectrometry confirmed that this commercial American cudbear was very similar to the samples from the United Kingdom but rather different from the archil-dyed reference yarns from Europe. The significance of the observations is discussed, and chemical structures are proposed for several of the unknown dye components detected in this study.
The damaging effects of sea salt aerosols on Globigerina Limestone are well known, and various professionals have studied and reported on the often complex underlying deterioration mechanisms. ...Following a preventive conservation project, undertaken to shelter and protect the UNESCO World Heritage Neolithic temple sites of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, the Preventive Conservation Unit within the Diagnostic Science Laboratory at Heritage Malta embarked on a pilot study to identify whether sea salt aerosol deposition patterns within the site alter significantly post sheltering. The results from this short pilot study, by identifying the presence of salts using ion chromatography, have shown that there is a consistent pattern that when directly linked to the intrinsic shape of the temple interior as well as to the micro-environmental factors that are changing as a direct result to the sheltering, point to the trends of greater pollutant accumulation, particularly dust.
