"Histoires fragmentées." Étude et conservation-restauration d’un fonds de fragments de manuscrits médiévaux remployés en éléments de reliure (IXe-XVe siècles ; Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Archives nationales) $e Améliorer la lisibilité d’un texte sur parchemi…

The topic of this master’s thesis is the study and the implementation of a conservation treatment protocol for a collection of mediaeval manuscript fragments repurposed as bookbinding elements. That collection, kept in the French National Archives site of Pierrefite-sur-Seine, was created in 1925 at the prompting of a memorandum sent to all departmental archives in the country, asking for every object of that type that might be kept in their respective warehouse. The historical periods when those fragments were produced and repurposed make that collection highly diverse as well as highly valuable both materially and historically.
My technical and scientific study as well as my conservation and restauration project were devised to suit the specific demands of a larger digitisation project, whose undertaking over the next few years will lead to every fragment being uploaded to the Fragmentarium database.
The technical and scientific study focused on researching imaging processes that would make the texts beneath paper or cardboard residue - brought about by the fragments’ past use as bookbinding elements - legible again. The results confirmed that simple, cost-efficient solutions can be successfully employed to avoid removing those residues altogether, which would be detrimental to the material history of the fragments.
The conception of the conservation protocol was done in accordance with the demands arising from the digitisation project, the proper respect due to the material history of the objects, and the pragmatic requirement that work time be optimised in the context of that massive undertaking. It has been implemented on a sample of five fragments over this dissertation year.