Editorial

Abstract

Evidence helps prove or disprove probable cause but the kind of evidence required is determined by the questions asked; all answers get added to the archive that encapsulates the privileged artefact (a process which Jacques Derrida fetishises as ‘archive fever’). Evidence is gathered to provoke action and this first issue of 2023 begins with two articles concerned with conservation’s use of evidence to try and stay ahead of, ultimately, the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics, entropy. Joyce Townsend and Rosie Freemantle’s ‘Three works on paper by Vincent Van Gogh: technical study, display considerations and a conjectural colour reconstruction’ presents the evidence gathered from various analyses—UV, SEM-EDX, FTIR, UHPLC-PDA-HRMS and microfading—to understand the components of the inks and gouaches used in three works by the artist made at the end of his relatively short life. Their results provided a focus for discussions about both the works’ future display and the wider lighting policies of their host institution, the Tate. Critically, van Gogh’s use of geranium lake gouaches based on Eosin Y, a dye highly sensitive to light, are identified for the first time. The second article driven by this cycle of evidence gathering, Alejandra Nieto Villena et al.’s ‘Towards a methodological approach to identify the main components used in historic photographs’, suggests an analytical workflow for characterising those components essential to characterising the type of early photograph on the bench before conservation begins. As the authors state, this workflow will ‘provide science-based evidence for any qualitative observations first made’ and ‘facilitates a secure evidence-based classification of photographs and provides valuable information for their conservation’. In his contribution, ‘The Iranian approach to architectural restoration: a style derived from nationalism’, author Mehdi Hooshyari takes a more textual approach to reading a variety of built heritage projects in his home country Iran to suggest how they independently exemplify aspects of Viollet-Le-Duc’s concept of ‘stylistic restoration’. In avoiding working towards some perceived original state Hooshyari tracks how in restoring historic architectural works an idealised historical moment—one that never existed—has been consistently invoked in restoration work across Iran, much like Viollet-le-Duc’s decidedly ahistoric completion and decoration of Vézelay Abbey in France. The author suggests that given the emphasis on understanding vernacular approaches in various conservation charters, any apparent antagonisms in this Iranian form of stylistic restoration with international conservation principles should be situated within a more accommodating approach such as attempted by the Indian National Trust For Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) charter that the author also discusses. Oluwole Ejiwoye Rasaki and his co-authors offer a qualitative and semiquantitative approach to evidence-gathering in their article ‘An investigation into pest management and control in selected university libraries in Nigeria’. Findings from their study revealed that currently there is a prevalence of pest infestations in Nigeria’s university libraries, mainly caused by food and drink being brought into the libraries, along with the occasional transport of infested materials. The authors describe various Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 2023 Vol. 46, No. 1, 1–2, https://doi.org/10.1080/19455224.2023.2174292