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The identification of the constituents of inks can play an important part in the conservation and restoration of manuscripts. Capillary vapour phase chromatography was used to analyze old inks, following methanolysis and silylation. The technique was applied to two reference samples of old ink which weighed less than 100µg and several inks from various kinds of document were also analyzed. When the support of the documents was parchment, the nature of the ink was always identified: a more or less degraded gum was present in all the binding media, sometimes associated with other products. However, it was not possible to interpret the analysis of documents on paper. It is difficult to take samples of ink and they always contain a fragment of the support. The peaks from the paper overlap those of the ink, as can be seen by comparing the chromatograms of the support alone and the sample supposed to be only ink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various methods of bleaching in common use have been studied. Three types of aged paper (rag, chemical and mechanical woodpulp) were washed, deacidified, bleached, deacidified again and artificially aged. The physico-chemical effects of bleaching were measured by the degree of overbleaching, yellowing and loss of mechanical resistance as well as by analysis by electron microprobe and gel permeation chromatography. Seven methods were finally retained and their application is described in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]