Interleaving and Tissue

Normally ordering from a reputable supplier like Talas is sufficient. But preservation staff recommends the following.

For crumpling inside a container, we use unbuffered tissue paper for everything so that we don’t have to pay attention to what we are using it for. We do not want to use buffered tissue with textiles, photographs, cyanotypes and various other printing reproductions (blueprints, ink jet prints, etc). and other materials which are or may be pH sensitive.

We do not use tissue paper for interleaving. It is so thin that it is prone to wrinkling, creasing and tearing. We sometimes use use Chartham translucent paper for interleaving for this reason. It’s just sturdier and more resilient but still translucent (!) so that you can see the item through the interleaving and know what you’re getting yourself into. But Chartham is completely inappropriate for crumpling and taking up space in enclosures.

There are other interleaving papers on hand that the end processor can get for you. We avoid using interleaving paper that has watermarks when we can, especially with photographs and early manuscripts.

 For most objects in enclosures, we simly use rolls of unbuffered tissue. There are often a variety of materials within our collections (embroidered bindings, one exmple), so instead of trying to keep track of whether or not buffered is good or not, we just use the unbuffered throughout and don’t worry about it. At this point in these items’ lives, we are assuming that the storage conditions are good. By this is meant that the temp & RH are as stable as we can get and the other materials used for the enclosures are of good “archival” quality. Essentially, we’re really doing the best we can given the size of the collection and the addition buffered tissue in an enclosure isn’t going to make a huge difference in longevity.