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The grey silverfish Ctenolepisma longicaudatum is a new and serious pest spreading rapidly across Europe. Compared to the silverfish Lepisma saccharinum, it does not depend on relative humidity above 70% and thrives also in new museum buildings, modern storage depositories, apartments, and office buildings. Especially collections of graphic art, modern art on paper, photographs, but also archives and libraries are increasingly affected by this pest. Damage of paper objects has been reported by different authors and institutions across Europe. As these animals live in inaccessible cracks and crevices inside the buildings, we investigated the spread of microorganisms on living grey silverfish, to show a potential additional threat posed by this pest. In 8 locations in Austria living animals were collected with traps and placed for 10 min on agar plates which were incubated for 2 weeks. After incubation of 50 agar plates, between 2 and 20 colonies of fungi were growing on each plate. The most dominant fungal genera were Cladosporium (Cladosporium cladosporioides clade) and Penicillium (Penicillium glabrum, Penicillium decumbens); also, species of the genera Aspergillus, Alternaria, Botrytis, Bartalinia, Byssochlamis, Chaetomium and Mycothypha were found. The diversity of fungi reflects the common fungal community of museums and archives. The spores and mycelial fragments of the fungi are obviously travelling on the legs and bodies of the silverfish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current analytical techniques for characterizing printing and graphic arts substrates, particularly those used to date and authenticate provenance, are destructive. This limits the amount of data that can be captured from an individual sample. For samples being evaluated in forensic and archeological investigations, any loss or degradation of the materials is undesirable. Furthermore, it is difficult to produce statistically relevant data for such analytes. We have shown elsewhere that a contactless microwave resonant cavity dielectric spectroscopy technique can discriminate between paper samples made from different plant fiber species based on their lignin content. In this publication, we demonstrate the utility of the contactless resonant cavity dielectric spectroscopy (RCDS) technique in the characterization of naturally and artificially aged paper samples. Based on our experimental results, we suggest that the technique could be used in forensic and archeological investigations of unique paper products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Damaged ukiyo-e are often backed with kozo paper and placed after conservation in matt window mounts. However, backing an ukiyo-e affects its physical nature by adding new materials to it. Matt window mounts are also not historically relevant because they come from the Western tradition of mounting prints. With these issues in mind, a new approach for treating and mounting ukiyo-e was developed at the Tokyo National Museum's department of conservation. The authors describe the technical steps that led to this new approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable differences will be found between the way many art works and particularly the papers, which act as support and made especially for graphic art, have aged over the years. They confirm an urgent need to use permanent archival materials to ensure the longevity of an art work. To evaluate whether some of papers used by artists are likely to last the test of time it is necessary to determine their permanence and durability. A work of art on paper, such as a print, created for display as the artist intended, should be printed on paper of archival quality, displayed and stored, when not being exhibited, under strictly controlled climatic conditions, with strict light levels.