The essential first step that every conservator takes when beginning a project is documentation. This essential step is where we record every piece of information that can be gleaned about its creation, history, and current physical state. As conservators it is essential that we understand everything that went into making the object and how its use as a physical object has caused damage before we move forward with treating it. Also nearly every conservation treatment will change some aspect of the object and recording the state of the object before or after treatment is a prime part of conservation ethics.

How do we do this?

Conservators will image an object using guidelines that will ensure the photograph is the closest real world visual of the object. Then we will examine the object using magnifiers and microscopes to record information about how it was made, what it was made of, and how it has been damaged. We combine this with cultural research to determine the next steps forward when proposing treatments to the curators.

Creating a damage map that highlights all the damage present within an object is a common practice but is not used in every situation. Its best use is for extensively damaged objects.

18^th Century Printed Armenian Prayer Scroll

One such object is an 18th century Armenian hmayil that I have begun to treat in the lab. The structure of the scroll includes a printed layer, backing paper layer, and a linen layer adhered primarily with animal glue. The extra layers and the animal glue hardened over time and lead to cracking and the family who owned this repaired the cracks with tape, which caused further damage. This heavily used scroll is extensively damaged and unable to be rolled and unrolled safely in its current state.

This scroll is 18 feet long in its pre-treatment state and when trying to plan for treatment I needed to see the full extent of the damage. How I did this was to take a large sheet of paper and start drawing the damage. I created a blank long scroll by using a ruler to draw a scroll and shade in equal sections that would represent the individual sheets joined end over end and made into the roll. Then I examined the roll and used a symbol key that I created to plot approximately where the damage was and what type of damage existed.

I then annotated the conservation images with shapes and colors that represented the types of damage and were placed over their exact location in the image. This process revealed a few more spots of damage that I had previously missed.

Finally I examined the scroll entirely unrolled and double checked every spot of damage on the damage map. 

I found that there are 56 complete cracks through the scroll, the cracks were repaired with 98 pieces of tape. There are 36 major tears in the scroll with hundreds of small tears along both edges. There are 9 areas of loss throughout the scroll with the most extreme being at the end of the scroll. There are 8 adhesive deposits on the surface that obscure text or images. And in 16 places there are manuscript inscriptions. This process allowed me to count all the types of damage within the object and plan appropriate time and supplies needed to treat the object, and this will be a good reference for after the scroll is repaired.

Are damage maps necessary for every treatment?

While it is always nice to have a damage map there are situations where this level of mapping is not needed or is judged to be too time consuming for the project. For example I am working on a collection of posters and there are so many with so little time to treat them that we decided to rely on the conservation photos and the word descriptions of the damage that I completed for every object. Also some objects have minimal damage which can be described in just a sentence or two.

Making damage maps by either drawing or annotating images is still being taught in conservation training courses and remains one of our best tools in preserving cultural heritage objects.