Conserving Vulture Peak | Episode 5: Surface Cleaning

One of the very first stages of our treatment of this object is to surface clean the embroidery. As you can see there's this overall greyish appearance, it's quite dull and that's actually caused by particulate soiling which is embedded in the fibres and we think that's from the embroidery's time on display in the museum. We want to remove that because it can be potentially quite damaging to the object, it can be acidic and it can become more embedded and built up over time. So we remove those by very simply using vacuum cleaning. This isn't your everyday domestic vacuum cleaner, it's very useful for conservation because we can control the power very subtly so we can make sure it's not too strong and potentially damaging the We use a very fine nozzle with nylon mesh over the end. We actually vacuum through these very fine nylon meshes. As you can see they're quite small so we just vacuum a small square area at a time. The main reason we use such small squares of net is because you have to be able to hold that net down with one hand while you're vacuuming with the other so if it was any bigger it would be impossible to hold down in a safe way for the object and it also helps because you can really see where you're going and track your progress through the treatment. During cleaning we don't want to be damaging any of the fibres so we make sure we're not doing that by constantly checking our progress as we go. We're always very aware of the fact that it is 8th century and it is quite fragile in some places so the net really helps to hold down those fibres. We also check the fibres under magnification before and after cleaning to make sure that they haven't been affected or lost during that process. We're also particularly careful in areas where the threads are noticeably more damaged or in large areas of loss we'll be vacuuming on a lower setting. So we're quite pleased with the results of this treatment. It's a very simple treatment but been very effective. As you can see in these areas that we've already cleaned the silk embroidery is really much brighter. You can see colours that you couldn't see before. They're much more vibrant. The reflective properties of the fibres has really come out and it literally shines so it's fantastic to be able to see that again. So far the cleaning treatment has taken about 13 hours to do just a third of the object so we have a few more hours to go before completing this stage.