But it’s a question Virginia Weygandt takes seriously the year round.
As much as her work in the conservation lab of the Heritage Center of Clark County involves using fine brushes, vacuum cleaners, cotton swabs and distilled water to clean off historical artifacts, it involves historical judgment.
“There is certain dirt that you don’t want to disturb,” said the museum’s director of collections.
It’s the kind of dirt that shows how an object was used.
Although hidden from visitors’ eyes, the inside housing of a motor used on a James Leffel water turbine Gateway Gallery “has this wonderful spatter pattern” that can be seen through a trap door, she said.
The pattern was left by oil, and a conservator who saw it told the staff never to destroy “that kind of evidence,” because it provided an important clue to how the motor worked.
Cleaning it would have erased a piece of history.
Material issue
After the matter of whether to clean, the question becomes what’s being cleaned.
“Some things can masquerade as different metals,” Weygandt said. And because objects of both sorts were made at the same time, questions can arise as to whether an object is made from ivory or an early plastic called celluloid.
That’s important because the thing being cleaned determines how it should be cleaned.
The next issue involves the kind of dirt.
For conservators, “there’s two kinds,” Weygandt said: Dirt that rests on top of an object — akin to food crumbs on a sweater — and dirt that “invades the object.”
Rust is one of the latter kinds of dirt, she said, “and if you don’t know what you’re doing, removing it can cause more damage than good.”
At a conservator workshop she gives for Wright State University, “I tell students you’re trying to create a collision between the dirt and the (cleaning tool) so that it will remove the dirt without damaging the (historical) object.”
First do no harm
When Weygandt isn’t sure what to do, she calls a professional conservator.
But if she’s identified the material and the dirt involved — and is convinced it should be cleaned — she begins with the least invasive approach.
“I’ll start out with my little tiny brushes, or I might start out with a homemade Q-tip,” she said.
Weygandt makes them by twisting the points of wooden skish-kebab skewers in cotton. Not only is it low cost, she said, but it can be fashioned to fit the need.
“This is about as close as you can get to a natural material that’s easy to work with.”
Weygandt’s brush collection includes stiff plastic ones “if I have to go after something with a little more authority,” she said, but her most standard tool is a soft, natural stenciling brush — properly prepared.
For all her she follows the ferrule rule. The ferrule of a brush is the metal piece that holds the bristles in place.
“I always wrap that edge with take to soften the edge,” she said. “That’s what’s going to hit,” she said. “The wood (handle) isn’t going to hit, and the bristles aren’t” — at least not enough to cause damage. “It’s going to be the metal ferrule that’s going to hit.”
Another often used tool is a vacuum cleaner, which can lift the dust without touching the object and can also take in perhaps noxious dust and other chemicals being taken off an object.
Textile safety net
Textiles are a bit different.
To help stabilize them, she often places a mesh net over the fabric.
“It makes it possible then to get literally right on top of the textile. You’re not sucking up the textile, but the dirt is coming through the mesh.”
Weygandt’s stiffer brushes and harsher methods are appropriate if dirt is “really encrusted or accelerating the object’s deterioration.”
But about the harshest chemical she usees is distilled water. And even then, she proceeds with caution. And if that doesn’t work, “you’re talking about chemicals beyond what I know,” she said.
Waxing historical
When Weygand believes wax is called for to preserve an artifact, she uses bowling alley wax. It has no additives: Just carnuba and other waxes in turpentine.
But whether she waxes depends.
The plus?
“It helps consolidate rust so it won’t progress,” she said.
The minus?
It can attract dust, spores, pollutants and other things that can damage the object.
That it can make things shinier and prettier can be a plus or minus, she said.
Because the beautiful camel-back truck in the museum’s National Road exhibit showed no evidence of ever having been waxed, the staff cleaned but didn’t wax it.
In wrongly waxing it, “you can almost falsify an object by adding a patina that wasn’t there,” she said.
And although it may be all right for folks like Shakespeare to wax poetic, waxing poetic with hitory is a definite “not to be.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
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