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Laser Cleaning of Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century A.D. Wax Votive Images from St. Peter's Cathedral, Exeter, England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Teresa Moreno
Teresa Moreno*
Affiliation:
Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A.
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Abstract

A rare collection of cast votive images (ex-votos ) made of beeswax were found in the 1940s behind the cresting of a screen above the tomb of Bishop Edmund Lacey in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter in Exeter, England. Some of these fragmentary, aged and brittle waxes, dating to the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries A.D., served as the basis to further test the cleaning of dirt and accretions using a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. Because of the low melting point of the wax, observations made of the effects on the wax substrate due to heat emitted from the laser were critical to establish the efficacy of the cleaning method. Preliminary optical microscopy was used to establish a typology of the waxes based on their condition, color, and nature of the weathering phenomena. Several techniques were used to characterize the waxes and the surface deposits, including gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS), energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS), in addition to simple tests of melting point and hardness that served to help understand the nature, condition and treatment of the waxes [1].

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 852 , 2004 , OO2.7
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2005

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