Advanced Instrumentation supplied to Art Conservation Workshop

Agilent Technologies Inc have announced it is supplying state-of-the-art instruments and software for a workshop on Recent Advances in Characterizing Asian Lacquer at Yale University.

An international group of art conservators and scientists are learning advanced techniques in gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to help them analyse lacquer and a broad range of other trace-level compounds found in Asian lacquer artefacts.

Careful analysis of lacquer can reveal a wealth of information about the age and geographical origins of the components, and also address the authenticity of the artefact. Modern coatings that aim to imitate lacquer are composed of various mixtures of polymers and pigments and can also be characterised using GC/MS techniques.

The five-day workshop, based on the Getty Conservation Institute’s research on Asian lacquers, was developed in partnership with the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. Frontier Laboratories’ pyrolysis technology used in this workshop is provided by Quantum Analytics.

Techniques such as THM-Py-GC/MS (pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy using thermally assisted hydrolysis and methylation) are commonly used in museum laboratories to analyse the chemical composition of paints, coatings, artifacts. Asian lacquer is primarily composed of sap from the trees of the Anacardiaceae family and is distinct from other wood finishes such as European japanning.

Agilent’s GC/MSD systems are widely used in a variety of industries and provide advanced analytical capabilities to specialised fields such as art conservation and preservation. Agilent also offers a selection of handheld mobile FTIR and UV-VIS spectroscopy instruments for use in artefact analysis at museums and in the field.