Analytical Investigations of XIX–XX Century Paints: The Study of Two Vehicles from the Museum for Communications of Frankfurt

Abstract

Over the centuries, humans have developed different systems to protect surfaces from the influence of environmental factors. Protective paints are the most used ones. They have undergone considerable development over the years, especially at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, between the two centuries, new binders and pigments have been introduced in the constituent materials of paints. The years in which these compounds have been introduced and spread in the paint market allow them to be defined as markers for the dating of paints and painted artifacts. The present work is focused on the study of the paints of two vehicles of the Frankfurt Museum of Communication, i.e., a carriage and a cart, that was designed for the German Postal and Telecommunications Service roughly between 1880 and 1920. The characterization of the paints was performed through in situ non-invasive techniques, i.e., portable optical microscopy and multispectral imaging, and laboratory non-destructive techniques, i.e., FT-IR ATR spectroscopy and SEM-EDS. The analytical investigation and the comparison with the data reported in the literature allowed us to determine the historicity of the paints, which are all dated before the 1950s.

Unveiling the Secrets of an Artwork through Non-Invasive Investigations—Case Study of a 19th-Century Female Portrait

“…The presence of Pb, along with Zn and Ba indicates the artist's technique of combining multiple white pigments to obtain the desired tones. The combination of zinc and barium could come from lithopone, a mixture of zinc sulfide and barium sulfate (ZnS•BaSO 4 ), introduced in the second half of the 19th century [17,23], but it could also point towards the use of zinc white, which is zinc oxide, and barium sulfate, known as Blanc Fixe [24,25].…”

Advances in Analytical Strategies to Study Cultural Heritage Samples

“…Studying paints and their components, such as binders, dyes, or pigments, may allow us to acquire useful information to differentiate original from non-original materials and date objects and artifacts. In the work of Macchia et al [13], the combined use of noninvasive in situ techniques, such as portable O.M. and multispectral imaging, and nondestructive laboratory techniques, namely ATR-FTIR and SEM-EDS, allowed us to obtain information on the compositional nature of the paints of two vehicles in the Museum of Communication in Frankfurt (Germany), which were designed for the German postal and telecommunications service.…”