Page - 159 - in The Vienna Genesis - Material analysis and conservation of a Late Antique illuminated manuscript on purple parchment

Sophie Rabitsch, Antonia Malissa, Katharina Uhlir, Martina Griesser, Christa Hofmann 159 According to the historical recipes, two forms of silver were used for the experiments: 1. Silver leaf6 that is used as silvering coating in decorative arts. The leaves measure about 0.5 µm in thickness. They are produced by mechanically flattening silver foils. 2. Pieces of rolled silver7 (silver foil of 0.21 mm in thickness) were filed with a small iron file to obtain fine silver chips. As illustrated in the workflow (Fig. 1), the silver leaves or silver chips were further pro- cessed to powdered silver by three different methods: 6 Obtained from Alois Wamprechtsamer GmbH, Blattgoldschlägerei, Vienna. 7 Obtained from Advent Research Materials Ltd. Fig. 1: Scheme of the preparation process of the reference samples. Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0