Ancient Parchment Examination by Surface Investigation Methods.

A restoring process was set up to restore flexibility, size, and shape in naturally aged or fire-damaged parchments of old manuscripts. Validation of such a process requires the measurement of intrinsic parchment properties and comparison of them before and after the treatment. To this aim, we investigated morphological, mechanical, and surface physico-chemical properties of parchment by taking SEM pictures and characterizing small samples by microindentation, mercury porosimetry, and water vapor adsorption/desorption isotherms. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.