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Ancient Mexican Rubber Artifacts and Modern American Spacesuits: Studies in Crystallization and Oxidation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2011

Mary T. Baker
Mary T. Baker*
Affiliation:
Conservation Analytical Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution, MRC 534, Washington, DC, 20560, USA
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Abstract

Modem rubber is a nightmarish material in a museum collection because it is highly susceptible to oxidation, and will slowly crystallize at room temperature, the combination of which can make the rubber inelastic after only a few decades. Recent studies by the author have shown that the rubber in modem spacesuits can be preserved against oxidation by cold storage, but only at the cost of considerably accelerating crystallization.

Natural rubber from ethnographic artifacts, produced by less consistent and less documented technology (as well as from different botanical sources), presents similar problems. A rubber sample from a Mexican artifact, for example, was found to be both highly oxidized and highly crystalline. It also appeared to have been filled with an inorganic material and may be crosslinked, offering striking similarities between its physical and chemical properties and those of the degraded modem rubber found in the spacesuits.

This paper discusses the results of the present research on crystallization/decrystallization of rubber artifacts, and the effects of storage environments on their degradation. These results are then applied to the problem of preserving the chemical and physical integrity of both older and modem rubber collections.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 352: Symposium – Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology IV , 1995 , 223
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1995

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References

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