#CIHA202400978Re-enacting Transparent Paper as a Medium of Copy and Design in the Early Modern Architectural Workshop

E. La Fabrique de l'Art
Creating, recreating: Towards an experimental history of art?
A. Bortolozzi1.
1Stockholm University - Stockholm (Suède)


Adresse email : anna.bortolozzi@arthistory.su.se (A.Bortolozzi)
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This paper delves into an experimental re-enactment of transparent paper production, as part of a broader project investigating copies and tracings within the Early Modern architectural workshop context. Our focus centers on a substantial collection of architectural tracings, comprising over 600 pieces, made by Swedish architects Carl Hårleman (1700-1753) and Carl Johan Cronstedt (1709-1777) during the period spanning approximately 1720 to 1780. In this era, architects had to create their own transparent paper, as industrially-produced tracing paper only became available commercially in the early nineteenth century.

Historical sources provide us with various recipes for rendering paper transparent. These formulations commonly employed substances readily found in artists' studios, serving as binding agents for pigments or as final coatings. Among these substances were linseed oil, walnut oil, turpentine, and the combination of turpentine and plant oils.

To gain precise insight into the materials used by Hårleman and Cronstedt for paper impregnation, we conducted Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) analyses on samples taken from a representative selection of six tracings. Our findings revealed a diverse range of coating media, including linseed oil (one sheet), walnut oil (one sheet), oil of turpentine (three sheets), and a blend of walnut and turpentine oil (one sheet). This data provides a nuanced view of the two architects' practices, suggesting that they did not favour a single recipe for preparing their tracings paper but instead employed the available media of their time. However, due to variation in the GCMS results, we could not definitively identify the substances used for coating all the other tracings.

To address this uncertainty, we conducted an experimental re-enactment of transparent paper production in collaboration with the paper conservators at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. The objective was to assess different coating media, examining their specific optical and physical qualities (such as colour, viscosity, and drying time), as well as their impact on paper (including the degree and uniformity of achieved transparency). This experiment shed light on several aspects of the process that historical sources had left unexplored or inaccurately described. For instance, it revealed the necessity of diluting certain substances with solvents to facilitate the impregnation process, as well as substantial variations in drying times across different materials. Moreover, it affirmed the importance of selecting exceptionally thin and homogeneous paper, as recommended by historical sources, to achieve satisfactory results.

Subsequently, we compared the paper samples impregnated during the experiment with eighteenth-century tracings analysed through GCMS. This comparison enabled us to assess how the aging process affected various coating media and identify optical and tactile characteristics that distinguish paper treated with vegetable oils from those treated with resins.

Key words: transparent paper; tracing; architectural drawings; re-enactment


Bibliographie

Baudez, Basile, ‘De l’usage du calque d’architecture à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, outil de conception ou mémoire de représentation’, in Claude Mignot (ed.), Le dessin d’architecture dans tous ses états: Le dessin d’architecture, document ou monument? (Paris 2015), 89–96.

Baudez, Basile, ‘Usage du calque dans le voyage de Naples, architectes et peintres au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles’, in Cristina Cuneo & Antonio Brucculeri (eds), À travers l’Italie: Édifices, villes, paysages dans les voyages des architectes français/Attraverso l’Italia: Edifici, città, paesaggi nei viaggi degli architetti francesi, 1750–1850 (Milan 2020), 166–173.

Bortolozzi, Anna, Transparent designs: Copies and tracings in eighteenth-century architectural practice, digital exhibition, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 15 May 2023: https://www.nationalmuseum.se/en/explore-art-and-design/more-to-discover/transparent-design-copies-and-tracings.

Colonnese, Fabio, ‘Between the Layers: Transparent Paper as a Modernist Architectural Design Environment’, in Cristiana Bartolomei, Alfonso Ippolito & Simone Helena Tanoue Vizioli (eds), Digital Modernism Heritage Lexicon (Cham 2021), 57–80.

Evans, Helen, ‘A Condition Survey of the Architectural Drawings Collections’, Art Bulletin of the Nationalmuseum, 16 (2009), 127–130.

Laroque, Claude, ‘History and analysis of transparent papers’, Paper Conservator, 28/1 (2004), 17–32.

Laroque, Claude, 'Transparent papers: A technological outline and conservation review’, Reviews in Conservation, 1 (2000), 21–31.

Olausson, Magnus, Millhagen, Rebecka (eds), Carl Hårleman: Människan och verket (Stockholm 2000).

Rollenhagen Tilly, Linnéa, Carl Johan Cronstedt: Arkitekt och organisatör (Stockholm 2017).


CV de 500 signes incluant les informations suivantes: Prénom, nom, titre, fonction, institution

Anna Bortolozzi

PhD, Associate Professor in Art History

Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University

Professional page: https://www.su.se/english/profiles/anbo-1.261203

 


Résumé / Abstract

This paper delves into an experimental re-enactment of transparent paper production, as part of a broader project investigating copies and tracings within the Early Modern architectural workshop context. The objective was to assess different coating media, examining their specific optical and physical qualities (such as colour, viscosity, and drying time), as well as their impact on paper (including the degree and uniformity of achieved transparency). This experiment shed light on several aspects of the process that historical sources had left unexplored or inaccurately described and enabled us to evaluate the results obtained from Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry analyses conducted on original 18th-century tracings.