106-CF-2019_Agliè, Castello ducale, Photo Fund – ‘Italian Museums - Sleeping Beauty’ project

Facilitated description: 

 

The 130 photographs are kept at the Ducal Castle of Agliè. 
The photographs are from the late 1800s and early 1900s. 
The La Venaria Reale Conservation and Restoration Centre carried out a maintenance (small interventions) on the photographs in 2019. 
The restorers cleaned the photographs of dust and stains.
They repaired the scraps of the albums and sheets under the photographs,
They put the photographs in storage bags and boxes.
They cleaned the albums without disassembling them. 
They put the albums in storage boxes. 
 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention: 

 

Maintenance

The project involved the conditioning and conservative maintenance of photographic materials belonging to the collections of the Ducal Castle of Agliè (130 phototypes constituting the Savoy Genoa photographic fund) and of the Racconigi Castle (photographic fund of Umberto II of Savoy). In particular, the photographic material of the collection of the Ducal Castle of Agliè consists of 130 phototypes of the Savoy Genoa photographic fund of various sizes (cm 50x70; 35x50; 20x30), printed with albumin and silver-salt gelatine. These photographs are mostly loose and equipped with secondary support in cardboard and partly mounted in an album containing cartes de visite.

The extraordinary maintenance has tried to solve the main problems found on both nuclei and which were possible elements of future degradation. A multi-stage cleaning was then carried out with tires, sponges and solution. Subsequently, the lacerations and tears of the secondary supports were saturated. At the end of the intervention all the loose phototypes were inserted individually in polyethylene bags and PAT certified boxes of various sizes, while the photographs inserted in albums were interleaved. The photo albums have been subjected to minimal intervention operations, without disassembling the binding: dedusting of the blanket and internal parts by micro-suction and with brushes, scalpels and solutions. Finally, the decorative elements of the blankets and hinges were consolidated and the partially detached fragments were repositioned. The album was placed in a box of conservative material.