Perfect successor of a long tradition of parchment production and processing, dating back to the beginning of the 14th century, Lucreția Miu, one of the very few masters of this increasingly rare craft in an age dominated by digital technologies, will coordinate two demonstration workshops in the framework of the exhibition organized within the project “FRAGMED – A Transylvanian Puzzle: Reconstructing Medieval Culture from Fragments of Codices”. The workshops will take place at the Romanian Academy Library, Cluj-Napoca Branch, on September 12 and 13, 2022, starting at 11:00 a.m.
Senior Scientific Researcher at the National Research and Development Institute for Textiles and Leather, Division: Leather and Footwear Research Institute, Bucharest, Romania and, at the same time, Expert in parchment processing within the FRAGMED project, Lucreția Miu obtained the title of PhD in Chemistry at the “Politehnica” University in Bucharest and was certified by the Training Center of the Ministry of Culture and Religion for the conservation of heritage objects in 2007. She was also certified in 2008 by the Conservation Center in Northampton, England, for the conservation of leather goods. She has been a coordinator or partner in multiple national and European projects for the development of leather and parchment technology as well as in projects focused on non-destructive and micro-destructive analysis for ancient leather and parchment and other cultural heritage artefacts.
In one of these workshops, Lucreția Miu will illustrate the parchment processing process, with specific informations regarding the technical aspects of making parchment from various types of skins and the influence of technological parameters in obtaining the special characteristics of various uses of parchment. Also in this workshop, Lucretia Miu will illustrate the main moments in the history of parchment processing, with an emphasis on the medieval regional history of this craft, which is characterized by the production, in Transylvania of the Middle Ages, of a type of parchment of such high quality, that it could hardly be distinguished from the imported one.
During the second workshop, she will present a guide for assessing the state of degradation of a heritage parchment, explaining (i) the methods of identifying the animal from which it is made, (ii) the types of damage depending on the factors of deterioration and (iii) evaluation of the degree of deterioration [diagnosis and investigation by physico-chemical, optical, non-invasive, non-contact and microanalytical techniques; vibrational spectral methods: IR-ATR, XRF, Raman, unilateral NMR; MHT thermomicroscopy, micro-DSC etc]. We invite you, therefore, to participate in these workshops for being able to learn some of the possible applications of chemistry or physics. The workshops are organized by the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca Branch, through the project “FRAGMED – A Transylvanian Puzzle: Reconstructing Medieval Culture from Fragments of Codices”, financed by SEE Grants 2014 – 2021, within the RO-CULTURE Program.
