Hi Kate,
About three years ago Suzanne Keene, Head of Conservation at the Museum of
London, presented a paper at a Getty Symposium in which she summarised thirteen
years of monitoring iron in storage. The conclusions as I remember them (the
volume is still stuck in the works somewhere) are that plain wet and dry
storage are equally bad, that some inhibitors work reasonably well, but for
display either the old methods of boiling alakli solutions or the new one of
plasma reduction are all that is really effective. As these can interfere with
the microstructure of the iron all scientic investigation should be done first,
by which time of course, the piece may have fallen apart anyway.
Museums in Britain tend not to be networked; the main switchboard number of the
Museum of London was (1992) +44 171 600 3699.
The basic message with iron is do your best but do not get depressed -
basically you cannot win.
Yours,
Peter Northover,
Dept. of Materials, University of Oxford
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