Bread

Robert Lodge <mckaylodge [at] gmail__com> writes

>I was contacted by a construction company in North Carolina seeking
>someone who can permanently preserve and protect for display actual
>loaves of fresh bread.

Bread is quite an interesting subject for me and I would like to
talk to you about three different occasions of bread exhibition.

I first came across actual bread loaves when I was doing an
internship as a Zibby Garnett scholar at the Museo Egizio in Turin,
Italy. The museum exhibited quite a number of ancient Egyptian
loaves which all presented the same problem: insect attack. All of
the attacks were of the same age as the ancient Egyptian bread
itself.

In this case, I would recommend just a mild mechanical cleaning of
the objects. You see, the exit holes as well as the the insect
tunnels within the bread loaves may provide scientists with
important information about the biology, ecology and climate of the
time the objects were made and they therefore should be kept as part
of the object and its history. It is worth taking a look at

    Baucon A., Privitera S., Morandi Bonacossi D., Canci A., Neto de
    Carvalho C., Kyriazi E., Laborel-Deguen F., Morhange C.,
    Marriner N.
    "Principles of Ichnoarchaeology: new frontiers for studying past
    times", 2008,
    in: Avanzini M., Petti F. "Italian Ichnology", Studi Trentini in
    Scienze Naturali, Acta Geologica 8 (in English).

As far as I know, in Greece, there is a Bread Museum:

    <URL:http://www.breadmuseum.gr>

but it is only available in greek. There is however an e-mail
address info<-a t->breadmuseum< . >gr where I suppose that you may ask how
they preserve their loaves.

In the town of Chania, on the Greek island of Crete, one of the
souvenirs widely sold is traditional marriage loaves. It is actually
round O-shaped loaves, highly 3D decorated with flowers and leaves.
They are sold as decorative objects, ready to be hung on the wall.
They are sold pre-varnished, so they are quite shiny, which I guess
that is something not acceptable for a museum collection as this is
not the original appearance of natural bread baked for consumption.
The shop assistants advise their customers to spray them with
insecticide once every couple of months.

Regarding exhibiting contemporary bread, I would advise you to
either bake your loaves adding quite a lot of salt in the dough
(this will act as a natural preservative and it won't show in the
final outcome), or inject them with insecticide especially made for
object conservation purposes and then apply a couple of layers of
consolidant, such as Paraloid B72-10-15% w/w in acetone, including
some fumed silica as a matting agent.

Evangelia Kyriazi
BA Hons Conservation and Restoration
MSc Geography and Applied Geoinformatics


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:53
                   Distributed: Monday, May 30, 2011
                       Message Id: cdl-24-53-004
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