ConNext-2021

28 Water damaged Raincoats? Conservation of two PVC ‐ Raincoats from 1950s and 60s KEYWORDS: PVC, raincoat, cleaning, test series, fashion history. Plastics are gaining more and more attention in historical collections across all disciplines. This is also the case in textile conservation in the form of fibres, garments or as raincoats made of PVC film. Since the 1960s, designers have frequently incorporated elements made of plastics into their collections which are now finding their way into museum collections. The objects and subject of this talk are kindly provided by the German Plastics Museum in Oberhausen. Both coats are made of the same material but differ in some respects. The older one, dated between 1940s to the early 1950s, is translucent colourless, sewn with silk thread and already heavily hardened and yellowed. The second coat, from the 1960s, is opaque black with presumably welded seams and still very flexible but with a slightly greasy surface. The reason for treating these two coats is the contamination with fire extinguishing water, which happened in 2016 in the building where the museum storage was located. Limestone stains from the fire extinguishing water and dirt are deposited on the objects over a large area, and in addition, corrosion developed on the metal knobs due to the high moisture, which has been transferred onto the foils in spots. In order to evaluate a suitable cleaning method, tests are carried out on various cleaning agents recommended in the literature. Since dry cleaning is not sufficient to remove the adhering dirt, wet cleaning agents are tested to estimate their influence on the PVC. To document possible changes, FTIR measurements are evaluated together with microscope images and weight as well as dimensional changes. From the interaction of the differently measured components, the cleaning agents are evaluated for cleaning. The work is intended to raise awareness of the relevance of preventive conservation of plastic objects in textile conservation; since the possibilities of active treatments are limited. To strengthen the historical significance of clothing made of plastic and thus its value in collections, cultural-historical developments of the raincoat are also considered. The synthetic material played a pioneering role in rainproof clothing because coats made of PVC film protect against wetness longer than the thickest wool coat. deborah.heinrich[at] smail.th ‐ koeln.de