Digital reproduction techniques applied to conserve paper theaters: a contemporary approach to the preservation of cultural heritage

Abstract

Digital captures of originals and generating images are contemporary preservation strategies. Creating ad hoc prints is an advantageous solution for chromatic reintegration of modern and contemporary artefacts due to their versatility and durability. Printing likewise serves to produce facsimiles with the objective of reserving the original and, therefore, assuring its preservation. The University of Granada (Spain), in an attempt to better understand contemporary prints, has delved into the behaviour of laser ink prints on cotton paper by means of accelerated ageing. The results gleaned from the digital conservation techniques were applied to a Children's Theater to generate both a physical and digital facsimile. The paper game was designed in the first half of the 20th century by Industrias Gráficas Seix & Barral Hermanos and is currently housed in Granada in the Manuel de Falla Archives. The restoration of other similar artefacts in Spain's National Library has likewise rendered it possible to correlate traditional physical and chromatic reintegration procedures with new methods to identify criteria better adapted to them.