A poultice method involving TRI-Funori™ and kozo tissue was used to clean two large (15,000 sq. ft.) coffered fibrous plaster ceilings at the Sir John A. Macdonald Building, a National Historic Site. These ceilings feature delicate gilt and metallic painted surfaces, which had not been cleaned since the building’s construction in 1930. In this procedure, the tissue was held in place and the TRI-Funori™ was brush applied through it onto the soiled ceiling surface.
After an appropriate dwell time, the paper was removed, taking soil from the ceiling with it. One of the key advantages of this cleaning method is that the paper can be inspected after removal to determine and confirm that no gilding or pigment was disturbed. The project used 200L of TRI-Funori™ and was carried out in six weeks by a team of conservation students trained specifically for the task.
This was by far the largest use ever of any funori-based product in a cleaning application.
Sir John A. Macdonald Building: Mark Brandt, Architect, MTBA & Associates Inc.; Jean-Francois Furieri, Iconoplast Designs Inc.
