Combination of a Liquid-Dispensing and Micro-Aspiration Device for the Cleaning of Sensitive Painted Surfaces

ABSTRACT

Many painted surfaces, not necessarily only those with a contemporary binding media, display high sensitivity to water. The resulting damage, including swelling, leaching out of some components, even partial solubility, may lead to a shrunken, impoverished, de-plasticized, more porous paint film. Different approaches to the cleaning of such surfaces have been developed throughout the years, as awareness of this sensitivity grew worldwide. Some deal with the proper physico-chemical conditions of the aqueous solutions, and others with the proper ways of delivering these solutions to the surface. The strategy proposed in this technical note is concerned with the latter, the application stage, and is based on the combined and simultaneous use of a device capable of delivering a constant, precise amount of the aqueous cleaning solution and a surgical micro-aspirator to immediately remove the soiled solution from the surface and speed up its drying. Also, using a different apparatus, non-polar solvents can be delivered, for cleaning surfaces contaminated by non-polar, more lipophilic soiling materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Cleaning
• water-sensitive paints
• aqueous medium
• solvents
• micro-aspiration

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Erasmus Weddigen for inspiring the development of this practical application; his colleague Alberto Finozzi, and ‘the handyman’ Guerrino Zanandrea for their valuable help in assembling the solvent-delivering can; and conservators Thomas Charles Nelson and Giulio Bono for revising this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.