As I mentioned last week, I toured the Indianapolis Art Museum's conservation lab as part of our summer ASM materials camp a decade or so ago. It was a great tour given by Dr Gregory Smith, star of this series of videos through which he explains the process of verifying the age and pedigree of an Uzbek Coat of Many Colors.
The rest of the four-part series is after the jump.
Give 'em a break, alright?
It was the pandemic. People were trapped in their houses. They were doing their best to create content that was interesting and that could be enjoyed remotely.
No, a video of two people talking remotely to each other while narrating a slide show isn't necessarily the most exciting of presentations, but I can vouch for Dr Smith being an entertaining guy. He gave me and our summer ASM campers a tour of the Indianapolis Museum of Art's conservation lab about ten years ago, and it is one of the more unexpectedly great tours that I've been on through those summer workshops.
Take some time and see what Dr Smith has to teach us about art conservation and forgery detection today.
Stephanie Kwolek absolutely belongs in the inventors hall of fame, in the women's hall of fame, on the American Chemical Society's website, and on lots of other lists of honorees.
Stephanie Kwolek, you see, invented Kevlar at DuPont in 1965.
The process of making shellac is scientifically fascinating, ridiculously complicated, economically important, and ethically questionable.
Like so many products that are 'natural', shellac amazes me because I have absolutely no idea how anyone would have thought to go through this process to turn bug secretions into a furniture sealant, a citrus fruit polish, a candy coating, and so much more.
