The conservation of tapestries is fraught with difficulties due to their size, weight, exposure to light, dust etc. Wet cleaning of tapestries has always been a challenge but over the last 30 years.
Since De Wit Royal Manufacturers installed a large aerosol suction cleaning chamber at their Mechelen (BE) conservation studio, they have developed an efficient and safe cleaning system which, together with their team of restoreres, scientists, conservators has produced results which have been applied to many of the most important tapestries from the most prestigious collections worldwide.
In this seminar Pierre Maes not only shows and explains how this works in terms of wet cleaning, drying, conserving etc. but also indicates how, despite the inherent advantages of the system, new challenges have constantly faced them, notably: Tapestries of exceptional dimensions; tapestries with exceptional damage; cleaning of tapestries with extremely unstable dyes; using aerosol suction in the cleaning of other textiles.
